I'll post this here as this is the way the thread has gone -

Richmond, GWS Giants planning to play in India for premiership points next year

RICHMOND and Greater Western Sydney are pushing to play a game for premiership points in India next season.

The historic match would likely be played at the 30,000-seat DY Patil Stadium in Mumbai during the mid-season bye rounds.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/more-news/richmond-gws-giants-planning-to-play-in-india-for-premiership-points-next-year/news-story/480ac77477e82215d1913e140718a29b

For the record Hurling is played on a soccer sized pitch and players are able to score from about 2/3 of the way down the pitch with a reasonable success rate. 

And I hate the Australian trend of moving/selling games to anywhere other than your own home ground in any code. But if you need the money that badly then I guess it has to happen.

Oh well, good luck to them.

I actually thought they played on a Gaelic field, which is a bit longer than a soccer pitch (just checked it's 130 to 145 metres long).

Anyway, if anyone on here thinks hurling is an easy game to play because you can score from beyond the half way line....

I did not know the Gaelic field was bigger. There you go. And I never said Hurling was easy. It may actually be my new favorite sport (just moved to Ireland) just saying that scoring from over halfway is not nescesary a bad thing.

Don't worry, I had no problem with what you said.  I was referring to other posters.

In the meantime, the initial reaction on the sub-continent is anything but welcoming:

“At the invitation of Austrade, club representatives have travelled to India a number of times and that included identifying a potential venue in Mumbai that could host a game,” Gale said.
“We were also part of a State Government trade mission so we have built significant links both locally and in India. “We seriously explored the potential of playing a game in India five years ago so the idea is nothing new. We do however welcome the renewed interest from the AFL and are keen to work with the Giants to make this happen.”

What is it with the giants and trying their hardest to not actually play AFL in West Sydney?

Nobody follows AFL in Sydney, remember?

Omg India now.

These attempts are so delusional you wonder if they're only doing to a- blow handout $ b - gimmick for Victorian tv ratings

No matter what they say the game will never take off anywhere in the world. It hasn't even conquered its own country in 100 odd years of existence (or however long they claim it's existed)

Who needs to conquer your own country when the 1.3 Billion people in China are in awe of the game seeing what a massive success it was. /s

Although interestingly, last night's game at the SCG had an attendance of 34,575.

The FTA ratings were 641k (meaning they will end up at over 1 million with Fox and regionals included).

The game was on 7Mate in Sydney and had ratings of 63k.

Is that good or bad?

Well, put it this way, the national A-League ratings on SBS2 rarely got above 60k - that's nationally.

I was just checking the highest Sydney ratings for last Friday on the secondary channels, and it was Peppa Pig with 65k.

So using the Peppa Pig scale, I would conclude that ratings of 63k on 7Mate in Sydney are pretty good (and there would be more watching on Fox as well).

In a way its like the FFA sending A League games to Canberra, Geelong and Tasmania for points

The travelling circus rolls into to town, people see an exhibition game of something they will never be a part of, empty their pockets, and the circus moves on

As critical as people are about the stupid things the AFL do, they are merely adapting to being a stand alone league that has outgrown its resources. Its only stupid when we take their way of doing things as a blueprint for our game

100% correct bluebird

This AFL blueprint has also been replicated at NPL Level

Amazing, Australia's premier sporting competition in Australia's premier city, with Sydney's biggest club in any code up against one of Melbourne's (Australia's) biggest club, if not biggest & it's on a secondary channel in the premier city & beaten by Peppa Pig & the TV viewing in less then 2 times attendance figure in the Australia's biggest city.

How many times will pippinu introduce Pepper Pig in to debates??? It's almost like s/he is surprised five year old kids watch TV 😂

@melbourne_terrace The simple reason they are moving games is that nobody in Western Sydney gives a shit about AFL, or if they did they'd already follow the swans. A lot of AFL fans in Victoria just don't get that there is zero interest in AFL in Western Sydney.

Even the Swans weren't that popular for their first 15 years in Sydney, and only got really popular due to an unusual set of circumstances in Rugby League in the 90s. Super League, team mergers, scandals, moving games to bigger stadiums and the attempt to kick out Souths all caused huge disenchantment with league. My father was a rugby league fan but when his team (Wests Magpies) merged with the Balmain tigers he never went to another NRL game.

At the same time this was going on, the Swans made the 1996 grand final and started getting good. Some of the disenchanted middle classes switched to AFL and never went back to league.

If not for those factors I don't think the Swans would be as popular as they are today.

Well, it would appear that for A-League and AFL at least, Peppa Pig is as good a yard stick as any as to how things are travelling on the secondary stations.

