More evidence that the AFL is full of s*#@

[Mr Beefy]

So if this merger doesn't happen, the Bullants will fold?

I read it that way too. Typically none of the other posters on this site wanted to touch your question. Too busy screeching against the AFL and Rucci.

Of course Collingwood and Gellong's focus is on the League side being at the pointy end of the ladder. Just as Norwood or Centrals wouldn't care too much about their Reserves sides being bottom if their League teams were top.

Move to the VFA as Fitzroy have done perhaps?

But Preston are already playing in the VFA(L)....

After they were stripped bare from their "merger" with the Brisbane Bears, Fitzroy FC took over/merged with a VAFA side called the Fitzroy Reds

[Reddeer]

Lets face the fact that Aussie Rules football is at its peak now. It will be economically impossible for a country the size of Australia to maintain the current level of payments to players and TV rights in the future with the global financial prospects to come. Unless say China starts playing Aussie Rules the game is headed for a slow slow decline. Most for us dedicated followers will not live to see it I guess but in 50 years time it will be soccer rules. So it wont really matter if clubs come and go.

[heater31]

[quote="pafc1870"]So if this merger doesn't happen, the Bullants will fold?

I read it that way too. Typically none of the other posters on this site wanted to touch your question. Too busy screeching against the AFL and Rucci.

Of course Collingwood and Gellong's focus is on the League side being at the pointy end of the ladder. Just as Norwood or Centrals wouldn't care too much about their Reserves sides being bottom if their League teams were top.

Move to the VFA as Fitzroy have done perhaps?

But Preston are already playing in the VFA(L)....

After they were stripped bare from their "merger" with the Brisbane Bears, Fitzroy FC took over/merged with a VAFA side called the Fitzroy Reds[/quote]

I know, firstly they sponsored the University Reds then became Fitzroy Reds now just back to Fitzroy, playing out of their first home ground in Brunswick St.

[SimonH]

Lets face the fact that Aussie Rules football is at its peak now. It will be economically impossible for a country the size of Australia to maintain the current level of payments to players and TV rights in the future with the global financial prospects to come. Unless say China starts playing Aussie Rules the game is headed for a slow slow decline. Most for us dedicated followers will not live to see it I guess but in 50 years time it will be soccer rules. So it wont really matter if clubs come and go.

I think that this line of thinking was very popular about 10 years ago. But increasingly there's a recognition that a global economy doesn't require that everyone follow the same sport, any more than it requires that everyone speak the same language. Most economies around the world have been pretty profoundly (and increasingly) globalised since at least 1990: how then, to explain the massive explosion in AFL revenues over the last 20 years, or the fact that the USA's native code of football, with no meaningful following outside the US, easily remains the best-attended domestic sports league in the world?

Organisers and fans of the A League are increasingly coming to realise that soccer didn't just have a subservient position in Australia for decades because it was balkanised and ghettoised; mostly, it's because it was and is simply a far less popular spectator sport at the club level than Aussie rules (and rugby league, to a lesser extent), and catching up will not just happen automatically after 20 years of A League. If you're just talking about the GFC or some other impending global crash to come: all businesses are affected by that sort of thing. A downturn doesn't change the proportion of the sporting dollar that each sport attracts; it probably acts to help maintain the status quo, because when money is tight people will stick with what they know and not be inclined to experiment with new forms of entertainment.

Ultimately, following a club in a sporting competition is a tribal thing, and not a particularly rational thing—as a fan, you never get a cent back of what you spend going to games etc, and 50% or so of the time you're disappointed by the result of what you see. And yet, people keep doing it in their hordes. So fans' patterns of support for a sporting team is not something where you can easily predict and change behaviours like you can by, e.g. increasing the cost of bananas.

[CUTTERMAN]

In order to guage whether or not the AFL is in decline or not you have to look seperately at the different areas of the competition.

-Money earnt by the players.
With another bumper TV deal the players are demanding more money which I would think they would've got easily if the AFL wasn't expanding into NSW & QLD, I think this is taking up alot of AFL resources, after the expansion has settled the players may be able to demand more coin but I can't see how they can earn much more than they are and I'm not sure that their earnings are such a good guage of where the comp is at.

-Money generated from media/tv deals.
Unless there is another pay TV provider in the Australian market I can't see how the AFL can squeeze too much more out of the TV rights. To see most games next year you will need to have Foxtel, the free to air providers have pretty well been priced out of the market so I'm not sure how the extra money in future rights can validated. If it wasn't for two extra clubs and more games each week I think the AFL would've hit their limit in the last deal. The question is whether people can afford to have Foxtel, which will ultimately test how much the TV deal is worth.

-Attendences to the games.
The AFL have been able to maintain crowd numbers (with a slight drop this year) by manipulating the fixture, ie more blockbuster games, this would lead you to believe that crowd numbers would be down alot more if there had been no further manipulation of the fixture, The AFL hide behind these figures.

-Club memberships.
Some clubs' memberships are up some are down, whether they are up in general terms is hard to work out as most clubs are now selling off 3,5,7 etc game packages. Again this will be tested with the average Australian being squeezed for more money and the cost of living on the rise.

AFL supporters have been tested with constant rule changes, ground rationalization, increased costs, manipulated fixtures, clubs throwing games for draft picks, GWS & GC allowed to breach draft rules, out of club player payments, negated ability to watch their team on TV, etc. With the advent of Free Agency supporters' loyalties will again be tested when the fabric of Aussie Rules will again be torn when clubs & players decide to trade part way through the year.
Is the AFL on a decline? With all the smoke and mirrors hiding the real figures you have to say that it isn't, but can it be sustained? I think Demitriou has played just about every card trick he has up his sleeve.