AS a veteran who follows the ratings every year, a couple of points:
- The early games in Super Rugby always rate well. That 90k for the NZ game and the 120 for Brumbies Reds is your standard good quality rating. The ratings tend to drop off once the NRL starts.
- We've always outrated A-League games 1 for 1. I'm guessing the justification behind their bigger TV deal is that plain and simple they had more games in the season, and don't forget they are all in Australia.
Super RUgby has less games and a Third of the games rate at a sweet fuck all of <20,000 as they are in South Africa at nobodycares AM.
Force crowd was up from 16,300 last year to 20k this time for the Tahs, good result I guess.
The biggest thing Soccer / Football has going for it in my view is it's backed by a bloke with a shittonne of money (why can't Alan Jones or someone do the same for Rugby? Although his money is nowhere near a shittonne. Perhaps a conglomerate of a few old boys with some cash?)
With Lowy's backing, Soccer got in and has a domestic league, which is growing steadily and has been for a while. If I was a billionaire, I would get on that ARU board, give South Africa the finger bar the Rugby Championship and tell NZ that we are creating a NZ/Aus competition with heaps of money, fans etc and to get on board.
That's exactly what Soccer did with the A-League, and it's slowly gaining a foothold with good quality investment. There's always a winner in Australia and the League has got a bit of FTA presence now.
Clearly there is strong supporting elements for Rugby but unfortunate circumstances are holding us back.
