Play Nice 2019 Non AFL Admin, Crowds, Ratings, Participation etc thread
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& it is that simple
It actually really is.
If you are playing games on Friday at 6 o'clock to maximise TV revenues and you are still falling well short than it probably means your game isn't as valuable
- May 13, 2012
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There's a small gap in the TV dollars.
There's a big gap in sponsorship dollars.
When you consider how strong NRL ratings are, you have to wonder why. their sponsorship revenue falls well, well short of what the AFL and its clubs earn.
Even the AFL's newest club, earns more sponsorship revenue than the majority of NRL clubs.
There's a big gap in sponsorship dollars.
When you consider how strong NRL ratings are, you have to wonder why. their sponsorship revenue falls well, well short of what the AFL and its clubs earn.
Even the AFL's newest club, earns more sponsorship revenue than the majority of NRL clubs.
Is there a different method of reporting between the codes?
National footprint
Less risky reputationally
3 times more club members and more than double match day attendance
Better game day experience (bigger fuller stadiums and generally better corporate facilities)
Bigger share of "top end of town "
I would suggest all of the above could be factors as to why the AFL dominates corporate sponsorship
RussellEbertHandball
Flick pass expert
The off field bullshit by RL players in the last couple off seasons in particular, but generally over the last couple of decades since mass media saturation, has meant corporates don't want to be as closely associated with clubs and pay as higher sponsorship rates. Whilst the billboard component is potentially quiet large because of TV viewership numbers, the negative component when players are splashed across the papers or TV screens wearing a jersey with a coporates name all over the screen, has an affect on calculation of that sponsorship value.
Fans with eyeballs forgive players for bad behaviour pretty quickly. Corporates don't.
Yes. Fans will forgive (they're rested on), but non-fans who may take a passing interest in sports tend to be censorious.
The behavioural stuff is hard to fix. The very nature of the sport means you will always attract players who are aggressive risk-takers with little sense of self protection.
What the NRL really needs is the sort of all-encompassing, micro-managing in-house media organisation that the AFL has in AFL Media. In the AFL, the whole news cycle is controlled by the league and the clubs, not the commercial media.
The whole news cycle isn't controlled by the league and the clubs, that's nonsense.
Probably mainly due to a different socio-economic/cultural mix of the player base and maybe the more aggressive nature of the game, the rugby league generally has a lot more serious behavioural problems to deal with and those problems tend to sit at the centre of perceptions of the code (more so than the AFL)
The idea that the AFL has any power to keep scandals out of "the news cycle" is complete nonsense. The reality is those scandals are more often of a nathan broad or jack watts nature than what happens in the NRL
Ultimately though any scandal in the AFL or NRL is a massive story in commercial media in the respective heartlands. The AFL and NRL cannot make them not be.
For all the squealing of soccer fans about how they are picked on in terms of how violence at soccer grounds is portrayed compared to (let's face it, it is always) at AFL games - do you really think the media would have largely ignored something similar to what those 4 joeys did in Cambodia? The media largely ignored it because nobody knows or cares about those players for the most part. It wasn't the FFA successfully stopping it from becoming a big story
You're naive if you think that the AFL media landscape hasn't fundamentally altered since 2012 (the establishment of AFL Media), or that "serious behavioural problems" either don't occur or are dealt with much more swiftly away from the spotlight.
A mate of mine represented Nathan Broad. The entire scandal was controlled at legal and media level. The issue wasn't the level of control by either AFL House or commercial media; it was the decisions that were made before the player was sanctioned (for instance, Nathan Broad wanted to publicly apologise in the week before Richmond publicly announced his sanction).
AFL Media's crisis management arm and the ability to control media access is why a Kim Duthie-scale scandal could occur in 2010 but not now. Granted, the socio-economic/cultural mix is a fundamental difference between the sports - but it's only part of the story.
You are deluded if you think scandals are dealt with "swiftly away from the spotlight". You are confsued as to what "AFL media" actually is
The Broad scandal was front page for days. How it was "managed" is irrelevant.
The AFL's public relations department is completely different to AFL media.
The Kim Duthrie scale scandal could occur now. The AFL having its own media arm cannot stop such a scandal from happening now. Again, delusional
That's rubbish. The AFL is so well-resourced that it has far more control over the fallout from scandals than either the NRL or the FFA. It took seven months for two members of the FFA board to even be notified of the Cambodia hotel incident - that's unthinkable in the AFL.
It begins from the moment a player stuffs up and has the resources/knowledge to inform their clubs and cascades from there. A big part of the process is the clubs then informing their own media team, who in turn manage up to the league. Anyone looking to dig deeper or ask awkward questions gets threatened with (further) limitations on player and team access. In extreme cases, accreditation is at risk.
The AFL's ability to control narrative is hugely valuable to sponsors.
Yeah, sorry but naaah. The AFL and clubs might have better resourced and more skilled public relations / media management but that certainly doesn't mean it can or does suppress scandals from hitting the media.
The idea that the AFL is some monolithic force that ruthlessly suppresses dissent is the product of paranoid tin foil hat types. Probably why the idea is so prevalent among soccer types
That's ok, we'll have to disagree. Having the resources and skills to frame messages (and reduce fallout) is a major advantage that the AFL has over other football codes. And it helps massively when there are non match-related scandals. In turn, that reduces the reputational exposure risk for sponsors.
