Both have their best players play overseas which means the domestic standard is not of a superior quality, ie I would much rather watch a European league over the A League. The same thing has happened with rugby with the best players playing in Japan or France.
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Neither have a significant FTA presence?
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good guess
popular view held online, but is never reflected in market studies
also the nbl and big bash league are doing ok
near enough
both left foxtel to pursue higher(ish) paying deals on other platforms
consumers are very, very lazy and hate changing habits. both lost significant audiences by moving to stan/paramount, and the platforms also made (in hindsight) a mistake in assuming the sports would bring over a captive audience
everyone keeps forgetting that the professional sports market in australia is heavily saturated, meaning fanbases in general are nowhere near as loyal in a consumer sense as they are elsewhere in the world
it will be interesting to see what foxtel do with the next afl and nrl rights deals now that thereâs strong proof of concept that moving off fox loses audiences. afl and nrl will really need to seriously ask themselves just how much of their audience are ardent fans vs casual viewers.
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I only ever watched A league when we had Fox.
yeh Iâll pay for Kayo for AFL, but the only other stuff iâll watch on there is NBA.
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hmmm might be interesting to look into this
my vague guess would be that, proportionately (% of total revenue), the a-league would be one of the biggest spenders in all aus sports
weaponised inertia, i like to call it. youâll watch it because itâs there. if it leaves, you wonât follow it
fox have the thing where the sport is. people arenât going to buy another thing where sport is, they already have one.
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Rugbyâs been slowly, inexorably falling over since before the A league was even started.
Not sure any one reason is to blame.
Itâs just a tiny, tiny sport in a very big market.
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Iâll have a bash.
Is it tv broadcasting rights and in particular the rise of how sport is streamed throughout the country in the last five to ten years?
Thereâs not much of either on free to air, so there isnât much âmarket saturationâ occurring. And Kayo has so many sports that itâs tough to keep up with those sports when there are far more accessible sports available on Kayo.
Have both leagues shifted to âboutique stadiumâ games meaning less people actually turn up to games?
Is there a different influence in NSW? Whilst NSW / Sydney is a great market to tap into, I donât think itâs as easy to change behaviours in that state compared to Victoria / Melbourne which are more âsports centricâ about things. So as Victoria grow in sporting teams across all codes, the A-League and Super Rugby barely get a foothold into the state or arenât willing to last long enough to see it through (before renaming or re-branding).
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Agree. Lots of mistakes but I still think it has a lot to do with its inability to engage and connect with the sporting public to build fan bases and create meaningful âvoiceâ in this city. Obviously lack of TV $$âs and TV vehicle works hand in hand with this. Irrespective, I still think if they had $300m they wouldnât know how to spend itâŚ
oh yeah theyâve stuffed up a lot of things
funnily enough they realised their place in the pecking order a while ago and started to really consolidate their primary markets
however they thought the way to do that was to kill the secondary markets?
you should see how hard they had to try to finally kick penrith out of the shute shield because the old boys clubs didnât want to drive out there
broadcasting/streaming discussed above, but will share my thoughts on this
imo, playing in the bigger stadiums has been the mistake. as per the âmcgâ thread here the casual observer sees a half empty stadium as a sht product so is less likely to engage further (ie: attend. sorry i canât help falling into wanker mode when chatting work topics)
nrl have this down pat. 20k at brookvale oval presents way better on telly than 20k at accor or whatever the fk homebush is called now.
main difference between sydney and melbourne sports markets is that melbourne has a place where all the sport is, so new entrants have a physically crowded place to try and squeeze in to. sydney people tend not to leave their suburb, so for example, wanderers going to where the people are was a bit of a no-brainer.
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While this is certainly a thing, Iâm wondering how the characterisation that Foxtel is good for these sports will play out in an AFL and NRL environment where both have, and would be expected to maintain a significant FTA presence.
I think the disappearance of elite sports off various platforms over the last 20+ years has been incredibly interesting, but Iâm not sure that Foxtel has been the answer for a bunch of these sports.
In my experience, as a non Foxtel/kayo subscriber a lot of sports have just disappeared from my consciousness, and hence my kids as well. Even such rolled gold products as cricket basically are non events for the vast majority of the year, as they are behind a paywall. Whether that paywall is Foxtel or a streaming service might have made soon difference over the last decade, but looking forward the ubiquity of streaming services makes me believe that the Foxtel advantage will be short-lived. Particularly if there is (as seems inevitable) a rationalisation of streamers. Super League and A league are paying the short term price for picking services that may or may not be losers in that rationalisation, who were desperately trying to gain market share with products that were perhaps less than the gold standard.
If, say, Netflix came to the AFL and NRL bidding table with a truckload of money, and a partnership with a FTA provider I believe the Foxtel Inertia would be a non factor. The casual fan would still get their FTA fix, and the hard core fan would roll into Netflix.
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yeah iâd be hesitant to call it a good relationship between fox and afl/nrl. we could spend all day discussing who is propping up who.
and hard agree that the way forward in terms of bargaining power for the leagues is a platform that already has an audience, rather than trying to use sport to build one. what the challenge is though is your amazons and your apple tvs have enough cash to go after the proper big boys - nfl, epl, etc. afl and nrl to a global platform is virtually meaningless so isnât likely to fetch as big a sum as fox + 7 or 9 is willing to pay
afl needs the reach, fox needs the content. itâs a co-dependent toxic relationship
and thatâs before we consider the investment/impact from betting companies
-edit- my broader underlying point is always that mba-brained idiots wreck everything in sport. looking at a slide deck of graphs of people who watch soccer and thinking âexcellent metrics, there are definitely no other factors to considerâ
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you can pin point cricket in england taking a massive talent hit when about 10 years prior they locked cricket behind sky
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mentioning betting in my last post set my mind off on another tangent
will the streaming platforms be as embracing of âbetting partnersâ as existing networks?
might already be happening with amazon and nfl, i have no idea, happy to be educated
espn have definitely sniffed large amounts of amyl nitrate and welcomed all comers, maybe in anticipation of competition
Did you really need to include âin sportâ in that first sentence?
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lol probably not
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Doesnât just present better on telly its what the members and fans want. NRL clubs are still very community/region based and fans hate leaving their region to go to away games let alone playing home games no where near your area. These spiritual home grounds still hold a lot of sentimental importance and are great to attend. Manly for instance would much prefer 20k at Brookvale than 40k at Accor
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