Rugby league getting nervous ???

[Guest]

I was reading with great interest an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, I think there are some very worried people up there. Check it out.

URL=http://smh.com.au/news/0011/12/sport/sport8.html

[This message has been edited by happy hawker (edited 12 November 2000).]

[This message has been edited by happy hawker (edited 12 November 2000).]

 

[Westy Boy]

The NRL are certainly fearful of the ramifications of this bid, and rightly so. It would be interesting to see the AFL's reaction had the tables been turned (if the NRL TV rights were up for renewal instead of the AFL rights), and channel 7 had made a bid for the rugby league rights. I doubt whether the AFL would be fearful at all. There wouldn't be any chance of seven offloading any AFL games to Channel 10 as Channel 9 are considering at the moment, and IMO, this just goes to prove rugby leagues impending downfall, just a matter of when. A lot of people on these boards have previously mentioned the fragile nature of the NRL, especially without the backing of the corporate heavyweights.

And in regards to the corporate heavywights, the last paragrph of that article just goes to show the enormous complexities involved in this matter.

"Nine is owned by the Packer-controlled Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd, a 25 per cent shareholder in Nine's AFL bid partner, Foxtel, whose other shareholders are Telstra (50 per cent) and News (25 per cent).

Contracts / counter contracts / internet rights (News Ltd's involvement in afl.com/ Eddie's sportsview contracts against Telstra's requirement to have control over ALL club's internet rights)/ companies' involvement and/or ownership of leagues/ stadiums/ will Tim Webster/Mike Larkin be commentating... the important issues never cease to amaze. Events involving this matter over the coming months (as they want to finalise it before christmas) will certainly provide good "entertainment" in themselves.

This next argument probably belongs in another thread, but an interesting (problematic) point that I noticed in the article was the fact that the ACTUAL payments to the AFL, if the proposed bid was to go ahead, would be in the vicinity of $70 million, with the rest of the $100million being the worth of advertising and marketing inherent in 9's/foxtel's activities. This leaves "only" $40 million over and above what the AFL are currently recieving annualy from Seven ($30m).

Now, optimistically speaking, you would expect approximately 3 quarters of that to filter down to the clubs.... which works out to be less than 2 million per club per year for the next decade (or 5 years according to some reports). I would imagine that this would be considerably less than the "club-saving" financial windfall that some administrations may have been expecting.

Put into perspective:-
*with inflation eating away at this (constant) figure of $1.8 million
*in percentage terms not a significant increase in income from the $14-16 million average revenues of clubs now,
*expenses going through the roof, and
*an ever increasing salary cap with players expecting a lot more due the "windfall",
I see a lot of clubs in a worse position than they are now....

 

[NICK THE PIE MAN]

I live in Queensland and i can't stand people who say that Rugby League is better than AFL. Rugby League is the most useless piece of garbage sport there is. No brains involved what so ever.

 

[Danni]

Nick I have to agree with you totally on that one. One thing to note tho, Qld may be a Rugby League state in the eyes of many. But these days, more schools play Aussie Rules here than League, the Lions are only a couple of hundred behind the Broncos in paid membership numbers, and on only a couple of occasions has the Broncos crowds been bigger than the AFL crowds at the Gabba in the last 2 years.

It is understandable that RL would be nervous, but they bloody deserve that too. It is about time that AFL got the media coverage it deserves in this state.

The AFL has said one of its stumbling blocks with ch7 is their refusal to televise live friday and saturday night games into the northern states because it would mean 'sacraficing' ratings.

What sort of ratings would they be getting from re-runs of 'sabrina the teenage witch' and dirt car racing??????? Ch 7's treatment of AFL fans in the northern states is deplorable. Alot of the time there is no mention of the Lions even in the 6 o'clock news up here. Yet ch7 (Brisbane) are a sponsor of the Lions.

Ch9 and 10 however (especially 10) have plenty more coverage via the news and the sports tonight show.

I for one would welcome the change of network providers. An average of 4 free to air games each weekend would be fantastic. At the moment we get 2, and even coupled with having the C7 sports channel this year, it was disappointing. On 2 or 3 Sunday afternoons this year when there were double headers advertised up here for a full afternoons viewing, we were shafted. We ended up with the 2.10 pm game live instead, and sure enough C7 sports showed the same game at the same time.

