The morgan poll is all we got, you can make of it what you will.
20,000 you say............... rarely they get 20k - it's usually more.
Whilst you choose not to support your claims ..... see the post from The Wookie as you clearly need a template.
The problem with the idea of a geographical supporter base is convincing the natives. Gil may believe he can tell Tasmanians who to support, he's wrong.
Go back and check the 25 years before that. These are systemic issues which have been happening since the AFL introduced their "crowd/revenue maximisation" policies in 1992/93. And that is just one part of the issue as The_Wookie has stated. The issues faced by Melbourne clubs are different to the issues faced by non-Vic clubs, comparing North with Freo is a false equivalency. Comparing North with Essendon or Collingwood shows the discrepancy in fixturing which favours the bigger Vic clubs.
Different league.
Melbourne made a loss of $2.8m this year I think but have cleared our debt partly due to selling the Leighoak club a couple of years back. Wouldn't surprise me if we go back into debt (or take out a loan) when we finally get our facilities built but we would be relying on significant funding from AFL and Govt as part of that.
No you couldn't.
You mean like what North tried to do with Fitzroy decades ago, only to be blocked by sooky la la "big clubs"?
Yep, from a parochial Sandgroper, I just can't see it happening anytime soon (cull of Vic clubs) and don't particularly want it to. I'd liked to have more traditional clubs in the AFL from the get go, but it's too late now, by 30 years. Unfortunately the business model behind clubs like the Eagles and Docker makes more sense.
Correct. Too many came in in the first place. And some fairly stern efforts to do the culling process after the event didn't come to enough, partly due the increasing revenue in the game, and partly because the fledgling AFL would have lasted about 5 minutes if it lost the Victorian public. Which it came uncomfortably close to doing as the failed merger / relocation efforts built up resentment - and not just in the Clubs that had their heads on the block.
Not sure on that one. A business environment where you have twice as many potential customers in your accessible population base as your competitors do tends to take a lot of pressure off the business model.
Precisely. It would have been better for everyone had they just allowed that to go ahead. If the merged club had to give up a few players for it to happen, so be it. Not that I'm complaining when the failure of that merger helped my club get three premierships.
Port, Melbourne and St Kilda all have similer followings attendance, TV ratings, and Membership etc..
I keep banging on about fairness and many correctly counter that revenue will decrease, supporters will be lost and TV deal demands 22 rounds of 9 games.
Neither of those things will happen so I'd prepare for disappointment if I were you.
So your idea of improving the competition is disenfranchising around a million supporters and 160-200k club members?
Not only that, if the TV rights holders had a choice between a Vic only comp or a comp comprised solely of non-Vic clubs I would bet they would be selecting the Vic comp everytime.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that a franchise club like the Eagles or Dockers looks to me like it would be more successful than it would have been taking East or West Perth out of the WAFL and chucking them into the AFL. As much as I would have preferred that.
That's plain rubbish. In 2018 we averaged over 40k to our home games, when was the last time the Bulldogs did that?
Get what you are at now.
Essendon are also unassisted. With Collingwood, Essendon, Richmond, Hawthorn, Western Bulldogs, West Coast, Fremantle and Adelaide being financially stable (plus teams like Geelong and Melbourne also being alright as well), I don't see why the AFL couldn't support the rest like it's currently doing.
