some comparisons ----

In 2014/15, the season FTA opener - SFC V NEW - got 243K on SBS2.
In 2016/7, the season FTA opener - BR v MV - got 118K on SBS2.
In 2017/18, the season FTA opener - MV v SFC - got 84K on ONE.

In 2018/19, we don't even know.

A-League and NBL struggle for TV ratings despite good attendances as new seasons begin

Updated about an hour ago

The similarities between Australian football and Australian basketball are obviously far greater than just the shape of the ball and their vast international appeal.

Both are notionally cold weather sports operating national leagues in the summer to avoid Australia's footy-centric winter sports marketplace.

Both have enormous grassroots participation — football has 1.15 million active participants and basketball 595,000 according to Sport Australia's latest Ausplay survey.

Both are attracting encouraging crowds at the start of their new seasons: the NBL had a record first round total attendance of 48,820 while 40,000 turned up for Saturday's night's A-League Melbourne derby, with a similar crowd anticipated for the Sydney derby this weekend.

Both are blessed and cursed by enormous international profile, the reflected glow of the NBA and European football leagues also creating unflattering comparisons with the local product.

And — here is the rub — both the NBL and the A-League are struggling to convert their enormous participation and encouraging live audiences into the kind of TV viewing figures that will, inevitably, provide the funds needed to underpin their sustainability and growth.

Adelaide played Sydney in both football and basketball on Friday night. About 67,000 watched the A-League version on Fox Sports and only 28,000 watched the NBL match; a random sample but representative of the average pay-for-view audiences of both leagues.

So how do we consider these two sports as they embark on what shapes as critical seasons: stadiums half full or TV rooms half empty?

The optimistic view is that both the A-League and the NBL have the opportunity to build their live attendances and that TV figures will grow as fans become more fully attached to their clubs.

The last part is vital because, as anyone who follows the AFL or NRL closely realises, people do not support the game itself. Their TV-watching, membership buying allegiance is through their passion for their chosen tribe.

The NBL puts much store in a 'game-day experience' that includes constantly thrumming music, bouncing cheerleaders and strobing lights that seem somehow appropriate before, after and even during a high-octane sport.

The challenge is to connect spectators attracted by the atmosphere to clubs through their stars and stories. This season the Tale of Two Tall Andrews — coach Andrew Gaze and NBA star Andrew Bogut's quest to make the Sydney Kings great again — seems the most compelling.

The A-League flirted with the game-day experience model over the off-season, with threats that music would be played during corner kicks and other delays, horrifying purists.

But the A-League's greatest asset is in the grandstands — the raucous, chanting fans who provide the game's most compelling off-field experience.

Get the balance between the spine-tingling atmosphere created by singing diehards and the family-friendly environment right and, surely, week-to-week crowds would at least start to become as healthy as those for the big city derbies.

Another key to improving local interest for both sports is bridging the international barrier and making comparison with big foreign leagues an attraction rather than a deterrent.

With the best of the NBA and international football only the click of the remote control away, it is inevitable that some will consider the local competition as a pale imitation.

In this regard it would seem the best solution is to create meaningful connections with the international leagues rather than pretend there is not a significant quality gap.

The A-League has attempted to do this through the importation of marquee players, and the repatriation of experienced Australian stars.

Keisuke Honda's immediate impact for Melbourne Victory on Saturday night was a good start — particularly in a season that threatened to be overshadowed by the novelty of Usain Bolt's role in Australian football's new reality show "The A-League Apprentice".

Yet while the A-League has steadily improved over recent years, it has mostly done so through the presence of so-called "second tier" European talent — players who have not quite made it in Europe but are bona fide club stars here.

Marketed properly, these players should enhance the local scene and become Australian icons, like Besart Berisha and Thomas Broich.

Yet, for the self-anointed football purist, the "failed in Europe, starred in Australia" story only — and very unfairly — hardens misconceptions about the A-League's quality.

Meanwhile the NBL, with long memories of the Michael Jordan boom, is warmly embracing the NBA rather than fretting about any unflattering comparisons.

Having NBL clubs play preseason games against NBA franchises — with Australian journalists taken along for the ride — was a clever marketing exercise.

The NBL's greatest potential advantage is the large number of Australians now playing in the NBA, most significantly Philadelphia 76ers star Ben Simmons.

But the enormous challenge is to parlay the feats of now distant homegrown stars into bums on seats and eyeballs on screens for NBL matches; which is why you can expect local major events committees to throw big money at the 76ers to tour Australia in the next few years.

At the same time, football's first golden generation of quality exports has come and gone, having created enormous interest in the game through successive World Cup qualifications — as participation figures show — but not necessarily in the A-League.

From the kick-off and the tip-off, converting apparent potential into a viable live and TV audiences is just another challenge Australian football and basketball share.

We can speculate why HAL ratings numbers continue to slide.But we cant blame it on new media.NRL,AFL ,Cricket,would have the same issues and there is no huge drop off in ratings for those sports.

The fact that crowd figures are not sliding to the same extent,suggests that diehard fans know when games are on and still want to watch games.It's the others who aren't watching.Do they know games are on and would they care even if they did know?
One thing is for certain and that is marketing continues to be confined to Foxsports from what I can see.So unless TEN are pushing the HAL then the chances of non diehard viewers tuning in are small.

There's a lot of truth to that article. I wouldn't say the sports are similar though.

The main truth is that the more international sports, Football, Basketball and Rugby Union, have the weaker professional leagues in Australia, while the two weakest international sports, Rugby League and AFL have the biggest club competitions in Australia.