So of 3 possible games and 2 different tv channels, we saw the one and same game on both. Stuff that!

 

[James2]

This may shock some, but I think that Channel 7's (Prime in Canberra) coverage of the football, in general is very good. Paticularly compared to the free-to-air coverage that Rugby League fans receive.

Three games are shown live everyweek (Friday, Saturday and Sunday), plus late games on Saturday and Sunday. Prime were "forced" to show Friday night football this year (8.30, on delay), after a concerted campaign from a local lobby group known as the Save Friday Night Football Committee. Perhaps this is what you need Danni???

 

[Danni]

James I wish it were that simple! Prime tv up here (Gold Coast) has good coverage as well. But the places where it needs to be shown, such as Brisbane, doesn't get it.

Unfortunately, I don't think a lobby group would work.

Even the fact that ch7 Brisbane received over 15,000 phone calls complaining about no coverage of Ansett Cup games in Brisbane did nothing. From memory, the showed instead a re-run of surf carnival that had been run the week before.

I do however think that CH7 have selfish reasons for this, and that is the affiliation with C7 sports and the all mighty dollar.

Why show it live on free to air in QLD when they can show it live on pay tv? C7 have pretty good AFL coverage in QLD. And the number of QLD subscribers to the service has increased dramatically over the last few years, mainly for the Football Coverage.

So by showing it live on free to air, they lose the paytv revenue.

It is utter crap that there is no market for AFL on tv up here. There is a large market that is growing by the year. Brisbane have received ONE live Friday night game in the last 3 seasons. That was the Lions v Roos prelim in 1999. It rated as the 6th most watched show on tv in Brisbane for the entire year!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Lions and the AFL and many a supporter lobbied CH7 to show the rnd 20 Essendon v Carlton match here live this year. No Success. We got a 'Sabrina' re-run and and old 80's movie instead.

I can't see channel 7 changing their ways up here. If they lose the coverage to someone willing to show games up here - then I think that is great.

 

[Peter P]

Danni is footy really more widely played in Qld schools than League? If so what are the numbers?

 

[Danni]

Peter, off the top of my head I don't know - but I will find out for you and post them here this week.

It is most definately played more in schools than rugby league in QLD now. Tho I am not sure about the comparison with Rugby Union

My son goes to a very small school, under 100 children. They do the obligatory sports, swimming, athletics, and then this year, they participated in an Aussie Rules competiton. Not a league as such, just a small round-robin style comp over a few weeks with some other small schools that were too small to field full teams in a larger comp.

The new AFLQ Commission has also received an injection of $5M from the AFL which has been earmarked for further development and enhancement of facilities for Aussie Rules in QLD Schools.

Some of the numbers are quite high.

A big increase really seemed to start in about 1997. And then for example in 1998 in one Club alone, they had over 200 children enrolled in Auskick.

Now in BJAFL competion (Brisbane Junior AFL) there are 29 or so clubs competing. And some of these clubs are fielding up to 3 and 4 teams in each age group.

As these children grow, and continue to play and support Aussie Rules, the profile of game will get even higher in QLD.

 

[Danni]

Peter, just for starters, I found that the AFLQ runs a competition for Independent Schools (ie private/non-State Schools).

This year 50 Schools participated.

Now traditionally in QLD, Rugby Union was the code of the private schools. Now at least 50 of them, and looking at the list, some of the top schools, are competing in Aussie Rules as well.

That is a very good sign!

 

[Guest]

Excellent commentary by all.

I've said it before and I will say it again, the people at channel 7 in Sydney and Brisbane hate the AFL at the same time recognizing the growing level support in these two states. They fully understand that showing more games on TV would promote the code far too much for their liking.

On a somewhat related point John Ribot (Melbourne Storm) stated that the RL was encouraged by the large sums of money being talked about for the AFL rights, he thinking that the RL could get as much or more for the RL TV rights. He said he based this on the TV audience for RL was similar to AFL, now forgive me but is this guy on drugs or what. Who in their right mind would pay 100m to a competition seen only in 2 states. This only reinforces my belief that people in RL are incredibly deluded by the notion that they are somehow better than the AFL.