A watching brief: has the footy become a home game?Greg Baum
The Age
May 26, 2022Here’s a conundrum. In the AFL, there is wailing and gnashing of teeth because crowds this season average 31,000 people. In the NRL, there is quiet contentment because crowds are averaging about 15,000.
How so? It’s because the AFL figure represents a 25-year non-COVID low, with the NRL number stabilisation at pre-COVID levels.
The AFL has always prided itself on its mass spectator appeal. The NRL is, if not officially, designed around Friday nights at the pub and Sunday afternoons around the barbecue. On television, NRL matches often out-rate the AFL. It’s a Sydney-Melbourne thing: we do the same things differently.
But for how much longer? A dozen explanations have been advanced for the dwindling at AFL grounds. Some are scientific, some anecdotal, some irrational. We’re talking about footy fans after all.
Pretty obviously, as COVID case numbers remain high, some fans are wary of crowds. Some are wary of public transport. Optus Stadium in Perth was operating at reduced capacity for the first seven rounds. Geelong’s GMHBA Stadium is undergoing a(nother) rebuild, limiting its capacity.
The Eagles are having an atrocious season. Neither Collingwood nor Essendon are on a finals trajectory. Carlton are, but are not yet drawing the fair weather friends and bandwagoners. These factors all feed, to some extent, into falling gates.
More broadly, almost no aspect of daily life is back to its pre-COVID self. Walk around the city for a bit. Why should footy be an exception?
Variously, fans blame the standard of play, the standard of umpiring, constant rule changes, the infernal PA racket at grounds, and the expense for their truancy. These do not really compute. Playing and umpiring standards and rule tinkering were issues long before COVID, but did not drive fans away. They are hardy annuals.
Besides, carping about the spectacle makes grumpy old men of us all. Look around: suddenly there are tall, marking forwards everywhere. How can that be a regression?
Cost long pre-dates COVID, too. So does poo food. Footy can be expensive, but the AFL has sought to freeze prices, and besides, in terms of budget, footy compares favourably with other entertainment. The risk of industrial deafness, sad to say, was a problem well before COVID.
Complaints about ticketing, fluid fixturing, starting times and Thursday night games are real, but peripheral. Taken together, they do not explain the drastic thinning at the gate.
What definitively has changed since COVID is the change wrought by COVID. For months, we could watch the footy only from home. It’s a footy ritual to kvetch about commentators, but the presentation is eye-catching and nearly everyone has a big screen now. And they have Kayo.
If people, generally, are abandoning free-to-air and pay television in favour of streaming services, is it so puzzling that footy fans are also preferring their sport at their leisure?
Who among us has not at least once begun the day with every intention of going to the footy, then when the time came heard the rain and felt the icy blast under the door jamb and remembered the bottle of wine and seen the lounge chair and plonked down into it? Friday night drinks, Sundays around the barbecue.
COVID has broken some habits, formed others. It’s the same at other levels of footy and in other walks of life. It’s a shame, really, because no matter how hard the broadcasters try, footy on the flat screen literally lacks a dimension. But it’s where the course of history has taken us.
For the AFL, it’s a ticklish issue. They nod at membership numbers rising towards record levels, but that must be taken with a grain of rock salt. Membership is a liberally interpreted status in AFL. One day, it will emerge that at least one 2022 member’s ticket was held by a dog.
The new footy watching paradigm is not as the AFL would have designed it, but in a way they cannot lose. Over the last two seasons, broadcast ratings rose by roughly the same number crowds fell. Simply, those who would have gone were watching from home, and there some have stayed. Virtual is reality.
This coincides with the AFL’s well-publicised overtures to potential new global broadcasters, tapping vast new money. Viewed this way, as long as enough fans go to create the spectacle and aura of a crowd (and last weekend, that was a big if), no more are needed. Friday night frothies and free-to-air, Sunday sausages and streaming.
The NRL was ahead of the game all along.
https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/a-watching-brief-has-the-footy-become-a-home-game-20220525-p5aogi.html
