some really interesting quotes in that article. it looks like RA revenue and TV money is similar to what the HAL is now. As well as ratings. Clearly, they are heading for a significant drop in TV Rights money. We're so lucky we have 3 and a half years to turn things around. 

Earlier this year, the ratings agency OzTam reported that Super Rugby viewership on Foxtel was similar to that of the A-League, hovering around 50,000 on average in Australian metropolitan cities.

"Sport is not growing a television market," Mr Cox said.

"The free-to-air operators and Foxtel have come to understand what the economics are of their networks, and what the cost of sport is."

RA reported around $60 million of annualised broadcast revenue in the 2018 financial year, which made up just over half of its income base.

Just having a look at the above article.  Interesting what this bloke says about rugby going to Optus:

Media analyst Peter Cox said if RA decided to partner exclusively with Optus it could spell the death of the sport in Australia.

He cited the telecommunications company's recent decision to become the exclusive rights holder of English Premier League football as a case in point.

"I think we have seen with the Premier League out of the UK that there has been a drop of interest in it since it's been on Optus because people don't have access to it," Mr Cox said.

"I think this is a worrying precedent for what could happen to rugby."

Optus has a different business model to traditional sports rights holders in Australia, which allows it to invest in sport and use it as a marketing tool, rather than one that needs to generate ad revenue.

"The telcos have huge cash flows, they have a lot of money so they can afford loss leaders to try and get people to move to their network," Mr Cox said.

"They want to get more people over on to Optus and away from Telstra and the other opponents so that is a business decision for them.

"But that is not necessarily what is best for the sport itself, because it will be a very limited market that can get it on Optus."

The concluding quotes are the interesting ones.

"Mr Cox said sporting bodies needed to work hard to invest in products that will connect with a younger audience, while also having to make difficult decisions around balancing broadcast rights agreements.

"Sport is an old demographic and that demographic is dying out," he said.

"Younger people have many other leisure and entertainment choices. That is the existential threat to sport as a whole."

Maybe our young demographic will be an advantage.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-25/australia-rugby-union-tv-broadcast-rights-in-limbo/11735352/?section=sport

Fox has never really released streaming numbers, for any sport. So to conclude that the reason they are not releasing streaming numbers for football is to hide good figures seems...optimistic.  I am with Bluebird on this one, people are taking the absence of info as evidence of good news, seemingly based  on nothing but a desire for it to be true.

I love your opening line... why are so many people death riding Hal...

My belief is within a strange kinda twisted logic they assume if Hal is done away with and replaced by ????? all things will be solved...

If Hal falls over it will set back Football a number of years.... people need to understand Hal needs to be improved not destroyed and replaced...

Great post and some that followed .... have a think about improving it and sending it in to SBS or one of the daily's... your logic IMO is very sound... 

I want to add one one piece of anecdotal evidence to my prior post.
I used to be a member and attend games ,but havent been much in the last few years.But have still watched games on Foxtel.
A friend of mine who used to  be a member as well and was a converted rugby fan also ceased attending games and dropped his  Foxtel subscription for the last two years and talked very little about football............I thought he typified what happened  to the fans.He was a casual and when things started spiraling downwards he lost interest and that was that ...gooone.

Well surprise ,surprise ,I found out he has Foxtel Now and was streaming  the last Roar game when I was last at his house.
So a casual ,who is a Rugby fan was streaming the HAL,while I might add the cricket was being played .
That kind of says to me ,If a casual fan still takes the time to watch Football ,then why cant we believe real football fans are?

It's very hard to know the truth in any of this.So you can only speculate based on what facts we do have.Maybe a bit of anecdotal eveidence as well.
1.The TV viewing figures started to slide after ADP left.This coincided with DG and FFA/Lowy   sustainability mantra and general self destruction of everything.
2.Foxsports at the start of all this payed what we thought at the time was below expectations.Now it looks like the sky has fallen and Football is doomed.
3.Before the slide and now downward torrent in ratings,people watched games and attended games.Were these Football fans that left disillusioned or interlopers that never liked the game or casual fans who found something better to do?Who knows the truth?
Again we can speculate that there were actaul football fans ,some enthusiasts and some casuals,but unlikely many haters.

So I dont think its unreasonable to suggest the fans that watched prior to streaming and started to switch off their tv's and subscriptions,could have come back.Albeit as streamers because of the significantly lower cost.

