North Melbourne are in the shitter a bit too. Maybe a merge between North and Melbourne would be good. It's the AFL's fault really for killing local footy and forcing clubs into a deal at Jihad that only really benefited Collingwood.

Worrying about these two new franchises as well. This is unprecedented territory with a second franchise team in another codes stronghold in Brisbane and Sydney.

On top of all that we are seeing richer clubs dominate. :-k

Edited by theselectfew: 15/4/2013 10:40:32 AM

Just checking the ratings for the digital multis. It's quite rare to get any sport in the top 20 of those ratings, but an AFL game has made it in there again, on only 3 cities.

The Friday night game made it into 8th position for the Friday multi digital ratings:

7Mate: Syd 25k Bris 27k Perth 170k for total of 222k.

7Mate won 5.7% of the audience on Friday, triple of ONE, actually more than SBS1, and seven times the number SBS2 got.

As I mentioned earlier, 7Mate actually won the ratings on Friday in Perth, beating all the primary stations.

I can see a future where Ch 7 will show their lifestyle shows on prime time Friday evenings, and put all of their footy on 7Mate, and they would absolutely dominate ratings in total, getting double the bang for their buck.

Edited by Mister Football: 15/4/2013 12:53:18 PM

Good ratings on Sat night (FTA 5 city metro).

7. Seven's AFL Saturday Night Football: 517k (Melb 424k, Adel 93k)
20. Seven's AFL, Post Match: 275k (Melb 218k, Adel 57k)

The best way to go about it would be to split into two conferences - Victorian and National. 'national west' incorporating a new WA team, Freo, WCE, Port and Adelaide. A 'national east' incorporating Tasmania, Sydney, GWS, GCS and Brisbane. And the Victorian conference with Vic North featuring Western Bulldogs, Essendon, Carlton, Collingwood and North Melbourne. And Vic South with Geelong, St Kilda, Hawthorn, Richmond and Melbourne.

As you say, you play the teams from your division twice and the teams from the other conference once - thus 23 rounds. The top two teams from each division quality for finals.

The only issue you'd then have is determining who you play at home or away in order to keep the draw relatively fair.

That becomes a dangerous split because the big Victorian teams attract extra interest away from home, in a way that the newest teams don't, and thus the non-Vic conference might be less attractive to sponsors (maybe a lot less attractive).

So I'd say it would be a very brave decision to go down that route.

Any publicity is good publicity definitely held true this week.

The Essendon v Fremantle from what I can gather got a rating FTA and PTV of 1,293m (correct me if I am wrong Mr Football).

This would have to be one of the highest rating AFL games outside of finals and I think the highest this year, especially for a Fremantle game (I cannot believe Fremantle fans actually think their team will ever win a flag).

Maybe the publicity the A-League is getting for so called crowd issues maybe doing it good.
After all it appears the AFL public does not mind the odd drug scandal and the NRL did well out of all it's own scandals.

:-S Isn't that the point? You follow your team in the hope that they'll be successful. You don't follow sport because mediocrity gets you off.

Freo actually have a very decent list, easily good enough to upset any of the more fancied heavy weights anyway.

As long as they hang on to Pav.

Haven't checked that out specifically myself, but it's a very good number, in fact, considering it involves one Vic team and the 4th newest team in the league, it's an incredible number. The game went down to the wire, that always helps ratings.

In WA, Freo's support is not that much less than the Eagles, despite the fact that they have experienced no success to date. Their support will go through the roof if they make just one grand final (and they have a team that is perhaps on the verge of doing it).

If drugs were truly rife throughout the AFL, that would indeed be scandalous, and that would affect support - but I don't believe that to be the case.

Why do I say that? Because no other sport has so many players on contract. NO other sport has so many staff engaged on a full time basis. No other sport has so many people so close to the heart of the club on a continuous basis. No other sport as the number of journos hanging around clubs 24/7 - if the problem was rife, we'd know about it very quickly.

If the Essendon situation is the very worst that ASADA has on the AFL - then the AFL is doing fine on that front.

You really think in the next 5 years that are going to win a flag with Pav at 35 years of age? I had the same bet with someone 5 years ago who was 100% certain that they were going to win the Premiership with Pav in his prime. Did they even win a final?

Pav is no Carey, just a good player in a very average team, otherwise he would have carried them to a premiership just like Carey did, twice.

There are 18 teams, apparently GWS and GCS have the cream of the crop of youngsters, so where is this premiership going to come from? Lyon could not win anything with St Kilda and they had some prime draft picks and these players were in their prime.

Fremantle will be the WB, Melbourne and St Kilda 1 premiership every 100 years or so. Some clubs have to be in this group and Fremantle have shown they cannot cope with pressure.


