Are footy fans growing weary of being condescended to by those who run, and broadcast, the game? Photo: AFL MEDIA
Does AFL football have another problem? Perhaps. And yet it’s one we appear to have been slow to diagnose and seemingly uncertain how to rectify.
It took a poorly-attended Richmond game at Marvel Stadium last Saturday night for the agenda-setting AFL media to start thinking about how many people were actually going to the football in 2021.
And when just a little bit of number-crunching followed, the results were pretty stark. Total crowds from rounds one to eight this season compared to the same period in 2019 (the last “normal” football year) were down by more than 737,000 people, an average of about 8000 per game.
It’s important here to note the impact that COVID-19 continues to have on the competition. The early rounds in Melbourne were played before only 50 per cent capacity crowds, while two games in Perth (including a Derby) have been “lockouts”.
Nonetheless, that is still a considerable drop-off. And it doesn’t appear to be simply a case of more people who did go now watching on TV, either.
While AFL audiences have increased by 15 per cent on pay TV and streaming service Kayo compared to 2019, free-to-air TV numbers in metropolitan markets are down around five per cent on figures from two years ago.
Is it possible more hardcore AFL fans are choosing to watch from home instead of going, while at the same time fewer casual supporters of the code are either turning up in person or watching games on the Seven network? That should have both the AFL and Seven a little concerned.
But the solutions may not be so easy to come by. Because I suspect there’s a convergence of factors at play. And while some of them are fixable, others are a bigger issue that won’t be solved merely by some “value added” for fans to actually go to games, or even to turn on their TV sets.
Ticketing this year, thanks to COVID, has been something of a nightmare, and clearly has taken some toll. Reduced capacities, more logistically-complicated admission practices and social distancing you suspect made going to games for some people more trouble than it was worth. Particularly when in Melbourne, until last weekend, they were unable to sit in the reserved seats they usually occupied, and in some cases, had to pay more to sit elsewhere.
And while this one might be harder to judge for a while yet, I believe last year’s three-month layoff due to the pandemic has had some lingering impact.
I reckon I’m far from the only person who, as much as I love the game, found the absence of football on the weekends a lot easier to cope with than I feared.
For the first time in 50-odd years on a weekend between late March and June, I did other things. Spent time with family. Read more. Watched some movies and TV shows I’d wanted to catch up on for ages. Even, heaven forbid, took in the odd bit of art and culture.
What I understood more when the game returned was that while I had actually missed the football itself, I hadn’t missed a lot of the increasingly large circuses which surround it, the saturation media coverage, the clickbait and the endless puffing of chests and stroking of egos in the former player cartel which now is the face of much of that coverage.
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There’s a level of self-indulgence about it all (take a lot of TV commentary now, for example) which is a real turn-off for a lot us who really do love the game a lot more than the celebrities jostling for airtime and who sometimes seem to make the actual game itself seem secondary.
Not to mention the media outlets facilitating that trend in the I think misguided belief the football public is hanging on their every word, many of those words regurgitated faithfully in the several other outlets for whom they work.
How in touch are they with what the average football fan thinks and wants? You do wonder.
Like when Fox Footy’s “On The Couch” (one of the few TV football shows I can now stand) talks about redrafting the schedule so no games cross over (for TV viewing purposes) then in the next breath wonders why crowds might be down. Umm … because you’re actively enticing people to stay home and watch on TV, perhaps?
Or when Eddie McGuire pronounces matter-of-factly that “Saturday afternoon football is dead”. The reasons? Apparently, because people now prefer to watch school sport or play golf on a Saturday, and watch the games on TV.
Ed, not everyone’s kids go to a private school with organised weekend sport, nor are they all members of a golf club where you can get on the course on a weekend. Nor, for that matter, do they all even play golf.
And pay TV? Well, Kayo has made Fox Footy’s coverage more accessible and affordable, but the take-up rate of pay TV in this country has always hovered around just 30 per cent, much lower than other countries. Which makes that free-to-air drop more significant.
Funnily enough, McGuire’s hypothesis, which could well be a self-fulfilling prophecy if the AFL continues to schedule the showpiece games away from afternoon timeslots, wasn’t exactly supported by the evidence last Saturday, when more than 31,000 people turned up to the SCG for Sydney’s clash with Collingwood, and just 18,798 to watch reigning premier Richmond play under the roof at Marvel Stadium.
Is there a growing AFL “bubble” in which the privileged operate seemingly more and more oblivious to the wants and needs of the rank-and-file football fan? I think examples like those are pretty telling evidence there is.
So various members of the AFL “boys club” and celebrity commentators paying lip service to greater engagement with the game’s supporter base doesn’t count for a lot if they don’t have much of an idea what that base is thinking.
Frankly, I reckon they’re pissed off. Not by the game itself, the aesthetic quality of which has improved this year, but by the ever-present suspicion that to those who run the game or who broadcast the game, and who often come off as a little mutual back-slapping society, they are just the riff-raff who will lap up what they are offered, along with a dollop of condescension, no questions asked.