Ratings for the Melbourne Derby:

Fox: 69k
Ten: 93k

These numbers are from a confirmed source and a combined viewership of 162k.

Streaming numbers for Fox and MyFootballApp are not part of that count.

source: twitter/Michael Turner

Is the FTA including regionals?

The FTA metro figure for the first Melbourne deby last season was 90k.

Moot point overall. The figures are embarrassing compared to SBS. Remind me why Dave played chicken with them again? 

5 city numbers apparently.

Foxtel GO numbers were typically 5,000/match or less last year apparently - they’re basically FoxSports customers who can’t get in front of their IQ box - and I doubt they’d add much.

The MyFootball App will be similar I suspect.

So what are people expecting?

Fox: 69k
Ten: 93k

Streaming, pubs and other sources: 684k

This is a genuine question (as in not being used to defend anything - I'm just curious), do Foxtel count the people viewing on Foxtel Go?

Not the new Foxtel Now but the free Fox Go that you get with a Foxtel subscription

Oops, my question had kinda been answered already sorry.
Though your summation of who uses Go isn't entirely reflective I don't think

That sounds correct but do you have any link to support the 684k

@ Davide82

The Go numbers aren’t counted when the release the OzTAM numbers as they’re basically an estimate of national audience based on a few thousand reference boxes.

I met the FFA Marketing guy at a Roar meeting last year and he showed the numbers from Go for each match and they only ranged from 1-5,000 so not insignificant (as much as 10% uplift) but still a small number. I’d always assumed FFA would tell us if the numbers were any good anyway.

The MyFootball App is a different proposition and nag we’ll be higher. I’m not actualy sure how many people are aware of it though, especially Telstra customers. I’ve watched a couple of games this season and the quality is good although the games do seem to run sbout30 seconds behind.

How good is it to be able to watch live Copa libertadores semi finals on tv at lunch time.
Kudos to SBS.
Also, this is a top quality match.
I hope it rates well for them

With Oztam introducing 'VOZ' in 2019 what is it going to provide that the ratings don't do now?

What would you consider a good rating?  It won't rate higher than your average A-League game.

                                                        

1. #TVratings Friday STV #ALeague #FoxSports#ADLvNEW 49k

@footyindustryAU tweet:

“Fri A-league last night rated 49,000 between Adelaide and Newcastle on Fox. The Friday match between Brisbane and Adelaide, from Round 2 of the 2017-18 season rated 88,000. Recent survey suggests streaming numbers are ~1/3rd of the TV numbers which would make it ~72,000.”

Can’t believe the streaming numbers aren’t released, they should be known to within +/- 1 resolution

These numbers are diabolical.

49k for Rd 2 Friday night. Fark.

On these numbers we are in deep deep deep shit ...

Time for all hands to the wheel and a united front,  on these numbers we would not be broadcast for free at the next media deal,,, 

ARU are getting better numbers then this. I reckon the Sydney derby will get around 50k or just above.

I reckon it will be higher only because I reckon people would have tuned in purely to see what the fuss was all about. It blew up on Twitter. Never before have I seen so many expletives from pundits.

Sydney derby on fox got 70k lol

45k for CCM v MCY

Pretty terrible and with no more derbies left for awhile we will see a massive decline if previous seasons are anything to go by. 

The Lowys have created a big problem for football. This is their legacy.

I’ve said this before I’ll say it again.
Our TV viewers and overall interest will not grow till we get our own house in order and we make it all about the football again. Negativity has reigned for too long, and it brings the whole game down.

There’s been no promotion or advertising of the league in 5 years, since ADP left, there’s been constant ownership issues at certain clubs, namely Brisbane, Newcastle and the Mariners being the most recent, and we’ve had a ridiculous battle in the FFA boardroom for over 3 seasons, which has unfortunately overshadowed the football, and it has turned many people, including staunch football fans right off. Also, by the FFA not acting on expansion earlier or even discussing the potential of promotion and relegation, it’s the same 10 teams each year, and staleness has set in for the fans.
These aren’t excuses, these are facts!

And this has all happened with the majority of the mainstream media still treating us like scum or ignoring the code all together, pandering to self interest, as they’re all in bed with the other codes.

Mind you, we’ve had some clubs continuously buck the trend, the Victory has maintained their large membership throughout the years, and their hugely impressive Victory in Business lunches. And even the Wanderers, yes their fan base seems like it’s dissipated, largely due to their relocation of games, but they’ve still had over 15k members sign up each season. And bo doubt that will grow again once they’re back to their brand new stadium. The FFA Cup has also been a sensational addition to the game, even though it still needs a few tweaks.

What we need now is to establish the new FFA board and Chairman, and for them to get to work quite quickly, regardless of who gets elected.
Expansion is not only a must, it’s too long overdue, I’d be bringing in 2 next season, and 2 more either 1 or 2 seasons after that.
The league needs to be independent, which will hopefully mean that it starts being advertised and promoted every season.
A second division is a must, as it gives more opportunities to players and coaches etc, and IMO a full transfer system needs to be implemented.

If the game can do all these things, and others, in the next 12-24 months, we will grow again, I’ve got no doubt.

I’m sorry for the long post here, but we can’t just expect to grow in attendances, TV viewers and overall interest in the sport, while there’s all this infighting, negativity, inaction and just plain incompetence in and around the game.

Its like the A-League is dying????? Those TV numbers are low as fk.  Bring back SBS!

Thanks VAR, add in some FFA as well. 

And this is with "clean air" :/

Saturday arvo on TV is a dead zone, I wouldn't get too excited about tv ratings in that timeslot

I'll add this to the list of excuses.