Edited by justafan: 15/4/2013 07:38:50 PM

Speaking of ratings, this is very interesting.

http://oztam.com.au//documents/2013/OzTAM-20130331-B2NatSTVShrRchCons.pdf

These are the oztam ratings for the week to 6 April 2013, 6am to midnight for all houses which have STV.

For the week as a whole, Fox Footy easily leads the STV ratings with 4.1% of the total TV viewing audience (including ratings for FTA and STV combined), ahead of Fox Sport 1 with 3.0% and Fox8 with 2.1%.

To put that 4.1% number in context, it is higher than ABC1. In other words, of the people who have Fox throughout Australia, for the week gone by, they watched more Fox Footy than ABC1.

In fact, it's only marginally less than Ten, which is extraordinary.

It's way, way ahead of SBS1, and forget about SBS2, it barely registers.

It's way, way ahead of all the digital multis.

This post is so full of flawed logic. Alastair Lynch was 33 when he won his first premiership with Brisbane.

Carey had a superb supporting cast. Guys like Schwass, Bell, Archer, Martin, Longmire... Fremantle don't have those kind of names but they're not far off doing so.

According to your reasoning Man City should never have been able to win the premier league.

What does the reach column mean (if anyone can help).

I assume this relates to how many different or "individual" people watch the station, so Fox Footy with 4.1% share would have 1.8m weekly reach which I assume is the number of different people watching and SBS with 1.2% would have a 2.02m weekly reach.

So SBS gets a lower share but is attracting a more wider audience than fox footy?

Is this correct.

What would be the key figure for advertisers?

Man City were a team put together by buying some of the best possible players, something not possible in the AFL, not sure how you can compare?

Being a North Melbourne fan I can assure you without a fit and firing Wayne Carey we would not have won those premierships the whole game plan was around him, Pagans Paddock? How many premierships did we win when he left and some of this supporting cast were still playing? We lost Schwass and a few other before 1999 and still won.

Lynch had a young and fit Jonathan Brown playing next to him as well a few of Brownlow medal winners pumping the ball down to them both, lets see Voss, Aka, the left footed guy whose name escapes me.

Nothing against the guy, but it is unlikely Pav will carry Fremantle to a premiership if he has been unable to do so in his youth let alone as he gets older. So why do people keep saying we have Pav, he is the difference? What is this based on, a few good games every now and then?

I do not follow it closely enough these days, but I know absolutely no one else in that Fremantle team, sorry expect the tall ruckman.

That's right: the number of unique viewers attracted during the week.

For a station showing just footy, it makes sense that it will attract only footy fans, and that SBS and ABC will attract a greater range of viewers during the week with a greater range of offerings.

Clearly, the 1.8m Fox Footy viewers are watching far more footy (in terms of hours glued to the TV) than what the 2.02m are dedicating to SBS' more varied programming.

Mathematically, if each of the 1.8m individual Fox Footy viewers are watching 2 to 3 hours each on average per week, then the 2.02m SBS viewers are watching less than an hour each on average per week (an example of the proportionate difference in TV watching per week).

Edited by Mister Football: 15/4/2013 08:29:13 PM

The top dozen attendances after the first three rounds of the season (featuring 14 of 18 teams):

Collingwood v Carlton (MCG) 84,247
Carlton v Richmond (MCG) 80,971
Hawthorn v Geelong (MCG) 76,300
Collingwood v Hawthorn (MCG) 72,254
St Kilda v Richmond (MCG) 56,783
Essendon v Melbourne (MCG) 51,153
Richmond v Western Bulldogs (Docklands) 44,045
Geelong v Carlton (Docklands) 43,241
Adelaide v Essendon (Football Park) 42,218
North Melb v Collingwood (Docklands) 41,040
Port Adelaide v Adelaide (Football Park) 40,707
Fremantle v West Coast (Subi) 39,626

This weekend, Richmond vs Collingwood is likely to take top spot with a crowd of over 85,000, Sydney vs Geelong on Friday night should get a strong mid 30s crowd, as will Hawthorn vs Freo and WCE vs Carl.

ANZAC Day the following weekend.

Another interesting point about these Oztam ratings. The first link I put up was a survey of all homes who had STV (allowing comparisons to be made as to their viewing preferences across both FTA and STV).

This link is for all homes (with or without STV):
http://oztam.com.au//documents/2013/OzTAM-20130331-A2MetTTVShrCons.pdf

It's for the same week, 6am to midnight, and the interesting thing is that it provides a break down by mainland capital city.

As you would expect, Fox Footy is miles ahead of all other STV channels in terms of total viewing audience for the week (a result that occurred every week of the footy season last year as well).