But here’s a news flash, guys. They are asking questions. They’re not necessarily going to abandon the game as a result. But their loyalties and devotion can no longer be taken for granted. Let alone, as those worrying crowd figures indicate, their patronage.
This article first appeared at ESPN.
I went to the footy yesterday for the first time in about 3 years. I paid $70 for a seat in the bottom deck of the Olympic Stand in the forward pocket. $70 to watch a game of footy, they have to be kidding themselves! On top of that, there was only one bar and one food outlet open to service the lower deck, which was 90% full. I queued for 15 minutes for a beer at half time. Add a 20 minute queue to get through the gates due to security, bag checks and QR Code check ins. We missed the first 10 minutes of the game. $90 to watch a game of footy and two beers, what world do they think people are living in? I won’t be going again for a long, long time.
maybe as we have a rotten gov, people cant afford it as a lot of those that lost jobs during pandemic, havent been able to get anything more than a part time job, plus the gov not helping those that cant afford to cover the bills etc..
There are probably many immediate reasons for the drop off depending on your circumstances. In my case I’m in my 70s and I’m avoiding crowds and I don’t go to night games any more. I’d probably jack up at pre buying tickets for every game as well. But I’ve long been fed up with the AFL and it’s attendant crowd of snoughts in the trough … they are rentier capitalists like a lot of the Australian business class, they’ve captured a monopoly asset (the game) and they are wringing as much out of it as they can get, never mind the fans.
This is pretty close to the mark. Let’s use the media campaign for more Thursday night footy as just one example of what you’re referring to:
I’m sick to death of their orchestrated attempts to make it a weekly event. 22-23 matches on Thursday night equals some clubs playing AT LEAST 3 matches in this time slot. Imagine being an 11-game home member and possibly needing to attend at least two games in this slot to get value for money. It’s simply not practical for many supporters.
Alarm bells rang for me when only 51000 showed up to Carlton v Collingwood in round 2. Hard to imagine now but there was a massive build up, it was the first game with 75% capacity and both teams were expected to contend for finals. Someone just forgot to convince the fans that they love going to the footy on a Thursday night!
The problem is that as the suburbs have shifted a long way from town, the inner city-dwelling “experts” have not. They can dissect a game like never before but have no concept of how the average supporter consumes the product. They spend more time addressing each other on their various media platforms, whether it be arguing each other’s points of view or straight out broadcasting of in-jokes and general one-upmanship.
Someone needs to burst their bubble, because a bubble is exactly what they occupy.
Yep. Thursday nights are ridiculous for those of us who go to the games.
Might be fantastic for TV but by scheduling those games the AFL flips the bird at usual game attendees.
I was listening to a radio station tonight. A lot of footy fans are getting sick and tired with the umpiring and the lack of footy sense. This was also backed up by the people on the radio. 3 umpires and they all pay the same type of free differently. There seems to be no accountability of poor decisions. I myself have heard this from a lot of other people personally. The clubs can’t say anything or else they can be fined. However I have heard a few rumblings from some clubs this year. Pity the AFL do not understand that it needs the fans, and their wishes should be heard.
I’m a Swans and GWS Sydney member and attend all games in Sydney with a few friends. This year it has started to annoy us…. The “no cash” has killed the enjoyment of attending a game. Some might carry on about people complaining about using cards only, however these people do not understand the costs single people with mortgages encounter any why me and my friends prefer to pay cash for a $10 drink or a sandwich. I like to buy the Record when I attend and have my $5 cash ready to handover and they sometimes take cash or card. If you’re 15mins late to the grounds … the sellers have finished their work before the 1st quarter has even finished and then you must attend the merchandise shop to buy The Record… no cash accepted. Here we go again… $5 and you want me to use a credit card, I have the cash in my hand. Last week at the SCG the people selling The Record outside the ground would not accept cash, it was card only. This is wrong.
This also happens at Giants Stadium, no cash accepted… I would like to help these small businesses by purchasing a drink or sandwich but I am not using a card for a small transaction.
Don’t start me on this ticketing… at the Swans we sit in our seats of many years, but we can’t use our barcode for entry. No, we must have tickets allocated each game…. for the same seats! Again, there are many of us that have older phones which can not use QR codes. It was very sad listening to the story of the elderly people who sit in the row in front of us for many years. They had to plead with the Swans to give them tickets they can use to access the game…. over 20years as members and they were in tears telling us how hard it was for them to get tickets to the game instead of them using their membership barcode on a plastic card. This ticketing process has been poorly managed.
I’m with you on this presumption that everyone both has and can use a modern smartphone.
Highly discriminatory.
The commentary around the Richmond game was fascinating. Nowhere did I hear “what is the AFL doing wrong?” All I heard was “What is wrong with Richmond supporters?” Absolutely crazy.
As a North member I was wondering if it was just because the team was struggling, I still attend all the games but my overall interest in the rest of the comp has dropped off.
I thought the empty stadiums last year would have highlighted how crucial the fans are to the game.