Of course they wont buy it.
The offset wouldn’t be as great as the loss.
We can only dream
I’d leave the comp as long as it currently is.
I’d actually add 4 new teams (one in WA, one in Adelaide, one in Tassie and another up on the NSW / Victorian border) and expand lists to 50.
Everyone plays eachother once.
More games for broadcasting games per round will offset the 2 extra rounds.
I’d expand lists because I think teams could utilise a lot of VFL / SANFL / WAFL talent but seem to continually stack their teams with players straight out of u18 footy. Having more lists spots means you can rest players for seasoned vets than just a token rookie getting a game.
I’m a massive NFL fan.
Every game is critical. Every game is meaningful. Every game is an event.
17 matches please
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Thanks for your suggestion Patrick. Now do tell us where the league is going to make up the few 10’s of millions of dollars they’d lose by limiting the season.
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Stop farking touching the farking game!
Fine Franga
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Is it too much to think they’ll try and shoe horn the Womens comp into the extra weeks available?
There’s your content for the bill payers.
Seriously you jest
Well, it’s an option.
- grounds will be available
- play curtain raiser to pre season comp
- different advertisers
Nothing like the same scale, but it could be a start
If the AFL were clever, they’d play women’s games and u18s games as a mid week event.
Let’s face it, between Sunday night and Friday night, the media just regurgitate their own rubbish and this country isn’t big enough to carry that level of rubbish the way the Americans do. Our rubbish media running out of footy storied and reverting to dredge up rubbish is what makes the season drag on so much.
A mid week marquee game will break up the rounds really well and I’m sure the TV stations will jump on board if it is marketed well enough.
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I think the Bye before finals is plain stupid.
Clubs dont adequately rotate their players. We have a 40+ players on a team but realistically see maybe 30 play regularly.
Rotate players who are spent.
If NFL/NBA can handle bigger season surley our guys can handle 22 games.
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Ideas (not coinciding with each other):
- 9 games per week is not necessary.
- Playing everyone once is not enough, I’d have an extra 3. Play the team that was your biggest rival of the year before as well as the current year and play a designated rival.
- To have a bye week after playing everyone and then playing games based on your ladder positioning.
- change the finals system to lengthen it and increase teams to 10-12.
I hate hutchy but he had a really good premise for the season.
When your team is firing on the field, the season isn’t long enough
When your team sucks, the season can’t end quick enough
I like dell’s idea. Eliminate some of the teams, everyone plays each other twice. Only way it can be fair
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Yep.
The problem is the AFL’s obsession of keeping the game at the front of the news cycle for 12 months a year.
If we shorten the only good bit - the actual footy - they’ll just fill it up with sh*t like celebrity All-star AFLX, a three month trade period, a draft dragged out over a weekend etc.
I realise that the season is said to be too physically grueling on the players, but I bet that is just as much mental fatigue.
Cut all the pre-season ■■■■ down, get the trade period and draft out of the way as quickly as possible, and then just switch the giant machine off for 3-4 months and let everyone get bored sh*tless by cricket.
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How’s the NFL doing? 16 games per team over 17 rounds. Guess that comp must really struggle to get sponsorship and TV rights dollars huh
Some of you are seriously short sighted with this stuff.
Nobody is watching footy this year. Nobody. The ratings have been horrific all season. And That lack of viewer interest is a trend over the past few seasons.
If the AFL think that the broadcasters just want more product they are stuck in the mid 2000s, before Netflix etc. TV watchers are far more discerning now. They won’t simply watch Friday/Saturday night footy because it’s on, because they have a range of other options. But they will watch it if it’s an ‘event’. Restrict the amount of games and you make every game an event, just like the NFL.
That’s what makes up the this supposed revenue shortfall. More eyes on the games that are played makes up for the missing rounds. It’s seriously not that complicated.
The reason that the AFL don’t do it, is not because of revenue, it’s because as Peos said, they want to dominate the news all year. And you know what - since they have been successfully perusing that strategy over the past 8-10 years an awful lot of people have fallen out of love with footy. Funny that
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And the other thing is: even if there might be a bit of a shortfall (there won’t be). But let’s say there was. Who the fark cares? There would still be more then enough to keep the clubs going, and to give to grass roots footy. Nobody is going out bankrupt or anywhere close to it.
The only thing it might maybe force the AFL to do is tighten its pockets a bit, like perhaps not squandering hundreds and hundreds of millions in the Gold Coast and not paying its thousands of executives exorbident salaries and bonuses.
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I couldn’t give a fark about revenue.
I do give a fark about 5 less Essendon games a year, though. That won’t make footy better for me personally. That’s five less chances to see ORAZIO every year.
As I said above, the AFL product is over saturated, but the game itself is now only about 2/3rds of the overall AFL Product.
22 rounds isn’t a new thing. It didn’t used to feel so long. But we didn’t used to have 24/7 AFL, all year long.
The circus surrounding football is the issue imo, not the actual game itself.
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Would Thursday night and Monday night games improve this?
Or do we need less news over the offseason?
Good question. Part of me feels that Monday and Thursday games are part of the problem, but it does cut down the amount of footy talk shows per week.
The off-season just needs to hide in the background, like it used to. Problem is, you can’t just give journos and ‘media personalities’ 3-4 months off a year, gotta find something for them to do. And that’s just the stupid amount the AFL employs directly, let alone the bottom-feeders from the MSM.
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Get rid of the preseason cup/challenge/whatever it’s called this year. One weekend of practice matches, then straight into the real thing - 25ish H&A games per season. Clubs can just start being sensible and resting players when they need it. Have an additional bye round if you really need one, and maybe an extra interchange player.
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