Play Nice 2022 Non AFL Crowds/Ratings/Finance/Development thread

[SBD Gonzalez]

I'm someone that's watched a fair bit of soccer over my life, but i'm by no means an expert. I haven't played it more than social league, and my kids haven't played it either. So take my question with that in mind.

Why does the offside rule exist?

Every person with a soccer background i've asked only ever provides a vague answer something along the lines of "well if it wasn't there, the defending team would just push everyone back and it would just end up looking like pinball between defenses". To which my question is then "well if that's so effective, why can't they do that now given the offside rule only imposes restrictions on attacking players"? Usually the response to that is the person just shakes their head and walks away.
Presumably there's a reason why it was introduced, wiki just talks about being unfair for a player to park himself in the box. But there has to be more to it than that. What would the game look like without it?

Yeah beyond my knowledge base mate but I'm intrigued to see what people say.

 

[Gigantor]

I'm someone that's watched a fair bit of soccer over my life, but i'm by no means an expert. I haven't played it more than social league, and my kids haven't played it either. So take my question with that in mind.

Why does the offside rule exist?

Every person with a soccer background i've asked only ever provides a vague answer something along the lines of "well if it wasn't there, the defending team would just push everyone back and it would just end up looking like pinball between defenses". To which my question is then "well if that's so effective, why can't they do that now given the offside rule only imposes restrictions on attacking players"? Usually the response to that is the person just shakes their head and walks away.
Presumably there's a reason why it was introduced, wiki just talks about being unfair for a player to park himself in the box. But there has to be more to it than that. What would the game look like without it?

The original logic of it is actually the reverse of what you are saying.
Supposedly, the offside rule is there to stop attacking players hanging out next to the keeper in the goal mouth to score an easy goal (in the early days of aussie rules, we would call such a players role: goal sneak).
It sort of sounds like a good reason, but it's also illogical, because like, well:
1. the keeper has a massive advantage in his own box and will win all aerial contests (and if he can't, he should be sacked)
2. if, say, two attacking players are hanging out with the keeper looking or the easy long ball, it stands to reason, that that team is getting outnumbered in midfield and will have trouble winning possession back against a half-competent team.
3. being the master game of strategy soccer is meant to be, those coaches earning tens of millions of dollars can't come up with a solution to negate someone hanging out alongside the keeper??

Anyway, whichever way you slice and dice it, the justification was lost long ago in the mists of time, and being the ultra conservative game it is, soccer will never change it.

Soccer is a game very much stuck in the mindset of the 1870s, all the equipment to run the game anywhere in the world harks back to that decade - nothing has changed.

I mean, fair dinkum, only in the last couple of years did it dawn on soccer that it might be a good idea to have someone independent keeping track of time.
You think!?

 

[Bjo187]

Off side use to be in field hockey and got taken away with no real changes to the play. Soccer would be smart to get rid of the keeper if they wanna increase scoring, a defender could stay back instead. It is strange that only one player on each team has exclusive rights to touch the ball.

Rugby league I'd look at something to stop it from being so repetitive, but I can't think of how.

American football, just quicken up the time between plays, take out some of the time outs.

 

[HavUEvaSeenTheRain]

The Womens Open Tennis final last night easily beat the BBL in Perth on FTA and Fox combined.

AO 851,000 only shown on Ch 9 FTA and the BBL on both FTA on Ch 7 and Foxtel 521,000 combined

That AO figure was the presentations. The game was about 100k lower. Both seem pretty poor.

 

[Teen Wolf]

I note with interest the shocking crowd at Hobart last night for the International Pakistan v Australia ODi match - it would have been lucky to be 500 so much for PR of Womens cricket being popular!

But ch7 put it on the main channel nationwide, yet can't put AFL games on the main channel up in Sydney or Brisbane.

Except they do put some AFL games on the main channel in Sydney and Brisbane, just more often on 7mate etc. Exactly like they do with women's cricket.

All but a few local leagues can only dream of women's cricket TV ratings, without doubt the best value for broadcasters in Australian sport.

Considering 6k turned up to see the Hurricanes vs Steve Smith three days earlier, the crowd of about 1k for Aus v Pakistan women clearly overachieved (if you want to look at it through the lens of how much the players are being paid).

