The delicate balance between football’s live and television audiences has been underlined by figures showing that, while AFL crowds in Melbourne are up marginally on last season, TV audiences for games have declined.
As reported by Fairfax Media on Thursday, a more fan-friendly fixture with bigger games between traditional clubs in day timeslots has produced a marginal increase in crowds in Melbourne, where the average so far this season is 39,038 compared with 36,948 last year.
But that appears to have come at some cost to the television audience, where average viewing numbers in Melbourne are down 5 per cent on last year.
The cumulative numbers show that Perth is the only capital city where viewers of live game broadcasts have increased, while Brisbane, with both the Lions and Gold Coast, has performed poorly and is down by as much as 15 per cent.
Australia-wide, taking in telecasts on both the free-to-air Seven network and pay television’s Fox Footy, numbers are down by nine per cent.
Perhaps giving Carlton umpteen Friday night games may have something to do with it - not to mention using the fixture to punish the Bombers
Of course Bartlett and the other neanderthals will crank up the get rid of interchange mantra to bring back the good old days
At least you can’t see all 36 players in 1/3 of the ground on tv.
Plus 2015 football has zero resemblance to the game I’m familiar with.
I support KB on a limit on interchange. F*ck shuttle runs, I want to see big forwards leading towards the ball with big backs trying to stop them. Positional play, not mauls. I want to see the tired players will themselves to contests in the 4th.
Make the game watchable again and people will, you know, watch again.
Too many teams, too many rubbish footballers running around, too many games each week, too much oversaturation of the game in the media, too many so called football ‘personalities’ with their crap opinions, way too much politics involved now, too over coached poor quality matches.
If you didn’t have to filter through ■■■■ commentary, draining adds(that cut out the play), expensive ticketing, poor customer service at stadiums and not to mention bullshit free kicks from bullshit rules that the umpires don’t understand that make the game look even more amateur than it has become, it would be more appealing.
Add Sam Lane, Matthew Richardson and Cameron Ling to that lot and they seriously wonder why TV ratings are down.
Any Fox matches I’ll watch a live internet stream on instead. #FarkAFL
I love hearing Bruce get excited over the young kids and Rioli. Dont forget BT’s overreacting on every little bump and the big Duke’s rubbish that he dribbles. What a gun commentry team.
That’s what we used to advertise in the game. Try do that add today and you would struggle to match half of it.
That ratings and attendance are down because they have desensitised the game, take out what made it great and turned it into a rules fest. So now in the heartland, nobody cares as much. Especially after all the power clubs have given up so much in draft picks, money etc from equalisation that the supporters are jacked off.
Add in the vindictive, corrupt AFL and it’s only going to get worse.
At least you can't see all 36 players in 1/3 of the ground on tv.
Plus 2015 football has zero resemblance to the game I’m familiar with.
I support KB on a limit on interchange. F*ck shuttle runs, I want to see big forwards leading towards the ball with big backs trying to stop them. Positional play, not mauls. I want to see the tired players will themselves to contests in the 4th.
Make the game watchable again and people will, you know, watch again.
Never gets mentioned, but…
90s (and prior) when it was a winter game - a Victorian winter game, the grounds were a lot heavier. Like a 7-dead on the horse track ratings.
There was a lot less shuttle running because it was much quicker kicking the thing above ground than run it up along the surface, and to get any value from kicking line to line you need to have the lines.
Also (anecdotally) concussions etc were a lot less prevalent as the surface was that much softer.
Any love for returning to watering the grounds again? Not full centre-circle mud-pit, but at least a downgrade. Yeah, it’ll slow down some of the skills a little, I can deal with that.
Would be a crapload easier to facilitate than any of the other ideas I’ve heard (I fkg concur with gradually dropping the interchange limit, not sure it’ll have much effect)
