- May 13, 2012
- 15,812
- 5,965
- AFL Club
- GWS
- Other Teams
- Brumbies, Socceroos
I thought the point of his post was that the difference isn't as huge as one might imagine (backed up by your numbers).
Footy Developments in NSW and Queensland
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I thought the point of his post was that the difference isn't as huge as one might imagine (backed up by your numbers).
Yeah, my post was confusing. I was just saying that the Google results were showing a pretty big difference, but we probably need to take into other stats and provided the only ones I could find. And to be honest, we all know NRL crowds are generally lower compared to AFL crowds, so maybe we need to compare each club's attendance vs the overall competition's average attendance. Either way, if other people can look at some other statistical analysis, we could get a clearer picture. I'd say it's still a very big difference in favour of Rugby League.
I think 2:1 that the google trends implies is more likely flattering to Australian football than it is unders. I think the 12:1 in favour of the AFL south of the Barrassi line is probably more in the stark zone
I suspect you'll find that things like attendance and participation are less than 2:1 but TV ratings would be far more than 2:1
- Mar 5, 2015
- 1,720
- 2,068
- AFL Club
- Western Bulldogs
- Other Teams
- Marconi, Arsenal, GreenEdge
Sydney and SEQld are very different places to regional NSW and Qld. AFL has significantly more chance to grow in Sydney and SEQ, as does football, Leagues heartland is regional areas where whole towns are rusted on. I see League participation in urban areas declining significantly, Union even more spectacularly and football and AFL will fill the participation void. Interestingly the heartland union schools in Sydney, the GPS schools are recognising this and shifting focus from Union to Footbal. AFL might be a step too far for them atm.
Took me a while to know what you were talking about when referring to "football"
I would say there is a massive difference between soccer participation increasing in Gps schools and "the focus shifting" from rugby to soccer in a prestige and elite resourcing sense. Far more likely Australian football chips away at that over time than soccer
- Apr 12, 2012
- 46,157
- 41,955
- AFL Club
- GWS
Been quite a few private schools putting up Aussie Rules posts and starting programs.
Love this. If you could add RU to RL, that would be a more accurate comparison.
Adroyo
Debutant
I'd have to disagree to an extent. Ive been a gamer for 20+ years and so have all my mates. Out of the 18 of us that regularly get together to play a game, only 1 watches anything E-Sports related. We've all tried and the other 17 of us will never get into it.
On the other side, we all grew up in the NSW country and were all NRL mad. Now only 5 still prefer NRL, me and the other 12 now prefer AFL.
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Okay, but with all due respect, what you and your mates do means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme. The facts are that many esports are already bigger than the A League for example.
Adroyo
Debutant
I definitely see it's growing popularity. But what do games do differently to sports? They change. You won't be getting 1 million viewers to Apex legends in 10 years will you? There's always something new coming out and that makes tournaments and competitions incredibly hard to market for.
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How does that make sense? You advertise your product in the current most popular E Sport, and when a bigger one comes along you can jump ship to that one.
Adroyo
Debutant
I'm glad some global online games are beating one low populated countries 3rd-tier sport.
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Well it wasn't long ago the whole E Sports genre didn't really exist outside of tiny isolated areas, so of course it has to grow, which it is doing at a very fast rate.
Why don't you tell us what your 3 friends are doing? That should help us figure out global trends, rather than actual research and evidence.
Adroyo
Debutant
You epitomize the toxicity of online gaming. AFL doesn't have to 'worry' about the growth of E-Sports, it's even investing in teams. Two completely different fruits. There won't be E-Sports stadiums competing with the MCG anytime soon. Why don't you ask your zero E-Sports Friends how well the Overwatch league is doing at the moment?
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When Esports takes young kids away from playing Footy and into playing games then yes, the AFL has an issue, obviously. Esports is an competitor just like the A-League / NRL. They don't need E-Sports specific stadiums, they can already sell out other stadiums.
Adroyo
Debutant
I agree but Parents will always want their kids in being active. E-Sports will always take a back seat in that regard.
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The kid has to actually want to play Footy otherwise parents can't do much, if playing games on a Saturday morning is far more enjoyable than driving out 40 mins in the freezing cold to play Footy then it's a hard fight to win. Saves parents time and money too
Adroyo
Debutant
That's a good point. I'll always want my kids being active and I'm happy to drive an hour to a venue on the weekends which I do already. But I'm also not everyone.
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Quite seriously, what facts?
You've just quoted a bunch of arbitrary numbers with no source.
It's not that I don't believe you, but you're going to have to do a bit better than that. Because i've never seen any actual evidence that it has any sort of serious following at all, at least in this country. Could you provide 10 examples in the last year of a sold out stadium in Australia?