Were there  100k people watching the CCM vs AU? I dont know.But even if there was half that ,it is a good result and puts as back where we were before the slide.

If you think about it logically,streaming has allowed those who couldnt afford to watch Foxtel ,to now watch  Football.Whether by Kayo,My Football or Foxtel now.
You can also factor in shared accounts and FoxtelGO.

There are clearly a lot who have converted to streaming.The question is how many?
If its over half,then we are not in dire straits at all.If its a quarter,it's still not the end.
We also should factor in  that  we have had the best part of three years of a new generation of young fans getting on board for the first time.
Add to that the flexibilty allowed by streaming.Whereas once you either sat in front of the tv or missed the game  live.You can now stream on your phone anywhere.
I have done it for varying lengths of time ,so I am sure others have------ That feature alone adds a new viewing option that was not available three years ago unless you had the wherewithall.

The bottom line  is.,this is the first time we have had any data to argue about .You clearly are at the extreme pessimistic end of the spectrum and the Survey data is maybe at the other end.Who knows?
I am prepared to take the middle ground and say if the data is only 50%  of what is stated,it is still pretty darn good and what we know doesnt make it outlandish.

I understand the surveying will continue week after week.So I am sure these figures will come under closer scrutiny and we will know what it really means eventually.

The game had an estimated 191k viewers on FTA (not sure of the metro figure / average as found it in an article)

This is where it becomes hard to believe that the majority of fans are now streaming games instead of watching them on traditional platforms

13k is not a great figure and nowhere near the 100k standard for all games figure that is being thrown around. Dont forget also the Socceroos games are often 4 times higher than A League games

I have Kayo. I have Foxtel I no longer have Foxtel. All I ever wanted was a sports only package. I know many people and have heard the same who wanted this so would not pay for Foxtel given they would not watch the other channels. Why BB are you finding it hard to comprehend many people may have wanted to watch the aleague but would not pay for Foxtel. Now there is a reasonably priced sports only streaming service they have signed up to this. Kayo is great with mini games and replays. Heck I watched a wleague game probably for the first time ever cos it was on Kayo and I wanted to see when the ccm game was on. Saw the wleague game so put it on and had a few beers. 

None of if the stats seem off the charts to me. 

if there weas a vote on the post of the year, this wins my vote. great logical thinking @crimsoncrusoe.

Oztam does measure some streaming, determined by Viewers per minute. This includes the ABC and Foxtel, but not Kayo, although it does do Foxtel Now.

The ABCs stream of Australia v Nepal had 13,000 stream starts, 295,000 minutes watched and a VPM reported of 3,000. Oztam states that this figure can be added to national broadcast figures if you wish. (in comparison the RL Australia v NZ league test had 12,000 VPM on Fox)

Taipai v Australia didnt even record a VPM for the SBS stream - 2,000 stream starts, 38,000 minutes watched.

Right but there is a difference between fact and hope

What we do know is the A League has depleting interest. Our figures for Fox dropped before streaming was an option

So why then would it be reasonable to assume that streaming is more than double our FTA audience? Not only that, but streamers are watching every single game. 100k watched the CCM v Adel game apparently

This is just guess work based on the total numbers in isolation of everything else. We know total Kayo numbers were 100k when the A League was in full swing, And close to 350k after the AFL / NRL seasons. Its not reasonable to assume people are just going to watch the A League because they have access to it. Kayo has plenty of channels and content

Not only that but where did these A League fans come from? If everybody else is ignoring the game, why are they streaming every single game in loyal large numbers and started only this season?

The best thing about the streaming hypothesis is it can't be disproven. "We can't measure our audience, so lets assume it is bigger than the audience we can measure"

45k was for the post game show but as the game was delayed that is almost certainly for the A-League game.

Wasn’t wsw vs mc 45k?

It's pretty sad that some people here are death riding the HAL.
When it comes to streaming numbers,we have had very little information.So we have had to speculate on what they might be based on the facts we do know.
One of those facts is that there has been a massive migration of subscribers away from Foxtel.(50-30% drop).
What we dont know is how many of those migrants have had the sports package and the numbers who left Foxtel and subscribed to Kayo or My Football.
We also know that in Sept 2019    382000 people subscribed to Kayo.How many are there now? .we dont know.
We also have an independent survey conducted on behalf of the HAL owners which shows good streaming numbers.
We also know there has been a massive migration to streaming services generally.
We know younger people use streaming more than older people.
We know people,particularly younger people watch streaming content on mobile devices.
So what conclusions can we draw?

