I'm not quite sure what your point is, half.
I don't think anyone here is putting their 'head in the sand' about the have challenges facing our game.
Your figures show, to me, a broad parity between Super Rugby and the A-League. Now if you were to believe the media coverage every year, soccer in Australia is a 'powerhouse' that is eating up the sporting landscape.
And yet they can only draw similar figures to rugby, which operates in a far more crowded landscape. Not to mention the Socceroos, who struggle to draw crowds for any match.
I'm not saying rugby should be happy with it's current situation. Just that the A-League is held up by some on here as the model we should be following, and I don't think that's the case at all.
When are they announcing TV rights anyway? I recall you posting a while ago they would get MILLIONS from FTA, but it just seems a cavernous silence...
Surely this would mean it gets bumped by the BBL for the two middle months of it's competition?
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The channel 10 rumours, this comes from the same client that sent me the link to the Fox CEO speech and the competition. The client owns a net media company and provides to all the networks general services, first his company will study the net world over for story lines the networks an interested in and send in the key links and second with some specialist programming. He talks daily to producers and technicians from all the networks Fox included. The technicians and producers have told him the following.
9 have the cricket all of it.
Meaning 10 don't have much sport.
The Fox media deal with FFA says they have to go FTA, 10 & Fox have a common media advertising structure now.
10 will broadcast the A-League on Saturday night on their primary channel, and provide at least one but more than likely two promotional shows to support its launch, a pre round show and a post round show, these will be on channel 1. The revenue he tells me is 3 million plus a percentage of gross revenue from the Saturday night broadcast. He also tells me special 10 & 15 seconds ads are being developed for stoppages in play like goal kicks and corners.
Plus 12 teams not the season but next, and more than likely this game will be on 10 as well.
The client BTW is a very hard core soccer fan however he employees 8 people which is not huge but its not a one man band either.
Head in the sand, its not we don't acknowledge where we are today, more the denial [maybe denial is too strong] of what other sports are doing, especially the A-League. I constantly read our metrics are similar.
This totally ignores where they started a few years ago, and what they plan in the future. With 12 teams and 3 rounds they will have over 200 games against our 40 odd,. Even our 40 odd local games may come down if we loose a team.
Consider 200 games at 13K is 2.6 million through the gate. Plus 200 things to sell a media company with local news.
The same client says the talk is within 5 to 6 years a 16 team competition over two rounds. Meaning 8 games per round over 30 rounds is 240 games plus finals, plus FFA Cup, plus Internationals, plus their Asian Champions league games by then 4 teams with at least 6 games each so 24 games.
In 5 years or roughly when our current media deal runs out they will have over 300 games to sell.
Then the women's AFL by then will have grown, as will have netball and basketball all with national domestic competitions.
The Fox CEO link scared the pants off me, he essentially outlined a working plan with soccer to build their ratings and grow the sport. Do we have this relationship with Fox.
So yer it is head in the sand, not to look at what others are doing, what their plans are, and how they plan to get there. Soccer is our biggest competition however very soon they will have 5 times the games we do.