AFL clubs set their sights on a multibillion dollar marketMichael Bleby
Australian Financial Review
Jul 29, 2022 Molina Asthana remembers her first-ever Aussie rules game. It was 2003 and she was visiting her then-boyfriend in Melbourne.
“You can’t escape AFL when you come to Australia, particularly Victoria,” says Asthana, a commercial lawyer.
Football is a family affair for Richmond Tigers-supporting Molina Asthana, and everyone in her household has a different team. Elke Meitzel
“North Melbourne was his team – they were losing, so I think he did the walkout. I understood the passion people in Australia have for footy.”
After marrying and moving to Australia in 2004, Asthana found Monday morning football conversations an “initiation” into the workplace. Subsequently, when she was doing community work on family violence, diversity and inclusion, the AFL asked her to become an ambassador for the game.
Offered her choice of clubs to represent, she went for Richmond. The Tigers theme may draw some people of Indian descent, but Asthana, national president of the Asian Australian Lawyers Association, says she was attracted to the club’s existing community engagement efforts.
Now it’s a family thing, even if they back different teams. Asthana and her Kangaroos-supporting husband Ajay have a teenage daughter Diya, who went through Carlton’s Adam Saad Academy development program and now plays for the Kew Comets junior football club in the eastern suburbs.
“Everyone has their own; what they like,” she says. “It’s still a family thing, though.”
Untapped potential
Commercial sports such as AFL have long considered migrant communities as a source of potential fans and talent. Census 2021 figures show they’d be mad not to. More than a quarter of the population was born overseas and India, with 673,352 people, has now overtaken China and New Zealand to become the third-largest country of birth after Australia and England.
In Victoria, the trend is even stronger than any other state or territory. India-born Victorians make up 4 per cent of the state’s population, the second-biggest cohort after Australia-born Victorians.
Richmond steps out on to the MCG on Sunday in a game against Brisbane Lions that the Melbourne team is branding its “many cultures” game. On the same day it will launch a plan to deepen its engagement among Melbourne’s diverse and growing ethnic communities.
“The face of the Australian population has changed significantly and will continue to do so,” Richmond chief executive Brendon Gale says.
“We are a better club for the diversity we have inside our four walls – we need to ensure that is reflected externally.”
It makes sense economically and socially, Asthana says.
“You have more bums on seat at stadiums, you sell more merchandise,” she says.
“It also makes sense from the more social issues piece – they want to connect to the communities. Multicultural communities represent a huge part of the population. We need to include them.”
The proposition is attractive. But it’s a long-term project and various clubs have made efforts, with varying levels of success, to tap the diaspora over years.
Asthana is now an adviser on AFL Victoria’s South East Commission, overseeing community development of the game and is also a member of Sport Australia’s Sport Volunteer Coalition, working to increase participation in sport. She says building up community support among new migrant communities is a long game.
You have more bums on seat at stadiums, you sell more merchandise. It also makes sense from the more social issues piece.
— Richmond ambassador Molina Asthana on diversity
“It has to be family oriented,” she says. “For Indians, it’s not about an individual. It’s the whole family that gets involved. This is not a game they grew up with. Many of them grew up with cricket or soccer, so it’s an easy sell. AFL is not.”
Avi Singh knows that experience. As a child, he wasn’t allowed to play football because his parents felt it was too rough.
Last week Singh, now a multicultural development officer with Melbourne Football Club, held the first session at Casey Fields – a community sporting complex 50 kilometres south-east of the Melbourne CBD – of the South East Multicultural Auskick Centre, a six-week introductory program for children who’ve never held a Sherrin and their parents.
The course teaches how to kick, mark and handball and aims to be fun. There were 51 children with Chinese, Indian and Afghan backgrounds last week. Parents came and watched the session that lasted an hour.
“We’re doing something to make sure kids like myself – with parents born overseas – have that pathway as well,” Singh says. “We want to make sure the parents stay involved in this as much as possible. Without the parents, we can’t get the kids.”
International dreamsDreams of taking the sport international have prompted AFL clubs to hold exhibition matches in China, but not yet in India. The opportunity is great, however.
India came third in the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games medal tally. But with a delegation of 205 athletes to the Birmingham Games that opened on Thursday, compared with 325 at Gold Coast, the country is unlikely to perform as strongly.
The combined market for sports media rights, apparel, supplements and equipment in the world’s largest democracy could rise nearly fourfold to $US100 billion ($142 billion) by 2027 from $US27 billion in 2020, according to a recent report.
Clubs, including Richmond, are thinking about it, having already toured the country and inspected potential stadiums for a game. But the pandemic, along with security and cost considerations, have put any plans on ice.
“As we come out of this, we’d start to explore the opportunity again,” Richmond chief marketing officer Simon Matthews says.
Asthana says any offshore strategy will need the strategic backing of the AFL itself, but that a strong foothold among Australia’s own Indian population will also be crucial to any success in the subcontinent.
“There are definitely benefits that accrue from working with the diaspora, locally and internationally,” she says. “If they want to take the game internationally, the growing diaspora is the best way to do it.”
https://www.afr.com/companies/sport/afl-clubs-see-growth-in-indian-community-20220727-p5b568
