There aren’t willing broadcasters now. Not sure what people were thinking was going to happen, 12K is in line with ratings before the Covid break so what was done in the mean time that might have changed the trend?

Let's see if we can get a bit of a kick along on the ABC.

A reality check for people who think winter football is going to be sustainable.
AFL and NRL clearly will always swamp us in the media.

From MediaWeek:

A-League
Fox Sports
Perth v Central Coast 9,000

They didn't provide the ABC audience, not sure why.

I was working yesterday, and my workplace interacts with the public. We have a large screen TV (which has Free To Air channels only). I put the ABC coverage of the Perth Mariners game on, and a number of customers, including a known Eurosnob, said they hadn't known that the A-League was back on, and at least 3 people were going home to specifically watch it. The Eurosnob acknowledged that the A-League had improved markedly since the A-League had begun.

We all need to do what we can do to promote the league. 

OMFG lol!

Having a look at the Fox Sports site tonight, one wouldn’t know that a game was played. No headline about tonight’s match for instance. 

MediaWeek reported 54K for match on ABC on Sat

Why only 50% on for Kayo?? I would've thought there'd be a much higher proportion of football supporters, (or sports supporters in general) watching their sport through Kayo rather than standard Foxtel.  

That’s not too bad really. Hopefully they can at least be a source of positive news. 

there's no doubt foxtel are facing a massive fight to survive.

but let's not kid ourselves - the NRL and AFL are still getting 200-300k Foxtel viewers for their friday night games. 

we're getting 12k

yes, foxtel have big problems, but ours are much bigger.  the FFA quickly needs to find a way to engage the football public - not just the diehard HAL fans - for next year.  JJ has a massive job ahead of him.

I was really looking forward to the restart and so many games in quick succession. But when the weekend rolled round I didn’t renew my kayo until the BRIS adl game on Sunday. Just had other shit to do Thursday Friday and Saturday nights. And then on Sunday, I had to scroll over several times just to find the roar game and that dead on kick off. We are so buried it’s not funny. 

Agree that JJ has a massive job ahead of him on many fronts. He is fire fighting at every turn, but also trying to implement strategic change at the same time, which is a daunting prospect. 

I know people don’t want to hear it but if you’re a football follower are you on FoxTel anymore? 

good points

i am also not convinced about winter.  i reckon summer is best for us.

Yet people are watching the Premier League on Optus (start and end of season can cross over with our local seasons).
So the flip side of the argument might be:  maybe it's a fallacy that the A-League should be expecting a bump just from people who play the game?
Are the people watching the Premier League mainly players?  or do they come from right across the population? (noting English football was very popular in Australia back in the 70s when it was on FTA)
I don't know, there appears to be no easy answer

When you position yourself as the competition to watch when there is nothing else on (ie free air in summer) then you wont develop a small loyal passionate fanbase, but majority are fickle and will move on when bored or something new and shiny comes up. When Ono joined MV, there was a noticeable increase in Japanese fans attending games, then when he left they also left because they did not establish a strong connection with the club. This is why the AL ratings and attendances are going south.

The EPL move to optus has probably improved it's ease of access and reach in Aus and you can see there are now many more stories about the EPL than there are about AL in the news, thats a reflection of the interest levels in the respective competitions rather than tin foil hat conspiracies about AFL media trying to kill the AL (I mean, 9K viewers on Fox, is that really a threat to anyone but the AL itself?)

It's easy to dismiss the fact many more people feel stronger connections to European teams than they do local teams (I know 10YO kids that are more passionate about Liverpool than any AL team) by calling them "eurosnobs" but thats just a lazy way of deflecting away from the core problem which is AL plays in elitist isolation to the rest of football in Oz and so has become a meme of itself, "football but not as you know it".

If the AL wants to improve their appeal to the rest of Oz football, they need to start becoming part of it and over time they will see the benefits. If they want to keep being elitist then current trends will continue and with less and less money in the top tier, they will die.

Ono joined the Wanderers. 

Sorry it was Honda, shows how big an impact he had on me!

"With all that going on - plus training one, two or three nights a week -  who the hell has additional time to sit down and watch hours of football? Winter won’t work imo."

I still dont understand why it works for AFL and NRL, presumably with quite a few people playing football then going to/watching AFL and NRL afterwards.

Has the professional league given us a vastly better product or produced better players for our national team?

Maybe a semi-professional multi tiered system with conferences is a better option. Get rid of the salary cap and let teams that can afford to be professional be professional,

I think it’s because in Australia football draws from “football people” many of whom are also involved in playing the game as well. It’s a small pool. It’s no coincidence that once EPL left the HALs viewing tanked (it took a year for contracts to expire), the FFA should have known that instead of sticking with FoxTel. 

I understand that if you are playing at the same time as a match is on, you cant watch it live but I actually think there would be more interest in watching football when you are in the mindset and playing it. I also think it is quite detrimental to our game and the quality of players we are producing if kids are playing football and then watching AFL or NRL because there is no football on.  
For me, the only problem with winter is ground availability and quality of playing surface but if it means we play in smaller grounds, and ideally club owned grounds, then that could be a positive I guess.

That was a great game with good three goals, no stupid ref mistakes and an upset but did people watch it?

Really enjoyed it. Good to see Newy get the win they deserved.

http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/8468-w-league-increases-tv-viewership-others-decline-march-2020-202007200645

Nope I watched Batchelor in paradise. Forgot the game was on

This guy! 

Some good news.
A related article from the page says that the Roar is now the most supported A-League club in Australia.

the line below from the Roy Morgan report is a bit of a worry:

The FIFA World Cup is easily the most popular Soccer competition on Australian TV with 3,391,000 viewers, although this is down 471,000 (-12%) on a year ago.