That AO figure was the presentations. The game was about 100k lower. Both seem pretty poor.

An easy 800k and 1m all up for the BBL and AO, par not poor.

 

[BobbyMorri]

 

[MelbourneGWS]

Women’s cricket globally and in Australia to be significantly impacted by the creation of the Indian WPL. The ICC is also focusing on the addition of T20 in the Olympics. The Bollywood of sport — how India is hitting women's cricket into the stratosphere

 

[jatz14]

Hi folks, I was wondering if it might be interesting/amusing to post our thoughts on how to improve other sports.

I've got just a handful of pretty boring suggestions.

But I don't see why we can't have amusing ones as well, so long as we're mindful of the mods' stipulation at the top of this thread that we remain at all times respectful, and not engage in slanging matches and code wars.

For mine:

Soccer - make it a LITTLE bit easier to score goals. (How? I'd suggest making the goal a little bigger all round). Make the scoring difficulty on a par with, say, ice hockey, where you customarily have very low scores but they are still usually decisive, and hence there is little incentive to stage for frees.

Rugby League - do away with the scrum. If someone can make a coherent case for why they still do them, I'd be happy to hear it, but to me, given the scrum feeder is allowed to pretty much give it to their own team, they are just a complete joke, a meaningless ritual on a par with prayers before parliament.

Tennis - do away with the serving let. Why does it exist? If the serve doesn't go in cleanly, tough t***ies.

Dont agree with most of these.

Soccer relies a lot on tension for its atmosphere. Soccer can produce moments of great skill and excitement, but thats usually a handful of minutes in a game. Easier scoring means the better team is the team that will tend to score more. If you defend like crazy against a better team, you might keep it to 1-0 with 10 minutes to play, you just need to squeeze out 1 fast break and goal. If your 4-0 or 5-0 down, games over, tensions over. Low scoring keeps weaker teams in more games longer, and keeps the tension up. More scoring means bigger winning margins, and less competitive tension.

This is the reason the draft and competition equalising measures are so important to AFL. AFL games can blow out quickly in mismatches.
Soccer doesn't have a draft or equalisation, they rely on the fact its hard to score against teams that are focussing on defending like mad, even if your much better. Keeps fans of shit teams hoping they can pull of a miracle.

Tennis. You increase the number of points, games and matches decided by double faults, hugely anti climactic. There is a reason the introduced the let point, and thats it. Not fair on the receiver to play the point, to boring to increase the number of double faults. Solution, just replay the point.

 

[weewilly]

Except they do put some AFL games on the main channel in Sydney and Brisbane, just more often on 7mate etc. Exactly like they do with women's cricket.

All but a few local leagues can only dream of women's cricket TV ratings, without doubt the best value for broadcasters in Australian sport.

Considering 6k turned up to see the Hurricanes vs Steve Smith three days earlier, the crowd of about 1k for Aus v Pakistan women clearly overachieved (if you want to look at it through the lens of how much the players are being paid).


An easy 800k and 1m all up for the BBL and AO, par not poor.

You must have counted the people at Hobart for the Womens cricket twice as there would have been lucky to be 500 there!
And the crowd figure is still TBA!

 

[weewilly]

Pretty good ratings for the AO Mens final.The BBL did not make it into the top 20 FTA!

2023 AUSTRALIAN OPEN D14 -MEN’S FINAL 1,322,000.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

American football, just quicken up the time between plays, take out some of the time outs.

With you on this. Such an exciting game when it's happening! But most of the time it's not happening!

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

Dont agree with most of these.

Soccer relies a lot on tension for its atmosphere. Soccer can produce moments of great skill and excitement, but thats usually a handful of minutes in a game. Easier scoring means the better team is the team that will tend to score more. If you defend like crazy against a better team, you might keep it to 1-0 with 10 minutes to play, you just need to squeeze out 1 fast break and goal. If your 4-0 or 5-0 down, games over, tensions over. Low scoring keeps weaker teams in more games longer, and keeps the tension up. More scoring means bigger winning margins, and less competitive tension.

This is the reason the draft and competition equalising measures are so important to AFL. AFL games can blow out quickly in mismatches.
Soccer doesn't have a draft or equalisation, they rely on the fact its hard to score against teams that are focussing on defending like mad, even if your much better. Keeps fans of s**t teams hoping they can pull of a miracle.

