I love the unsustainable excuse everyone mentions, yet neglects to mention the fact that the franchise model only seems to be funding the Lowy's.

Obviously I didn't get my point across.

Ultimately the BBL has schooled football in marketing.  You can call it "manufacturing interest" all you want, it is what got us involved in the first place.  I didn't give a crap about a Central Coast team in 2003, then saw an ad telling me this type of football was not as I knew it.

I'm not talking about marquees, i'm talking about promoting those stars in the A-League today.  As it stands we just have team blue v team red every week because the common pleb doesn't even care who the crap Besart Berisha is.  I'm saying the FFA needs to make them care.

The advertising for season 1 was brilliant made football feel fashionable and contemporary. Running an old format and expecting a different response is just stupid. It is with that the game needs a fresh set of eyes driving the game. Also get rid of the Phoenix.

You have to be careful drawing comparisons between the A League and BBL - football is a start up professional sport and cricket the national sport with much larger supporter base.

Cricket is (generally) well run and administered, whereas football isn’t.

Cricket supporters are generally united but football supporters are divided, distrusting and quite frankly bitter n twisted.

Cricket plays to a friendly media, football does not.

If you “lifted n shifted” the BBL model to the HAL would it work as well with a smaller support base, a divided support base, an unfriendly media and poor administration?

BBL doesn't pretend to be something it isn't

yeah but BBL doesn’t have Pro/Rel so it should be struggling shouldn’t it ....?

There isn't P&R in T20 anywhere in the world

BBL doesn't pretend to be something else

Most Australians like cricket.
Some Australians like football.

Go home everyone

What would how T20s elsewhere in the world are run have to do with whether Australians decide whether to watch the BBL or not?
There is 1 million Australians prepared to watch the same BBL teams play each other, dead rubber after dead rubber, no drama of relegation battles, no prospect of promoted teams, but then the A-league is on, `not watching this, same teams year after year, no pro/rel, its to stale?

Cricket has 40/50 years of TV viewers and the BBL is a chance for that ingrained audience to share that with their kids without having to take them to a Sheffield Shield game. AFL and Rugby League are the same.

Football doesn't have that, unless you include generations of football fans who basically have no interest in Australian football. You need to develop that audience, the best you can do in my opinion is develop the large pool of players into a sizeable amount of elite players, I'm not sure the current system is set up for that.

I’d argue that the BB have exceptional marketing for a great atmosphere to take the kids out of the cheap for some entertainment.
In all honesty most BB fans don’t exactly care who wins or loses they are just there for the show.
Probably the equivalent of when Arsenal or Liverpool tour.


Imo the A-League’s best season attendance wise was season 3. Back then we had the golden goose but the ffa killed it. The game was tribal and the atmospheres at games across the board brought the added entertainment to the main show on the pitch.
Basically every city was buzzing and there was a true sense of getting behind your home town.

Active support is the key to getting the kids enthused about the game. So many times over the years I’ve seen kids in absolutel awe of the NT in its prime and it was a beatiful sight of what this game can do.
Now we pretty much have the atmosphere of a funeral and a sub standard games in an oversized oval. Personally if there is a poor game with a good atmosphere, it papers over the cracks. If you have a poor game and a poor atmosphere, your not keen to come back.

Maybe the first few years people didn't care who won but the atmosphere surrounding the bbl has definately changed in recent years, they're actually getting behind the teams now, you can see it as well on social media and the backlash from fans when a team gets beaten.

27,500 in Brisbane tonight, match ends at 10.15pm local time, how are all those people gonna go to work tomorrow?? Does the Gabba have cleaner air?

"the impetus created by the new national competition didn’t last. I don’t have all the answers but I think the downhill slide began when the administration became a bit complacent. They stopped updating the concept and allowed the competition to stagnate." Interesting this was an excerpt from Johnny Warren's book, Discussing the fall of the old NSL. The more things change the more they stay the same.

Horses for courses

P/R is a strategy for managing the weak part of the game as we use the strength of the game to attract a larger core interest and a better casual following

The BBL doesn't need a low cost expansion strategy. It can also manage equally sized teams on a national level. It also doesn't feed into national teams. It is a short and sharp entertainment gimmick that is ultimately revenue for Cricket Australia so it can be managed from a central bucket and have competitive controls

The A League wouldn't die as a single tier without a salary cap. The 4+1 rule ensures that at least 10 of the top 100 available Australian players will be in the 6th best club. We have seen both the J League and the K League successful without a salary cap. Even the AFL before the professional era didn't die just because the Bulldogs, Saints and Lions continually struggled

P/R is just a fair system to stop teams from squatting on a licence that absorbs millions of dollars being generated by the appeal of other clubs. Without P/R the danger is a break away 6 team league

@ bluebird

Mine was a flippant remark, I am a strong supporter of p/r

But it was flippant in the regard many of the “problems” in our game are not problems in other codes eg lack of p/r, no second division, same number of teams etc and it’s folly to assume there is one fix for the entire game because there isn’t.

The bitter n twisted nature of many people within the code means we risk getting rid of lowy and replacing him, elected or otherwise, with someone else with a new axe to grind, so we need a lot more than just a new face at the top or one initiative like p/r to fix our problems.

The problems are many and not all are as obvious as they need to be.

Jokes getting a bit old.
27,500 for cricket and about 10-12k for soccer actually makes a lot of sense to me ratio wise and purely ratios wise is actually decent. If it had been 55,000 you might have been able to make your tired joke again.

Its no joke, its alarming that this mickey mouse team outdraws the roar by a whopping 17,000, and on a weeknight, how did all those people go to work today? Gotta be tired.

It's cricket. We live in Australia. You're boring.

