This is an interesting article on the struggle between active fans and “establishment” some interesting quotes in the middle of the article: 

Nielsen Australia managing director Monique Perry has surveyed and measured Australian sports fans for the past 23 years.

She says Australian soccer has a particularly young and avid supporter base, which is a big opportunity for the struggling code.“Thirty-four per cent of Australians are football fans and 36 per cent of those fans identify as avid A-League fans,” she says.“This is a pretty exciting demographic.

”Perry says soccer fans in general are particularly valuable. “When we look at the A-League fans, it over indexes to younger Australians, so [among] 18-to-24-year-olds and 25-to-39-year-olds,” she says.“That core avid fan base is growing, which is a great sign.”

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-25/western-sydney-wanderers-rbb-unique-opportunity-for-aleague/11618220?pfmredir=sm

Waz

Thanks for posting that article.... its very thought provoking in many ways and being an ABC article it will be widely read and looked at...

I am still thinking about it... but one thing that stood out was how the article referred to well groomed CEO's and small business owners as well as families being in the crowd....

If you consider most reporting on the RBB suggests young out of control youth....

Will comment more latter... great find... 

Another comment was the small conversation rate of players to A-League fans even among those that follow Football.... its the 64 million dollar question... how do we get the player base involved ... 

A nice balanced article about active support without a click bait headline. The RBB will get a bit more competition this year with a lot of the old 'North Terrace' back for Victory.

We need to focus on the 64% of football fans first. Not the 66% who have no affinity with football.

So that means there are 3 million "avid" A-league fans in Australia... where the fuck are they hiding then?

Lot of factual mistakes in that article. I honestly expected better research from the ABC...



So, the 2006/07 season was AFTER the 2006 world cup, not leading up to it.
The 2006/07 averaged 14,036 per game. It was the 2007/08 season that averaged over 15,000 per game.

Also worth mentioning that the 2006/07 & 2007/08 seasons had fewer games than these days (90 games per season vs 140 for the last 7 seasons).
Those two sentences could be rewritten as;
1,507,001 supporters went through the turnstiles for A-League matches in the 2018/19 season, up from the 2006/07 season, which saw 1,263,252 people attending matches.
Factually correct, but completely changes the tone of the phrase.


That said, the rest of the article seems pretty good.

we need to change that 36% to 100%. thats the real challenge. 

does other countries have the same problem?

like in asain champions league games sometimes the crowd is not full for games in korea,japan china ect 

Agree, but the cut through of the stats is that 1 in 10 Aussies call themselves "avid A League fans". So we have a great base to build on. As is being said on other threads, hype the young players coming through this year. Make a big hype of the Diamanti and Kone playing for Western. There are great things happening before our eyes in the A League. 

Just some maths...

34 % of 1.5 million is 510K

36% of 510K is 184K are connected to Hal ...

184 K as a percentage of 1.5 million is 12.25%.

Meaning we have 12.25% of those connected and activity taking part connected to Hal... some years ago this figure was 18%.... in League, Rugby, AFL the conversation rate has an average of 86%.

So we have a sport with, 510 K active follows of which only 184 K, watch Hal and another 990K who are involved but we can't get them interested in Hal.

Meaning we have 326 K [510-184] low hanging fruit, and another 990 K to work with...

Anyone with half a brain would invest in this as the blue sky possibilities and massive....

I have often gone on about behavioural science and creating small changes will have a mega impact.  

To things for me stand out like dogs balls, first is the lack of connection between the professional game and the player base, and second the media in general... I will use Newcastle as my example of what happens with a supportive media, Football in Newcastle is huge and has equal respect with league...

The interesting thing is why is Newcastle so different, essentially the Football media in Newcastle by and large are both positive about Football and Australian Football and main stream media outlets are equally supporting of Football...

Everywhere else  the game lacks both promotion and positiveity and its always been that way.... no broadcaster be it 10 or the ABC today co-promotes Football... SBS tried but kept finding fault everywhere and the problems and issues over rode the good.... whereas in Newcastle they acknowledged the issues but constantly and often presented the good...

Whether its leadership, vision , or uniting, or whatever ... if we can crack the riddle of connecting to the player base we will be the biggest code by far...

Back to the article... if we get a broadcaster who promotes Football with Football people in management ... I would be over the moon 

Every country that does not have a top league has this problem, especially in Europe.

In my experience, when you talk to people in that 64%, their reasons are all pretty similar. More often than not the reason given is the quality isn't good because of the cap and lack of pyramid. That 64% simply want the league to follow the European models. There are also still plenty of NSL fans that won't follow the HAL because their team isn't in it. 

Great read but it does fudge a few things so they can build up the narrative of a league in strife: the 06-07 season averaged 12k not 15k

It is a good read. A great bit of spin by the RBB as well ... all those larakin  CEO’s, General Manager’s and Doctors & Dentists letting their clean shaven head of hair down over a few tinnies and flares is a lot less threatening 😁

They keep seeing games like MV v BR