I get your logic, but to me, the blight of staging is a greater issue, and if they made the per-game scoring more substantial we'd see that pretty much eradicated from the game. Players in all sports stage, but it's pretty much only in soccer that a single act of staging can decide a match.

And then introduce draft and equalisation...

Tennis. You increase the number of points, games and matches decided by double faults, hugely anti climactic.

Yeah I disagree. I think double faults deciding matches would be fantastic and tantalising. Each to their own I guess.

 

[BobbyMorri]

Pretty good ratings for the AO Mens final.The BBL did not make it into the top 20 FTA!

2023 AUSTRALIAN OPEN D14 -MEN’S FINAL 1,322,000.

The BBL was a dud game, but still, it needs to finish by the start of the AO.

It just not worth going up against it. AO had 47% share, which is high. It was similar last night with the womens final (850K). AO won every city outside Perth, which only happened because the Perth Scorchers were playing.

I think TV ratings of the AO were down by 40% from last year. But that is not too bad considering the lack of Barty(which had 2.5M watching the final last year) and Nick

 

[Teen Wolf]

Pretty good ratings for the AO Mens final.The BBL did not make it into the top 20 FTA!

2023 AUSTRALIAN OPEN D14 -MEN’S FINAL 1,322,000.

The BBL was a dud game, but still, it needs to finish by the start of the AO.

It just not worth going up against it. AO had 47% share, which is high.

...

10

SEVEN’S CRICKET: BIG BASH LEAGUE – THE KNOCKOUT

Seven Network

348,000

92,000

90,000

85,000

44,000

38,000

Very good numbers for the BBL. That'll be 850-900k all up, going h2h with the men's AO final.

Tennis only seems to siphon significant cricket viewers from Melbourne.

 

[dave10]

Am I the only person who’s noticed the attendances at The Jack Jumpers is almost always 4,293. They obviously don’t count spectators there which is a bit odd.

 

[JD-Roo]

Am I the only person who’s noticed the attendances at The Jack Jumpers is almost always 4,293. They obviously don’t count spectators there which is a bit odd.

Yep. Seems dodgy.

Official capacity is listed at 4,800, yet they seem to have twice gone over that with the exact same figure, then an amazing run of the same crowd numbers in groups.

Are the same bean-counters in Tassie the ones they used for the early World Cup crowds in Qatar maybe?

 

[Rob]

It's like every few weeks they have a meeting to work out what that month's crowd figure will be

 

[The_Wookie]

Am I the only person who’s noticed the attendances at The Jack Jumpers is almost always 4,293. They obviously don’t count spectators there which is a bit odd.

Actually they were always 4231 in 2022 until i started asking about it on twitter...then they went up. lol.

 

[The_Wookie]

 

[The_Wookie]

Pretty good ratings for the AO Mens final.The BBL did not make it into the top 20 FTA!

2023 AUSTRALIAN OPEN D14 -MEN’S FINAL 1,322,000.

yes it did at #10

 

[The_Wookie]

 

[JD-Roo]

At the risk of being annoying, may I ask what the Oztam acronyms represent?

BOVD
TTV
STV cons+7

 

[dave10]

Actually they were always 4231 in 2022 until i started asking about it on twitter...then they went up. lol.

Yeah.. Us nerds seem to notice these things

 

[BobbyMorri]

JJ's have a full membership and barely any general tickets for the public.

Their actual attendance wouldn't mean much in terms of match-day revenue. It is just how many of those actually members turn up. obviously, counting crowds and sharing them with the public is not a high priority from them

 

[The_Wookie]

At the risk of being annoying, may I ask what the Oztam acronyms represent?

BOVD
TTV
STV cons+7

BVOD - Broadcast Video on Demand - includes 9now, 7plus, Tenplay
TTV - Total TV - consolidated 7 day viewing inclusive of metro, regional, and bvod (live and delayed viewing)
STV - Subscription television
cons+7 - consolidated broadcast live and delayed viewing ratings up to 7 days out (used to form Total TV ratings and regional reporting).

The other one you'll see from time to time is VOZ (Virtual OZ) which is 28 day consolidated live and delayed viewing.

No this doesnt include Kayo or Stan.