AFL Women’s League the latest competition to pose a threat to lethargic A-League

IN the summer of 2012-13, the A-League was the hottest summer property in Australian sport.

Western Sydney Wanderers arrived with a bang while Alessandro Del Piero headlined an influx of international marquee stars as record crowds and TV ratings followed.

It prompted Cricket Australia and the AFL to act and four years on, the A-League is battling to stay on the summer podium.

Cricket’s Big Bash has gone gangbusters, with extra content added to the crammed six-week schedule as the TV networks vie for the rights.


The Melbourne Derby was outrated by the AFLW clash on Saturday.
Even the NBL, thanks to the drive, vision and $7 million-dollar injection of Dodo founder Larry Kestelman is closing in, with regular sellouts piquing interest and two international franchises set to join an expanded 10-team league within two years.

But the mega opening round of the AFL Women’s — headlined by last Friday night’s Ikon Park lockout — would have caught Sydney-centric FFA off-guard.

A-LEAGUE: Dandy derby holds bold expansion audition

In a season that the W-League has trod water and been affected by water (a game was called off prematurely when the automated sprinklers turned on), Melbourne City’s dramatic, high-quality win against Canberra United on Sunday night didn’t register on the radar.


A packed house at the opening Women's AFL at Ikon Park.
It’s taken one round for the AFL Women’s to surge past the stagnant W-League, but make no mistake — it’s threatening to overtake the A-League.

The AFLW ratings dwarfed the A-League’s — Friday’s Fox Footy average audience of 123,000 for Carlton-Collingwood dwarfed the following night’s Fox Sports broadcast of the Melbourne A-League derby (83,000).

After one round, there is a push to expand the eight-team AFLW competition, extending the season, and schedule the grand final at the MCG.

While FFA is struggling to attract corporate support and its turnover has remained at around the $100 million-dollar mark for several years, at the AFLW the sponsors are queuing up.


The W-League Melbourne Derby barely registered on the radar.
Meanwhile after almost a year of discussion, would-be A-League owners and fans are still awaiting an A-League expansion blueprint.

Crowds and TV ratings suggest soccer is failing to capitalise on the Tim Cahill shot in the arm, just like 2012-13 when the game failed to exploit the Del Piero (and Shinji Ono and Emile Heskey) effect.

As for the W-League and women’s soccer, that’s in need of a complete overhaul with the legitimate international pathways — the sport’s point of difference — completely under-utilised (the Matildas haven’t played since Rio 2016).

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/football/a-league/afl-womens-league-the-latest-competition-to-pose-a-threat-to-lethargic-aleague/news-story/8a15aaeea5324bdb806312f60222147d

The day an AFL writer writes a negative article on the AFL like this, is the last day they have job in the media in Melbourne.  

Hard to argue with any of that, wasnt that long ago that it felt like the a league had the summer to itself, only really rivalled by international cricket and even then it was mainly just the ashes and a couple of weeks of tennis, the bbl and now aflw are big game changers. 2012/13 feels like a lifetime ago.

The ffa screwing things up? Sounds about right. Time for change.

This fear mongering is out of control 

The only threat to the A-League is the A-League itself. 

I have to agree with this. The FFA just need to have faith in football. Just know it is the greatest sport in the world. They do not have to worry about what other sports are doing and be so insecure. Start moving forward on expansion and eventual P&R which will be a game changer.

This... get expanision going build the game... we are literally the only sport in the country that could make every club in the country relevent to the top level through ffa cup and p&r in the future. 

Ffa need to appeal to the football public. Its massive, they need to put up the big bucks for big name opposition for the socceroos and the matildas here... regularly build world cup quals from these games and the a-league and w-league from that. 
We need advertising in all major cities, on fta tv... a full blanket media explosion.

Stuff needs to happen now, football supporters are sick of waiting.

I think this is the big change that Davutovic is highlighting.

As bluebird says often, we reached the point long ago where we don't have to be overly concerned about overlapping with the Winter football codes.

I don't know why people are hammering davutovic on his twitter, he wasn't bagging the A league, just called it the way it is, the other codes have muscled up over summer and filled the gaps that the A league once benefited from not long ago. how many years ago was it when gallop declared cricket season over before Boxing Day? The landscape has changed big time.

It's the only thing Twitter exists for isn't it?

There is nothing wrong in this article and I think this line in bold put our league into context:

"IN the summer of 2012-13, the A-League was the hottest summer property in Australian sport.
Western Sydney Wanderers arrived with a bang while Alessandro Del Piero headlined an influx of international marquee stars as record crowds and TV ratings followed.
It prompted Cricket Australia and the AFL to act and four years on, the A-League is battling to stay on the summer podium.

What does it matter if cricket and AFL and all thjeir variations are bigger ratings winners than our game. They always have been and very very likely always will be.

