Let's be honest here, 5k is sh1t.

BBL Attendance is in absolute free fall:

https://twitter.com/footyindustryau/status/1210875120329183234?s=21

God save us from Western United 

Well let's face it! It isn't real cricket now is it?

It's an abomination.

Oh wait! A League is another abomination.

Put a few fireworks on show and Aussies will flock like seagulls to a chip and then lose interest. They prefer the KFC adds as well every 2 minutes because the MSM have brainwashed the public so the media moguls laugh all the way to the Bank.

So they like their stop start sports with adds and fireworks and theatrics.

In Europe, it's the fans that bring all the fireworks and flares. Tribalism and passion which can't be beaten but the fun police in Australia want a nation of introverts which will sit down when told to do so, and stand up when told to do so. Frustrating!

Over 34000 in Sydney tonight.

Lots of seagulls!

Call me a purist but I would prefer a good Test Match and One Dayer.

This is KFC cricket.

I expected Ballarat to be worse than that

Test match man myself.

Looks like the bbl rebound started tonight with the Sydney derby,  the averages will skyrocket just with the availability of the mcg and marvel starting next week. Half the teams haven’t had a real home match yet.

So we're now expecting less than 5k for games ?

What an era the new regime is ushering in...

For WU playing in Ballarat, yeh, I thought for sure it would fail to make 5k.
Pleasing to see that people turned out for it.
There was a surprisingly large Kiwi contingent - they could make this an annual match at Ballarat.

As I have said elsewhere, this is going to be our baseball. It's here to stay. 

The clear air is an illusion. Summers are getting hotter. The A League should go back to winter. Can anyone honestly say that attendances would fall. Look at them now. 

Attendances weren't supposed to fall according to all the "Anything is better than Lowy"-ers.

Look at them now.

Yeh, I'm starting to think let's get out of the Summer, leave it to whoever wants it.
We need to align with the 2nd division anyway.

They may well improve over the coming weeks as you say, but year on year they’re suffering a decline. 

The summer / winter debate is more about venue accessibility. Also access to sponsors and advertisers

Some overlap is inevitable. To me the optimal kick off time is the last week of August

Our administrators have done nothing but copy gimmicks from other sports

There seems to be a belief that the sport itself is second to how its presented to the public. Yet despite all sports following the same template there are vast differences between the fruits each is able to reap

It isnt hard to believe football fans want to support competitive top tier football

Not true.  I was one of them and certainly expected them to continue to fall, as did others I know.  

You conveniently ignore the central fact that FFA still runs the A League and nothing fundamental can change while that is the case.

but but "Anything is better than Lowy"...

A meaningless statement.

Meaningless? You could say just flat out wrong.

Libel is most likely Steven Lowy so he is quite biased, but is correct that while in a legal sense the FFA and HAL are still joined, operationally they are definitely seperate and there is plenty of official data from the owners themselves which clearly shows that ( eg 100 day plan, radio ads,scudemore,etc).

The situation we are in now is analogous to letting the McDonalds franchisee’s set the strategy to turn around the failing national business model. As individual business owners they are only interested in their own survival in their patch not a long term vision for the entire business (ie comp) so their response will be quick fixes (remember the plan to mic up ref’s) and the meaningful structural change required wont occur (I know there is debate about the merit of radio advertising but the fact the owners couldn’t agree on a common plan illustrates the point).

the future of iHAL is not certain and this is best illustrated by something I read about MC not wanting to consider building their own stadium until the future is clear (can’t remember the exact article). 

Venue availability is a function of the HAL business model and lack of investment in facilities by the owners. In a traditional comp where teams have their own grounds this isn’t an issue.

This

Exactly why the A League model is failing.  Easy with hindsight, but there should have been some kind of lock in way back at the outset whereby clubs committed to developing their own grounds over, say a 10 year, period.

It's been obvious for a decade that the lack of suitable sized, football purposed stadiums is the major factor holding back the competition.

No.  Semantics have a purpose.  Words are my profession.

Sure, at best a meaningless statement, or otherwise just flat out wrong then.

I believe cricket has found the right balance with 20/20. In terms of overall attendance more people are watching live cricket than any other era. Gone are days where if you lived in Melbourne all you had was 1 test match, 2 one dayers and the summer was over, actually that was the same with every city. 

Cool

So all we need is $2b to for clubs to build their own venues, and then write a clause preventing P/R to protect their investment

This is the major thing holding the competition back

Me too.