United we stand, divided we fall?

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

Should the AFL and AFLW programs come together, with all matches double headers featuring a men's game and a women's game?

Ignoring Tassie for a moment, the 17 rounds that AFL teams play against the other clubs could double as the AFLW program.

AFLW 17 round season, play everyone once. The finals played at the back end of the men's season. The AFLW Grand final in the dead week between the AFL Round 23 and finals starting.

The men's double up matches to be played prior to and after the 17 round block.

Men's Rnds 1-3
Men's Rnds 4-20 + AFLW Rnds 1-17 (double headers)
Men's Rnds 21-23 + AFLW finals
AFLW Grand Final
Men's finals

 

[cmndstab]

Should the AFL and AFLW programs come together, with all matches double headers featuring a men's game and a women's game?

Ignoring Tassie for a moment, the 17 rounds that AFL teams play against the other clubs could double as the AFLW program.

AFLW 17 round season, play everyone once. The finals played at the back end of the men's season. The AFLW Grand final in the dead week between the AFL Round 23 and finals starting.

The men's double up matches to be played prior to and after the 17 round block.

Men's Rnds 1-3
Men's Rnds 4-20 + AFLW Rnds 1-17 (double headers)
Men's Rnds 21-23 + AFLW finals
AFLW Grand Final
Men's finals

Other than necessarily tying the matches together as double-headers, this is exactly what I would do. Start the seasons at around the same time and get everything finished shortly before the men's finals.

It will eventually need to happen, so we should rip off the bandaid and just do it.

 

[PorPleaseYa]

A few double headers as a fun novelty? Sure. But for the whole season? It turns going to the football into at least a 7 hour enterprise, which just won't work for most people. The crowd demographics and atmosphere at aflw are super different too. With the cost of tickets to men's games, plus the fact for us that most of the stadium is season ticketed, it's completely cutting off the core aflw fanbase.

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

A few double headers as a fun novelty? Sure. But for the whole season? It turns going to the football into at least a 7 hour enterprise, which just won't work for most people. The crowd demographics and atmosphere at aflw are super different too. With the cost of tickets to men's games, plus the fact for us that most of the stadium is season ticketed, it's completely cutting off the core aflw fanbase.

Is the core AFLW fanbase large enough / growing enough to sustain a competition by itself?

At the moment it's a much greater enterprise than 7 hours and much costlier to see a game of men's football and women's football given that you need to (drive there, park, walk to oval, walk to car, drive home, buy food, buy tickets) x 2

I wonder if people are footballed out to a degree by the time the AFLW season comes around?

 

[PorPleaseYa]

Is the core AFLW fanbase large enough / growing enough to sustain a competition by itself?

At the moment it's a much greater enterprise than 7 hours and much costlier to see a game of men's football and women's football given that you need to (drive there, park, walk to oval, walk to car, drive home, buy food, buy tickets) x 2

I wonder if people are footballed out to a degree by the time the AFLW season comes around?

And you think you're going to sustain a competition off the people who have enough time in their day to sit at Adelaide oval for 6 hours? What do you do with Friday night games, given the AFL has made clear with its finals double headers the last two years they're unwilling to give up their hour+ of fox footy pre game? Do we have 9am games before a Sunday midday fixture? The A Leagues have moved away from double headers because nobody shows up to the women's game, and soccer is much shorter than AFL.

 

[cmndstab]

Is the core AFLW fanbase large enough / growing enough to sustain a competition by itself?

At the moment it's a much greater enterprise than 7 hours and much costlier to see a game of men's football and women's football given that you need to (drive there, park, walk to oval, walk to car, drive home, buy food, buy tickets) x 2

I wonder if people are footballed out to a degree by the time the AFLW season comes around?

There are quite a number of people who will happily go and watch AFLW live, who never bother going to the men's games. Hell, I've barely gone to any men's games in years. Too expensive, and takes too much time, etc. But I will often attend several AFLW matches a year. And there are people who only follow AFLW and don't care about the men at all.

There's something about having it be a double-header that would make me feel like it's not worth going to either unless I could commit to both. Maybe that's just me?

From a selfish point of view, having the seasons not overlap is nice for me. It's nice having football on during the AFL offseason! It's also nice not having to find the time to watch two Crows matches a week. But it's not fair on the women to relegate them to the summer months to deal with 35 degree heat and summer thunderstorms, and as the season grows to a full length it will become unavoidable anyway. We will have to eventually just have the two seasons overlap (or mostly overlap), so we should just rip off the bandaid and do it.

It doesn't actually matter whether the fanbase can "sustain the competition by itself", because it doesn't have to. AFLW is part of the AFL, who have money to burn. AFLW doesn't have to stand on its own feet in the here and now. And long-term, it already provides a massive benefit to the AFL by opening up their product to a broader market, both as fans and as players. There are so many more women and girls playing football now, and their involvement increases the likelihood that they and their family/friends will attend games, or become club members, and eventually introduce the sport to their kids, etc.

What we should do right now is to prioritise steps that will lead to an increase in the quality of the product. That means that the top priority should be allowing these women to become full-time athletes (which requires extra pay for the players, and extra staff from the clubs). Beyond that, we should be seeking to have the women play football during the cooler months, and ideally on better grounds. And the AFL themselves should be ensuring they have top-quality umpires and broadcasts that don't just fail to start or have massive audio issues.

 

[jenny61_99]

I don’t know how we fix it, but it sure as hell isn’t working the way it is.

 

[Scorpus]

How does a double header work with a men's Friday or Thursday night match?

 

[Interloperer]

On the subject of money/sustainability: An underappreciated part of the women's game (and the recent rise of women's sport in general). Is that a lot of the sponsorship money is new money that wouldn't be in the game otherwise.

Sponsors who specifically want to be associated with the women's game and are generally uninterested in the men's game.

 

[jenny61_99]

How does a double header work with a men's Friday or Thursday night match?

I'm not a fan of that idea. I think the women's comp has to have it's own entity. Can imagine them doing a double header with the reserves, but not the women.

 

[brucetiki]

Is the core AFLW fanbase large enough / growing enough to sustain a competition by itself?

At the moment it's a much greater enterprise than 7 hours and much costlier to see a game of men's football and women's football given that you need to (drive there, park, walk to oval, walk to car, drive home, buy food, buy tickets) x 2

I wonder if people are footballed out to a degree by the time the AFLW season comes around?

At the moment I have a full season memberships for the Crows men, Crows women and Centrals.

If the women’s comp fell in line with the men’s season, I’d probably drop my Centrals membership back so I could still go to all our mens/womens matches.

Having said that, football fatigue well and truly kicks in the later the AFLW season goes on. The first half of the season I’ll happily watch a few games a week. By the end of the season even just watching our games becomes a bit of a chore - not because I don’t want to support the girls but because I’ve been following footy since March by now and it’s tiring.