Agree. Over 10,000 is definently a decent attendance room for improvement but decent.

Cricket is boring

Yeah, I'm not saying it's great and obviously Brisbane Roar crowds have slumped like the rest of the league but people get carried away when they start comparing us to cricket in summer.

A Brisbane football club that got consistent 14-16k crowds is achievable and would be amazing if that was rusted on year after year.

The fact that a cricket match can double that is so irrelevant and southmelb is boring and has too much clear air in his head

I think a club like the Roar would definently benefit from a derby to occassionally bump up those averages. Also, I don't think your average punter cares about the congress issues but there seems a major focus is being taken away from the game. 14-16k is realistic under the right conditions.

I think you've missed the conversation preceding

IIRC Waz is on an apple mobile so he can't 'quote reply' to posts normally in this Forum

So did Adele and Justin Bieber

Spot on!
I also agree with what The Select Few is saying but I can see that the point you were trying to make is different.
To be honest what this league needs is a combination of everything. There isn't just one strategy that works. What works best is a combination of initiatives that hit the mark for for the total fan base. Some that will be targeted at the younger/newer audiences and others for the rusted on purists. Choosing one strategy that helps one type of fan over the other is less productive and creates a less than desired outcome.

So bearing in mind costs, this is the 5 year plan the FFA should have put in place leading into this season (starting in the early stages of the off season) in June of this year:

1) Allow the A-league to be independent with all revenues generated by the A-league to go to them with the FFA taking an annual golden share (say 10%).

2) Independent A-league discusses with all bidders for expansion 11 and 12th teams. Then tables a model that would allow the chosen bidders to bid for a share of the A-league by paying their way in rather than being paid. Perhaps $5m-$10m. This would eliminate the tire kicker bids. 

3) A-league announces the scrapping of salary cap and introduces transfers. Meantime the FFA announces that FFA cup winner gets an acl spot. Introduce FIFA breaks and play FFA cup semi's and final on the weekend. Starting from this season!

4) A-league announces a plan to expand 11th and 12th teams in by 19/20 season and then a further 2 clubs the following year. This same year a second division is put in place. Either way these discussions will create excitement leading into the new season. The A-league also agrees on no back to back home games for clubs except for the rare exception. This creates fan attendance habit and avoids attendance fatigue. 

5) Start of next A-league season the bigger clubs decide to invest more in the game because they have the funds to do so, hence bringing in marquee players that purists and casuals enjoy seeing. Smaller clubs on the other hand can now start to really focus on developing players that can then be used to sell to other a-league clubs if need be. Either way creating an alternative revenue stream to make it more sustainable. Also NPL clubs are now incentivised to develop players as they can be sold to A-league clubs.

6) A coordinated effort with all clubs to really embrace active fans again. Less restrictions and more tolerance. This will at the very least ensure good atmosphere from the very start of the season at games and will get more casuals and fringe supporters turning up.

7) Use the marketing budget to promote A-league players from each club. Make them the stars even if they don't have international recognition. Compound this with really cheap tickets for all kids all season long. Getting the kids in now will convert them into paying members down the line. 

8) Season ends, and straight away in the off season, the A-league is hyped with new entrants coming in the following year as well as discussions of 2 new clubs the following year.  A second division also goes into full swing.

9) Following year 2 more clubs enter the league taking us to 16. The year when a true home and away season is created with 16 teams playing each other twice (30 round season). This alone will help boost attendances further and eliminate same old same old.

10) Promotion and relegation is introduced 1 year later or 2 years after the 2nd division is in place.

This plan above would propel the game forward and give us true momentum for YEARS to come rather than the short 1 season sugar hits that we get from time to time. Building long term momentum is key and growth will be underpinned by it. This 5 year plan could really establish us as a serious code here. And by the next tv deal we'd be looking at easily more than doubling the current deal.

BBL crowd of 27,500 last night? More like half of that apparently (14-15k).

Was anyone there? It’s a pretty easy stadium to guess attendance if you go regularly

Apparently cricket fans don't need to shop before Christmas....
http://www.news.com.au/sport/football/a-league/aleague-brisbane-roar-unhappy-with-aleague-scheduling/news-story/3b501f2742af3639ac4c5041ff8a3461

So it's predicted 8k tonight at the game. To be honest the scheduling of games back to back is a concern and fits into line with one of my points I made further above about attendance fatigue. HOWEVER the ills of the game go way way beyond scheduling, and I think clubs like to throw that out there in order to lay the blame onto FFA. The FFA is to blame, but it's not scheduling that's the main issue. Yes it has an effect, but the reasons why they are getting 8k tonight is not entirely due to scheduling. In fact all kids are on holidays now and the ticket pricing is meant to be cheap as chips for kids. And if 27k can turn out on a week night in summer up the road the night before then clearly Thursday night football in this instance isn't the issue.

The FFA has to go so that an independent a-league/ individual clubs can then be responsible. Because they won't be able to lay the blame on FFA in the future.  

Have you not noticed that its school holidays?

@ Davo

BBL is a massive success no doubt, mid week crowds are no problem even if they are over inflating last nights crowd.

But Roar are forecasting 8k tonight and will likely get 6k and there will be many reasons for that:

- football fans don’t like midweek games.
- it’s a dumb 6.50 kick off which makes it harder to get there on time for kick off if you’re working
- Roar played at home last on Sunday - 72 hours ago
- it’s Roars 3rd home game in a row
- after this, 2 out of the next 3 games are also at home
- then add in form, injuries etc.

And it’s easy to see what they’d struggle.

The bigger question for Roar is why a trypicsl crowd is not 18k and this would be a “poor” 12k

Ok sure its school holidays, kids go free next few weeks right? I expect 15k kids at the roar game tonight.