For instance, the OPL - seemingly the major E-sports organisation in this country, has 8k facebook fans and 5k twitter followers (and a lot of that is probably because 2 AFL clubs bought in). Prizemoney for league appears to be a paltry $32,000 (based on a quick google search). No TV network broadcasts it. Newspapers don't cover it. The only time it ever really makes any news is because of the novelty of a few thousand people going to watch it somewhere. But that's rare. Anecdotally, i've never heard anyone talk about it. Ever. But I appreciate that i'm probably not the demographic that does follow it, nor do I associate much with that demographic.
Adroyo
Debutant
E-Sports biggest challenge will be competing with themselves for viewers. There is so many options. You are comparing one game (AFL) to the combined hundreds of E-Sports games.
Even then, In 2018 the most watched event had concurrent 173,000 viewers for the major in Boston. Hardly 'millions and millions' of viewers is it? If E-Sports was confined to just the one game then yeah, it would be a realistic comparison.
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Dirty Bird
Pokémon Master
I'm in my 20s and I perhaps MIGHT see it in my lifetime
phase 1 - Taking over Sydney - Juniors are growing substantially. Happened when I lived there and played there. u9s I played for Penrith, and we were in the North-West league with teams like Parramatta, Westbrook, Baulkham Hills and The Saints (Hawkesbury????) Next year teams at Emu Plains, the Crows (St Clair???? St Marys????) were formed and we now had our own West League. I left Sydney in the late 00s. And looking back these days the leagues are double the size and going down to division 2, 3 and sometimes 4. I wouldn't be shocked if in 20 years (the 40s/50s in my lifetime) Sydney is starting to be taken over from Aussie Rules.
phase 2 - Taking over Brisbane - We're not cracking Queensland until we break New South Wales. It's part of their culture. You need to destroy their rival (NSW). Once they lose interest in that rivalry, they could shift to fight NSW in Footy rather than rugby league. 2060s is best case scenario imo in cracking QLD. It'll always have a niche following. But becoming numero uno? It'll take a culture shift. And the AFL can't force that directly onto Queenslanders. You have to do it via NSW.
phase 3 - Taking over the country - That aint happening until you destroy the NRL. We're looking at like 2100s.
From someone who spent their youth in Sydney (5-18yo), I will tell you right now, the best way to crack it is through 2 plans. Plan 1) More grassroot clubs. Put another 1 team in Sydney. I'd try somewhere between Cronulla or Campbelltown. Another club to allow players to work at the grassroots level. And perhaps another team in the North.
Second is culling Victorian clubs. One of the main things Rugby lovers seemed to spurt a lot in the time was how it's a Victorian league with so many clubs. Break this perception. Merge 4 clubs into 2. Then create Tassie and Sydney #3.
phase 1 - Taking over Sydney - Juniors are growing substantially. Happened when I lived there and played there. u9s I played for Penrith, and we were in the North-West league with teams like Parramatta, Westbrook, Baulkham Hills and The Saints (Hawkesbury????) Next year teams at Emu Plains, the Crows (St Clair???? St Marys????) were formed and we now had our own West League. I left Sydney in the late 00s. And looking back these days the leagues are double the size and going down to division 2, 3 and sometimes 4. I wouldn't be shocked if in 20 years (the 40s/50s in my lifetime) Sydney is starting to be taken over from Aussie Rules.
phase 2 - Taking over Brisbane - We're not cracking Queensland until we break New South Wales. It's part of their culture. You need to destroy their rival (NSW). Once they lose interest in that rivalry, they could shift to fight NSW in Footy rather than rugby league. 2060s is best case scenario imo in cracking QLD. It'll always have a niche following. But becoming numero uno? It'll take a culture shift. And the AFL can't force that directly onto Queenslanders. You have to do it via NSW.
phase 3 - Taking over the country - That aint happening until you destroy the NRL. We're looking at like 2100s.
From someone who spent their youth in Sydney (5-18yo), I will tell you right now, the best way to crack it is through 2 plans. Plan 1) More grassroot clubs. Put another 1 team in Sydney. I'd try somewhere between Cronulla or Campbelltown. Another club to allow players to work at the grassroots level. And perhaps another team in the North.
Second is culling Victorian clubs. One of the main things Rugby lovers seemed to spurt a lot in the time was how it's a Victorian league with so many clubs. Break this perception. Merge 4 clubs into 2. Then create Tassie and Sydney #3.
That was average concurrent viewers, for an even that goes for several days. It pulled something like 55 million viewing hours. So, it may very well have been millions of viewers.
Does it have to be done in this order? Obviously the AFL has a big interest in cracking Sydney and Brisbane since this is where their clubs are, but I wonder if investing money into country leagues now might be a smart idea since taking over the country would cut off half of rugby league's talent supply.
It is a Victorian league and always will be, since Victoria is big, footy is the state religion and the grand final will be played there in perpetuity. I don't agree with the proposal because Melbourne is growing fast and will overtake Sydney in population soon, it won't make any financial sense to kill off a team there. You just need to look at rugby union to see the perils of having too many teams outside the heartland compared to within it. Also, it's not like the NRL has had a problem with Melbourne people staying away from Storm games because of the number of teams in Sydney.
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