As I once said, unless the A-League can consistently defeat Peppa Pig in the ratings, it can never hope to get a big TV deal.

I mostly agree with what you are saying, but it's pointless getting into the coodabeen, shoodabeen types of discussions - this is where things are now, rightly or wrongly.

One can either look at the Swans' experience in their first 15 seasons in the harbour city and conclude that GWS will fail, or one could take the oppposite view and conclude that maybe it will work if the AFL remains patient for 15 seasons.

Who knows what will happen - it's part of the charm of sport.

My Grand Niece loves Peppa Pig. 

@ pippinu

That's where your warped AFL-biased reality kicks in. Why don't you post on AFL boards instead where you'll get more sympathy??

SBS average for the HAL is about 50k and for Fox 70k. So that's about 120k per Friday game, that's before regional is added in (as you say for AFL and true for football). So maybe 150k compared to say a million for AFL, BBL or NRL .... that's about right, 15%, based on the relative popularity of the various sports.

Big games swing well over 150k towards 200k and it would seem reasonable to assume football can get 250k+ audiences in the next year but expectations need to be tempered as Socceroos games only hit a quarter of a mil and it's unlikely the HAL will blow them away.

Meanwhile NRL and AFL will continue to hit 1m.

But comparing football to those is rather pointless, as is your Pepper Pig report, the comparison for football is 20 years ago football. Average attendances then were 3k and they're now 13k, tv viewing then was too low to measure today it's a healthy 70-150k. Care to guess where they'll be in another twenty years?

I'll leave you with a Waz report - saturdays is pretty much all day at my junior club. The AFL Oval next door plays one game a week max, for the second weekend in a row a junior game wasn't played because one side couldn't raise enough kids. Thankfully we were able to use the kid-free AFL grass to warm up hundreds of soccer loving kids this morning.

So while you crow on about your big viewing figures and the size of your cock, sorry I mean tv deal, all is not well in your code of choice. And people like you are fighting the wrong battle ..... you shouldn't be fighting against the sokkha you should be fighting for the footy.

Your efforts here and elsewhere to put soccer down at every opportunity do nothing to diminish our codes progress, meanwhile your assumption that all is well in AFL is misplaced. It could do with some help. And your enemies should be glad you're on these pages making no difference whatsoever and not elsewhere making a difference in AFL.

Why are these posts always turned into a dick measuring contest? I realise you turn away from reality when AFL is mentioned on this site, why?

Actually as everyone I know who follows Aussie-rules enjoys going to it and everyone I know who follows football enjoys going to it, the only problem I have with it is these stupid outrageous claims that AFL spin doctors projectile shit out their mouths - like "Fast, technically gifted playing the best game in the world"

I'm not putting anyone down, I'm just looking at the numbers - we should never be afraid to benchmark against the very best in the business.

Re growth, let me give you another comparison.

For the start of the 2006-07 season, the A-League entered for the first year of its $17 mill per annum TV deal with Fox.  In 2006, the AFL was in its final year of a $100 mill per annum deal.

Eleven years on, and the AFL has a $418 mill p/a deal and the A-League deal is around $50 mill per annum.

Football will continue to grow, but every other part of the economy grows as well.  Whereas ten years ago, on this very board, we all would have been talking about bridging the abyss which exists between the A-League and the AFL, ten years on, it's pretty clear that that abyss will never be breached.  To state that is not the equivalent of putting one or the other sport down.  Note that one of our number, someone who has been on this board for as long as I, has an alternative view, to him all the figures show that football is about to grow exponentially, it's about to go bang.

Some will agree with that poster, others might choose to disagree, and so be it, no one should get offended.

I thought rugby league was the greatest game in the world?

I never put up posts about which sport is better, I enjoy watching all types of sport.  I mainly focus on the business of sport and governance issues.  I observe what's happening and comment on it, nothing more than that.

Nice post mate. I've lived in Sydney and know the score with AFL. But you will never convince Pip... as he is an accountant/TV executive who knows all the facts and figures- that's what counts, apparently.

I would certainly defer to your knowledge of the Sydney market.

All I can do is look at Friday night's game, and the numbers look all right:

Attendance:  34,575
FTA Sydney ratings on 7Mate:  63k.
Fox Sydney ratings:  46k.
Total Sydney TV ratings:  109k.

It seems to me that 109k watching in Sydney is pretty good.

As a point of reference, the NRL ratings in Brisbane on Nine were 138k.

So I hear what the Sydney residents on here are saying, and with all due respect, the attendance and TV figures seem to suggest something else.

Go to bigfooty

Brisbane didn't play in the NRL last night so how is that a point of reference?