- Apr 20, 2006
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In the Broard incident and the like I’m not sure what you are getting at. I don’t know how the fallout could be any different. He copped it big time as do most who stuff up like that, much more so then other sports with less resources like soccer.
one thing though is the entire Essendon drug saga. How the hell so many professional journalists have gone so easy on professional sports people over it is quite incredible. They actually let them get away with playing the victim which is incredible. I wouldn’t be surprised if the AFL have had a hand in this.
RussellEbertHandball
Flick pass expert
Some stuff can be buried. Some stuff just can't be.
The AFL and the clubs do a lot better job at burying the sort of stuff that can be, than the NRL. That's why they have those ex coppers in their 'integrity' unit go and do investigations and try and spin stuff after their investigations.
What always fascinated me when I lived in Sydney for the next decade or so, after the Super league war was over, and News Ltd and ARL merged to set up the NRL, was that the biggest digger up of dirt was the Daily Telegraph. They loved RL scandals, it produced so many front and back pages for them, yet their parent company was 50% owner of the game and it affected their image.
I guess Rupert was more interested in the business he had 100% ownership of, doing better than the one he only had 50% ownership of.
The AFL and the clubs do a lot better job at burying the sort of stuff that can be, than the NRL. That's why they have those ex coppers in their 'integrity' unit go and do investigations and try and spin stuff after their investigations.
What always fascinated me when I lived in Sydney for the next decade or so, after the Super league war was over, and News Ltd and ARL merged to set up the NRL, was that the biggest digger up of dirt was the Daily Telegraph. They loved RL scandals, it produced so many front and back pages for them, yet their parent company was 50% owner of the game and it affected their image.
I guess Rupert was more interested in the business he had 100% ownership of, doing better than the one he only had 50% ownership of.
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- Moderator
- #1,841
There is a reason the "AFL Media" brand exists under the heel of the AFL
Think you may have misunderstood the earlier remark
AFL media landscape /AFL Media ... think you are both on the same tram here.
There are multiple reasons "AFL Media" exists and most of those are commercial. It exists under "General Manager, AFL Growth Digital and Audiences".
The AFL doesn't have a "heel" it is a corporate organisation with the same practices and structures as any other corporate organisation.
The AFL would have a public relations / comms unit that would probably exist under the CEOs office. They are two very different things but people seem to be confusing "AFL media" with a public relations and comms unit
I don't really disagree much with what you've written there beyond degree of some of your statements.
The AFL doesn't have the power to stop scandals from being made public, it can perhaps manage them better at the margins. The main reason though the AFL doesn't have as many scandals as the NRL is because there is less scandalous behaviour.
So then it's a three pronged argument. There's 1) a better relationship between the governing body and media; 2) there's the governing body's ability to control stories and outflows better than competitor sports can manage; and 3) there's more investment in player recruitment and player behavioural education than other sports, which minimises extreme events/poor behavioural episodes.
Sorry - as in there were very different views between his legal reps, the AFL's legal team, in-club media/PR and the club's management on how to control the delivery and timing of both his punishment and the apology. None of that is surprising, but the efficacy of damage control once the incident occurred was greater than it would have been several years beforehand.
What is surprising is that - with increased social media, dating apps, betting apps, player downtime, media partners etc - that there aren't more episodes of scandalous behaviour that come to light. Part of that is to do with player education and behavioural standards, but we're still talking about a group of 800-odd identifiable men aged 18-35 with high incomes. Stupid stuff will happen, but when you have the resources and relationships available to minimise scandals, then fewer of those scandals will come to light. And when they do emerge, they're less damaging than in previous years because there are resources and media relationships in place that can direct messages.
Of course, but isn't that also about the fan-boy nature of Australian sporting media? It needed journos who didn't have AFL media accreditation to raise new evidence and mount different arguments about player culpability.
In light of the rest of this discussion, I wonder how differently that scandal would be covered if it happened now rather than in 2013.
Thinking back to that discussion about David Gallop, doesn't that help explain his appeal? He was the person best placed to navigate the relationship between News Limited and its investment.
RussellEbertHandball
Flick pass expert
I think all the scandals just wore Gallop down, and contributed almost as much as News Ltd giving up their 50% stake and an independent ARL Commission appointed, to why he got the boot.
There was a balance needed. News Ltd's biggest way of clawing back their $560m+ investment was via their veto power buying the TV rights cheaply by Fox Sports and making big profits there as they owned 50% of Fox Sports and the Packers the other 50%. As I said before, the scandals didn't see many eyeballs drop off from the TV screens.
Daily Telegraph got good mileage, so therefore good profits for News Ltd there, and NRL paid a fee to News Ltd, a dividend of $8m a year once the NRL was set up in 1997-98 and until they left in 2012. So if sponsors dropped off,or underpaid, either to sponsor the NRL or its clubs, no real skin off News Ltd's nose there.
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One more time trying to explain the what "AFL media" is and isn't
The AFL media is a media outlet operated by the AFL
It does not do media management and public relations at all.
The AFL and "industry" may or may not have gotten better at media management and public relations etc over the last few years but it is completely independent of the founding and investment in "AFL media".
The AFL media is a media outlet operated by the AFL
It does not do media management and public relations at all.
The AFL and "industry" may or may not have gotten better at media management and public relations etc over the last few years but it is completely independent of the founding and investment in "AFL media".
Most corporate dollars, at least in the AFL, are earned on matchday. Boxes, presidents lunches, coterie groups, that sort of thing. Because AFL clubs generally play in front of bigger crowds in better stadiums they can sell more of that product at higher prices. I doubt some of those suburban NRL grounds in Sydney have many first class corporate boxes to even sell.
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