As Bluebird says we are stuck pandering to AFL and League fans when we don't need to. A football league for football fans is MORE than just sustainable these days and football/soccer HAS become more accepted mainstream since internet and playstations and blah blah so just focus on ourselves and stop telling everyone we are the number one sport. If i hear that from Gallop one more time I will puke

Not following it on twitter so not around what bagging he is getting, but it also pot kettle, he accuses FFA of being Sydneycentric whilst the fireworks going off on the WAFL is pretty much melbourne centric and after one game/round.

I find it abhorrent that a football writer has hit the panic button so quickly.  The need for expansion etc is separate to anything that any other sport is doing, if we react we have already lost.

Pretty pathetic article in that sense. 

We shouldn't forget that Davutovic is a Murdoch hack toeing the party line which was defined by Murdoch just last year as:

“This is a very significant investment for us. We’ve always believed that this is the premium code in Australia – it’s the national game,” Murdoch said.

So far as I know the Foxtel viewing figures are not audited so who knows what the real stats are.

But it shouldn't be about reacting. That's the point. We have needed expansion (at a minimum, for a while or at least 2 new teams should be signing players for next year by now).

We shouldn't react but we shouldn't put ourselves in a position where we need to react now.

As a sport we constantly fail to capitalise on momentum. 2 steps forward 1 step back and then rocking on one leg wondering whether to land that next step forward or back. I know what I mean there at least.

Pretty much this and also look how quickly it has taken for the A league to fall this far behind in summer, that is what happens when you have a bunch of people who don't know what they are doing.

As a side note meaningless to anyone else, I genuinely had no idea this AFLW was a thing until after it happened and I read everyone here bickering.

It's amazing how much you can remove yourself from "mainstream" society these days with internet entertainment and hobbies vs commercial tv/radio and lethargy.

If P&R is the gamechanger, do it now

Expansion will do nothing but create a couple of midtable teams....yawn

why does this article make one's growth sound like an empediment to another's growth. I actually want to see the nbl grow, ive been to a few games this season and the competition is actually the best ive ever seen it with the kings pulling in good crowds that i actually look forward to nbl expansion.

Too much of a victim mentality in our football community, we have a product and we can make it better and it doesn't need to generic like the cricket or rugby.

Lets use our main adv. which the huge numbers in the grassroots and create a football system around it, expansion, second division and pro-rel are things we can use to our adv. that the other codes do not have.

Lets be bold and brave and not blame the media or look down or up at the codes when we can control our destiny. 

Wow! What a surprise. I didn't know you wanted pro/rel. I mean, it's not like you've mentioned it in every single comment you've made for the last year.

With teams playing each other for the third and sometimes fourth time in the latter stages of the HAL ,it's no surprise fans lose interest and want to watch something else.Even I am bored.
If FFA dont get their act together and expand the HAL and get a second division ,before interest wanes altogether and fans have jumped ship,we will have a real reason to worry.
The sad thing is the suits at FFA. Have lost the plot.
If sustainability is their main focus ,then we are in real trouble.
We can have sustainability with a six team competition that runs for 12 weeks,that starts after the AFL and finishes before BBL.
We will have derbies virtually every week and avoid regional no rating zones.We will have clear air and avoid competing with anyone.We will have low costs and clubs can allow male players to join the BBL and females to join the AFL. To supplement income.

Did I mention that P&R will cure cancer ?

Don't forget it will bring world peace

Very true

and after that, might even attract Eurosnobs

P&r isnt the answer... yet. We are decades off a sustainable competition that includes that but expansion is needed... and above all investment... academys, stadiums, foreign players and a national 2nd decision etc.

We cant afford current a-league teams to be relegated, they will be lost forever, then the following year it will happen again. 

As someone said why is someone else's growth a negative to football... it shows how easy the general public is manipulated by mainstream media... we have the numbers but ffa have not taken the game to them... the years post 06 the a-league was cashing in on socceroos games in Australia against the netherlands argentina etc we need regular big games here it does kick ontov the a-league.

Things need to move... i feel nervous about the next 12 months regardless of big bash or afl... i have even grown tired of the season and I'm a rusted on a-league fan. 

"We are decades off a sustainable competition" Standard throw away line with arbitrary time period attached.
"Lost forever" what does that even mean?

Bit like Auckland, Townsville and Gold Coast.  




Except they can actually get promoted again.

What i'd like to know is when are we going to get a media 'partner' like AFL has adn a more savvy marketing department at FFA? If you live in Victoria, for the last couple of months, every single day there has been at least one item on the Womens AFL in either the Herald Sun, on Channel 7 News or on the radio (SEN). Channel 7 have been playing stories on it in most evening news bulletins, sometimes as the lead story. Usually, there is a coordinated press release that all of the agencies seem to pick up. I have hardly any interest in AFL (mens or womens), but I couldn't have avoided knowing all about the womens competition even if I wanted to to. That tells me the AFL are marketing their game aggressively. I remeber a few weeks ago Dave Davutovic made the comment that he was hardly getting anything from FFA. There really needs to be some auditing of the marketing department at FFA.

Let me guess, DD's answer to this is to allow Knights into the A-League