1. With so many people on KAYO,what are they watching now?......Is it that much of a stretch to think they are watching the most popular summer sports like HAL,W-League,Men and womens Cricket,Basketball?
2.Is it really that hard to believe around 100k are watching Football?
3.If we consider they are not watching football,what are they paying to watch?....382000-100000= 282000 to watch other sports exclusively,if they hate football.Thats still a lot of people.

The survey results are the first to show us what people on these sports streaming service are watching.
Foxtel does know and has deliberately not released the figures.Why?..Because it doesnt benefit them to do so.Why would that be the case?
I can think of one obvious reason.If the figures are good or very good,then competition,like Optus,Bein,etc.. will come in and bid for those sports and force them to pay more for them..
If the streaming figures are bad,then why not release them so they can show that they are over paying for all the sports.That way they can force down the prices they have to pay next time they have to negotiate a deal.

The evidence points to streaming figures being closer to the survey results than the Foxsports and the Doomsters would like to admit.

The difference is traditional platforms are backed by billions of dollars of advertising revenue where as the streaming platforms are largely subscription dollars

The second thing is everybody can access FTA whether they want to or not. To access a sport on streaming you need to pay for a subscription (making the bundle and value for money important) and also have a decent Internet connection

So are the tv averages BB so what’s your point? All data is extrapolated across the population. Do you want every Australian citizen to answer?

Its not evidence. Its an independent poll of (?) number of people then projected across the population

There have been many instances of our sport jump onto popular opinions with no real evidence only for it to backfire

The MSN poll which you quickly dismissed has just as much substance as the poll you'd stake our our game on if given the chance

I came across a comment on the latest Australian article on this subject.  Obviously, the Australian is pushing the line that it's all over for Rugby in this country, but the comments online appear to be quite open and varied.

One post says that Fox already owns the rights for Sth Africa and NZ.

What does that mean?  Does it mean that any Super Rugby game being played in Sth Africa and NZ can be shown on Fox?

I would have thought that gives RA a very weak bargaining position, because effectively Optus would only be buying the rights to Australian home games.

Those games would get the higher viewers in Australia, but still, it's not a great situation for RA.

All the evidence suggests they are streaming in large numbers (and they always have, one of the most common questions on match day pre Kayo was “any free streams?”)

100,000-150,000 streaming for those matches is just a singke data point, but sufficient to say where viewers might have gone. 

MSM is out of touch. They know it but they have a cash rich older audience to pander too so they’re fine .... for now. But every day that audience is dying out at more than 3,000 people per day. 

Ive seen adds, along the lines of "ABC, the home of Football". They also give us good coverage in the News.

it was wellington vs brisbane as well.

do they even advertise us on abc? 

To consistently get over 50k on the ABC is a good outcome.

there is a clear trend of viewers choosing the ABC over Fox when both are showing the game. I have both and I have been watching the ABC. 

Round 7
ABC Metro (a-league): 53,000 (season average 53,000)
ABC Metro (w-league): 27,000 (season average 33,000)

Fox
WSW v MC - 27,000
WP v bris 17,000
AU v MV -  53,000
PG v SFC - 25,000
CC v WU - Not reported.
Fox season average: 38,000

I know things have been changing or a while, and will continue developing in that direction, but I do see an advantage to having one service which caters for a large chunk of Australian sports fans.  It means that a smaller sport, like Rugby, has a chance to occasionally get spotted by the fans of the bigger sports.

It seems to me that once rugby disappears from both FTA and Fox, you are talking about becoming even more of a niche sport than it currently is.

The news about Rugby become streaming isnt being met with "thats fine, everybody streams anyway"

The most popular MSN poll option is "final nail in the coffin"

Regardless of what the estimates based on independent surveys suggest, if people aren't streaming the A League in large numbers, then moving away from traditional platforms will do more harm than good. As Davide says, "out of sight, out of mind"

SA ratings and income is many many times more than NZ & Aust combined and the SA games are beamed live into Europe at prime time zones.... SA ratings are huge something in the order of 10 times the combined Aust & NZ ratings

SA leaving would or could it  is estimated to take over 80% of SR revenue  

I'm not an expert on Rugby and its demographics, but surely South Africa leaving SR would be a good thing as all of the games would then be in more friendly timezones?