I haven’t checked, but I assume the footy ratings are down less than the overall decline.
Mind you, a hell of a lot of other locally-produced non-cheap programming is getting cut…
Well that’s not really the question.
The actual bet (which id be more than willing to take) is that the rights money would not be a cent less if the season was reduced to 17 rounds. I’d be very very willing to take a substantial bet on that.
Of course we’ll never know though. The AFL won’t do it as they are just as shortsighted as you on this issue (and many many others who share the same view)
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I find it interesting when the players say the season is too long. Elite NRL players play around 35 games a year (finals & representative rugby games). Soccer players, 70-80 games a year? NBA, 82 regular games.
Obviously, all the sports are different, but I believe the professional athletes can play 40 games of footy. In saying that, I do think it is too long, especially for the casual fans.
I like the 17-5 concept. It is a good way to shape the ladder properly. Remember North Melbourne in 2016? They had the easiest fixture but the 17-6 concept would have effectively ensured they didn’t make the finals. Ditto Port Adelaide last year(?) who couldn’t beat a top 8 team.
And all the teams should have the bye on the same weekend. It is simply fair.
Yor theory leaves 7 & Foxtel needing to find a hundred hours worth of a few hundred thousand viewers, to serve up to their clients, for the next 5 years.
It’s a big, big hole. Maybe tens of millions a year hole, maybe less, maybe more.
But certainly not as trivial as you make it sound.
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Baseball 170 odd (162 normal season + rep + playoffs).
All very, very, very different games though.
And it’d be quite silly to drop a big change over one off-season, they’d need to adapt how they train and prepare accordingly.
you shouldn’t be calling others short sighted when comparing the afl to nfl. For starters teams are owned and personal money if i’m correct is put on the line.
AFL it comes from tv broadcasting.
secondly america has what 10 x the population that we do.
thirdly “creating an event” out of a game is simply not going to make people sit there and watch gold coast v carlton when they’ve won what 5 games between them.
I’m not saying that revenue or pay in general will fall, but geez you’ve been very obtuse in your oh it won’t have any effect mantra.
there’s plently of reasons as to why alot of people have fallen out of love with the game, it’s not restricted to too long a season.
2 more teams. 19 rounds. Everyone plays once. Expand AFLW to fill the other 3 weeks.
Current season = 198 games. 20 teams playing full round robin = 190.
Put the big games on Friday nights as the “nationally televised” game. Showdowns, Western Derbies, Dreamtime, Good Friday, Hawks/Cats, whatever else. Big massive important once-a-year game every Friday night. Ch7 get to pick the Saturday and Sunday games out of what’s left.
Every team plays 9 home, 9 away and 1 neutral. 19 games to ship off to Darwin/Alice/Ballarat/Cairns/NZ/Laos/wherever. Maybe do 1 round of preseason games for even smaller markets.
Season is not long enough.
There are too many teams, so two need to go.
- Merge Carlton with Collingwood, and call them the Collingwood Magpies.
- Hawthorn merges with Melbourne and call them the Melbourne Hawks
- North Melbourne moves to Tassie
- Gold Coast moves to Cairns
- Footscray moves to Darwin.
Leaves
Melbourne with 5 teams; Essendon, Collingwood, Melbourne, Richmond, St Kilda
Geelong with 1
Sydney with 2
Adelaide with 2
Perth with 2
Brisbane with 1
FNQ with 1
Tassie with 1
NT with 1
So Sixteen teams, 30 games a seasonplaying each other twice.
Season starts first week of March every year, no byes, Home & Away games go until end of October.
Finals start first week of November with a top 6; and go for three weeks, no double chance
First week: 6th vs 3rd and 4th vs 5th
Second week: First week winner play 2nd and 1st
Grand Final: Second week winners.
All Melbourne teams play 8 home games at the MCG and & 7 at Etihad, and that includes Richmond and Melbourne. Interstate Teams play at least 6 games at the MCG each year.
50 players on list plus 6 rookies. 6 on interchange
I can’t see it happening but I like the idea of Fark Carlton being obliterated into the history books.
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They can always move to more split rounds. i.e 17 rounds over 22 weeks.
So Friday/Sat nights are still there, they get the same number of weeks of the other content to go with it. They just drop some sat and sun arvo games.
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Oh, no!
What would we do without football starting at 4:40pm on a Sunday???
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I’m not sure if you made that contrast deliberately, but if so bravo.
Sunk lower than Melbourne, LOL.
I disagree with much of the rest, purely on a selfish basis as I like to go to my team’s games (for less than several hundred dollars and most of the weekend many times).
Why don’t we expand the season to 46 games over two years, have a mystery round somewhere in the final weeks, fold half the clubs therefore creating a new conference with divisions like the world game or the old VFA comp with promotion and relegation. Give Surrey Park from the Eastern Football League a licence in lieu of the folded/merged clubs. From the liquidation of the folded clubs, give me all the money and that will be that.
Viable.
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Get Murdoch to set up a Super league.
My biggest objection with this whole plan is St Kilda still existing in its current form
Find a way to make teams play each other twice. Only way to have a completely fair fixture.
- Teams have shorter pre season training (why the heck is it so long to begin with?)
- No pre season comp organized by the league. Teams can organize their own friendlies with whomever they want (AFL, VFL, WAFL clubs) which might help build revenue for lower league teams.
- Make the games a bit shorter.
- Increase the lists a bit
- Might have to have a few mid week rounds. Bigger lists should help accommodate this.
In other words, structure it more like Professional Soccer leagues. I await the hate.
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Is there any data to back up that players are retiring earlier due to injury?
Edit: Quick look suggests there are twice as many 300 game players starting from 1980-1998ish as there are starting 2000-2018ish.
Edit: Edit: Yes, I get that there may be more to come that started post 2000, but still…
I like your idea in the main.
But footy isn’t soccer. The bang and crash aspect impacts players in a way soccer never does.
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Why stop at twice? Maybe we should have each team play each other THREE TIMES. A 51 week season. A-mazing.
Then play a super dooper Finals week in the week before Christmas (sponsored by Zooper Dooper, of course) with the GF starting after lunch on Christmas Day (there’s nothing else on TV, just think of the ratings!).
Then on Boxing Day evening, after day 1 of the Test, Round 1 kicks off (With a blockbuster Grand Final rematch, obviously) and we do it all again.
So good! All football, all year, all the time. The TV networks will be sooo happy and the revenue will be massive AND THATS ALL THAT MATTERS OKAY
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Yikes.