Unsurprisingly, in Melb, Adel and Perth, Fox Footy is a zillion miles ahead of every other STV channel, nothing else even comes remotely close.

In fact, for both Melb and Adel, Fox Footy is even ahead of SBS1. In other words, despite only 35% of households having STV, the numbers for Fox Footy are so large amongst that 35% that they outweigh the 100% who have access to SBS.

Now this is the most interesting bit of all.

In Sydney, Fox Footy attracts 0.7% of the total TV audience in Sydney. Doesn't sound huge, except that it's actually the 5th highest of all the STV channels, as follows:

Fox Sports 1: 2.1% (where NRL is shown)
Fox 8: 1.1%
Lifestyle: 0.9%
Disney Junior: 0.8%
Fox Footy: 0.7%

The interesting thing here is that the programs in 2nd, 3rd and 4th position are available to all Fox subscribers, whereas Fox Footy is only available to those who have the sports package, meaning even less than 35% of Sydney households may have access to it.

Despite that handicap, Fox Footy in Sydney attracts more than double the viewers that SBS2 is attracting, which is accessible to 100% of households.

In Brisbane, it is doing even better, being in equal 3rd position, and only a fraction behind Fox Sports 1.

Next, I'll use these percentages to estimate what percentage of the total Fox Footy audience is attributable to each capital city.

Melbourne's members have already voted in favour of their club's extinction before, who's to say they won't try to do it again in the near future?

The AFL wouldn't let one of the competition's oldest clubs go under just like that. And to be fair when they voted to fold the club, they were in significant financial troubles - which they aren't now.

Also, you'll get a chunk of Melbourne supporters who reject the validity of that vote (but yes, the history books show that the membership voted for the merger, and it took the Hawks to put the kybosh on it).

It's actually incredible that anyone at Hawthorn ever thought a merger was a good idea when you see their financial strength these days.

But underscores my original point, most clubs go through bad patches.

The AFL were happy to let it happen when the Demons were in financial trouble and mooching off AFL purses. Now that they're financially stable simple bad results won't be enough to jettison them as a club.

If the AFL ditched clubs just for bad results the bulldogs would have been gone decades ago.

Just as an aside, Fitzroy didn't move. They let us die.

There's a fair bit of truth in that.

It's true that Fitzroy was flat chat broke, but it's equally true that the AFL probably saw an opportunity to kill two birds with the one stone:
1. free up a spot for the incoming Port, to keep the competition to an even 16 teams; and
2. strengthen the Brisbane team.

So Fitzroy was ultimately a victim of unlucky timing as much as being broke.

It's also true that if North had taken the massive carrot to re-locate to the Gold Coast, we would have still been with 16 teams, and there would have been no second Sydney team.

Having said that, while the AFL were forced to implement the second Sydney team a bit quicker than they would have liked, the fact that they were forced to act probably made them bite the bullet and focus their energies into doing something they had to do sooner or later.

They don't have much further 'down hill' that they can go. You act like the first round of the draft is the only time good players are available.

There's no doubt that decades of zero success eventually start to bite.

It's no coincidence that South were forced to move to Sydney having failed to win a flag in almost 50 years, and Fitzroy were forced to merge having failed to win a flag in 52 years (and both had made very few finals appearances over the journey).

On that measure, the Bulldogs (nearly 60 years) and Melbourne (nearly 50 years) are next in line and it's no coincidence that they are recipients of financial assistance from the AFL.

Not to mention that with 18 teams, flag droughts can only get longer - it's not about to get any easier for anyone.

You can either call that a problem or conclude: meh, that's modern sport.

There is one thing I am confident will NOT be happening, and that is a return to suburban grounds (not to mention that Whitten Oval has been turned into a training ground, with most of the ground completely opened up).

Boutique stadiums and suburban are unsustainable due to public transport issues, logal logistics and local residences.

Even Waverley Park was a complete disaster.

As for the whole "you don't win titles, you're doomed" assertion. That too is crap. look at the Detroit Lions - they haven't won a title in 83 years but are one of the NFL's most financially sound franchises.

Of course you are comparing a generation from 50 years ago to today's generation. In a era where there were not really too much else to do, footy clubs did not cost much to run and there was a lot more community spirit in attending your local ground and you were influenced by the local media and people in your community.

So it is logical that today's youth will go week in week out to watch their team lose year after year after year in the hope that one day they can may win something, because that is what we did.

If this is still the case why does the AFL not have a fairer draw and not be focused on the big blockbuster game at least every round? Why do Collingwood play so many games in Melbourne and MCG? Why do the big drawing crowds get Friday night games?

The AFL crowd is older more rusted on supporters born from the baby boomer generation. Gen Y and X have the attention span of hang on what was I saying.

Edited by justafan: 16/4/2013 07:31:17 PM