The only ratings that matter are the top ratings

Take the grand final for instance. 1 fucking game out of 140. And yet many argue it is a tragedy if we ever lost it

You don't see every game getting ratings that high or a guaranteed sell out. And yet as we try to sell football as a package to Fox or FTA its an obvious drawcard. As were the Socceroos games in initial negotiations

Fox or FTA don't expect average ratings of 100k for Sunday afternoon games. They happily show the W League and I haven't seen a single rating figure produced

The value of the A League will always be the top 4-5 teams. It works that way in Germany. Ditto for England. Ditto for a lot of leagues

So we have two choices here:
1/ We have a 4-5 team league because we stupidly believe every game has to be well attended with high ratings
2/ We throw everything behind our biggest assets to drive the value of the league up and everything else is player development "filler"

Adding more teams and more tiers may drop average league attendances and ratings (because that's how averages work) but there will be no detrimental impact on the elite part of the game. This is what will be watched and judged (in the same way that even in this shit season the grand final will still be an event)

If the FFA ever tried to sell a Sunday afternoon game as a stand alone they couldn't even pay others to pick it up. These games that we throw all our money and resources trying to pretty up have no value. The majority of people are only interested in a small part of the league. That's how global markets work and that's how they differ to local markets

So far our attempts to implement a local market strategy in a global environment have come to naught. But of course, we can keep trying...

Interesting market segment

Wonder if they eat Maccas ?
Webjet & NRMA will be of no interest

Probably already scared them off with Darth

BB

Thanks for your post and your top 6 concept.... I believe it has a lot of merit and I think you are reasonably close to the truth of the matter...

My concern as I expressed is convincing the Australian broadcasters to back it.... I am considering what you posted and will get back latter with a more detailed and considered reply.

 

Amen to this. 

Many leagues are sustained by the most popular clubs.  

Go through the Bein Sports guide and you'd be hard luck to find a matchday without a Real, Barca, Juventus, One of the Milans, Napoli, PSG, Bayern, Celtic game on, no matter the opposition..

Wanderers v Victory 51k.  Mediaweek.

Down down ratings are down. 

Don't worry about that mid table stoush, its the big games that matter, like tonight, the mighty FC vs the trailer park boys.

The A League doesn't have big teams

I know, except Sydney obviously.

No. 

#TVratings STV Saturday #FoxSports
#ALeague #SYDvCCM 43k

#TVratings STV Saturday #FoxSports
#ALeague #NEWvWEL 29k

#TVratings Saturday #ONE
#ALeague National 51k (Metro 37k Regional 14k)

FTA metro rating of 37k

Does anybody have the FTA ratings for rounds 14, 15 and 16?

There is no tree. There is no forest. There is no spoon.

Unfortunately these aren't the numbers of a national competition.

Maybe we need 18 months to start from scratch again like in 2004?

In the meantime cut the bullshit and just play the inevitable Sydney v victory grand final now.

No point when we'll just repeat the same mistakes

The league structure needs and overhaul and the game needs big clubs

Unfortunately a new league will create ambiguity. Our best chance of big clubs will be to use the existing teams as a starting point, and then let nature sort out the rest

18 months and still repeated the same mistakes. What's another 18months of stagnation going to achieve. From my memory we have had 2 successful seasons with an league. 

The flaw in this thinking is it is based on overseas.  The biggest teams in the UK, or Germany or Italy, etc, are the biggest teams in the biggest and by far, most financial sport in the country.  Not only that, they all get very significant money flow from overseas.

Are the biggest A league clubs going to be big enough or popular enough to have the financial clout to hang a whole league from?  The biggest Australian clubs do not get the sort of following when playing minnows, or unimportant games, to sustain high value TV deals, and that is even if the broadcast deal heavily favoured these clubs. 

The detrimental affect on other clubs being starved of media and resources in favour of the biggest clubs will possibly be more significant than the benefits imop.

Its not based on overseas. Even the AFL had Collingwood, Carlton and Essendon

And how can you say big clubs don't get a following playing minnows when we have seen instances of clubs like CCM with a boosted attendance by one visiting player (let alone a big team). And even if MV fans may not go to CCM home games in the same level of support, casual fans don't attend every game anyway. The attendances will balance out over the season (as we see with other clubs in this country) regardless

In the current system we don't see a large following for games against minnows or unimportant games. So there is no trade off to be won in one model vs the other in that regard

As for other clubs being starved of media and resources it is already said 70% of ratings are in the Sydney and Melbourne markets. Not only that but we don't see businesses lining up to sponsor CCM or NCJ (any more than they normally would by virtue of wanting a club in an elite league)

If you take away the TV deal you can kiss goodbye some of the smaller clubs. They aren't being kept alive by their attendance figures or sponsorship, they are being kept alive predominately by a TV deal. The value of this TV deal is not equal. Saturday games are worth more than Friday games. And these predominately feature Melbourne and Sydney

If there was a shred of credibility in what you were saying then we would see CCM and NCJ as equal leaders in sponsorship dollars, attendances and ratings. But we don't. Even in a balanced league they are small clubs

We know big clubs have the potential to drive the league because they do in the current model. And there are is a hell of a lot more out there for our sport to capitalise on without ending up in a system where big clubs simply take existing resources from smaller clubs

6

LIVE: FOOTBALL: A-LEAGUE MELB C V ADEL

FOX SPORTS 50

41,000

Media Spy Facebook

Ugly

lol is your playing field leveled enough yet? 

keep getting those aleague numbers low enough to achieve gender equality with the wleague

that'll close the pay gap!

This sums up channel 10's fuck giving for football.

Stuck watching channel 10 news in Adelaide. Ok make that just stuck in Adelaide for a month.

Channel 10 sport

1) some random is batting for Australia in a ODI
2) 10 minutes of big bash
3) AFL - including footage of port adelaide players playing.. cricket. plug for AFLX
4) Australian Open
5) shit hey the Australian national football team has a coach for the world cup
6) arsenal chelsea
7) NBA. and for some reason the game featured ex AFL player Dane Swan.
8) ............nope. They didn't even mention there's an aleague game on tonight. Or any aleague this week.

Fuck whoever at FFA thought they should trade the only network that cared for football for this mob.... they need to get it sideways

There's a game on tonight?

Have we stopped TV ratings because they are so low?

anyone got the ratings for last night?

Remember when people were hyping up Channel 10 because of their cross promotion? LOL

None of the sources I use have STV ratings up yet.

City v jets -38k

Pretty shocking.

Wonder what the big poo will get tonight up against Federer, cricket likely to be over by then at least.

#TVratings Friday STV #ALeague #FoxSports#MVCvSYD 54kMediaweek.