Three closely related issues floated
in the background this week, behind the jumper punches and the injuries and the
comparisons of flawed title contenders. Both issues speak to the general
philosophy of the Australian Football League as an organization and as an
association of clubs.
One is the decision two weeks ago to
freeze the number of clubs competing in the AFLW in 2018 at eight, the same
eight teams which battled this February and March, with the intent of expanding
by just two teams in 2019 despite the intense interest of at least six of the
current AFL franchises in fielding a women’s team as soon as allowed.
The second is the fallout from the
home-and-away game held in Shanghai in round eight between Port Adelaide and
Fold Coast – sorry, Gold Coast. Despite the game being a sell-out, the
general tenor of the conversation following the game was more apros pos to a novelty
event, rather than a landmark, first-of-its-kind game that would set the
precedent for a series of such games in the future.
Finally, while not currently drawing
large numbers, support in Hobart and Launceston for the Hawks and Kangaroo
games continue to poise the question that having a team full time in Tasmania might
be at least as economically viable as the last two franchises placed by the AFL
in Queensland and Western Sydney. Yet no desire by either current tenant or the
league as a whole to place one there has been evident.
All of these decisions show a
conservative approach of the AFL as an administrative body that should not
surprise anyone who’s followed the game for any length of time. While the
league brass is more than willing to tinker with rule changes and schedule
formats and playoff tickets and fighting regulations from moment to moment,
anything requiring investment of capital is looked upon with great trepidation.
Whether that’s good or bad depends
on your own opinion on the topic.
For the purposes of this article,
set aside the day-to-day discussions – all the questions laid out a moment ago,
about rules and schedules and playoffs and such. We don’t have room for both
topics here.
But when it comes to expanding
the game into new markets, the AFL has consistently shown itself to be on
the side of concern. If you were the holder of the purse strings, you might
very well have the same opinion: it’s easy for us to roar, “Tasmania deserves a
team!” or “The success was there this year! Let’s make the AFLW a 12-team
league next fall!” But if we’re wrong, we’re not the ones who would be
left paying the bills – the AFL is. (And then us, because they’d have to
make it back somewhere.)
These issues are all related: Tassie, China, AFLW expansion. They all
involve the assumption that professional footy has audiences out there waiting
to consume the product in numbers exceeding what’s currently doing so. But
consider where we’ve been first.
The
immediate precursor of the AFL, the original Victorian Football League, was
indeed “Victorian” from its official beginning in 1897 until about 1980, its
members clustered in and about greater Melbourne for those eight decades. In
fact, exactly the same twelve clubs participated (with wartime exceptions only)
from 1925 through 1981.
But by then, there were competitive
teams across the country in other leagues. Expansion for the VFL first meant a
tentative toe in the pool, a move from South Melbourne to Sydney before the
1982 season, and then the addition of the Bears in Brisbane and the Eagles on
the West Coast in 1987, leading to the full-out name change of the league in
1990, the self-declaration as the nation’s footy league. Additions in Adelaide
(1991) and Fremantle (1995) had root clubs in place already when they were
annexed, and then the league sat at a very manageable 16 teams for fifteen
years.
Then, it decided to force
expansion.
New teams were planted in
Western Sydney and Gold Coast by the league. These were not organically-born clubs like the last two
debutantes, or all of the original teams. The powers-that-be sensed a pair of
markets that would be economically viable to expand their product, and expand
they did.
However…
The backlash from traditionalists
has been biting. While banner banter is meant to be light-hearted and witty,
there was an ounce of bite in the Bulldogs banner when they came to play at GWS
last September: “Your club was born in blood and boots – Not in AFL focus groups” That
isn’t an unusual sentiment around the league. When I was first pressured to “claim” a team around then (being
American, I have no geographic alliances), I half-sarcastically cast my heart
with the Giants, because they didn’t seem to have any fans of their own.
Meanwhile, Australians have spoken
with their feet. The average attendance at an AFL game has been over 31,500
every year since 1997. Of the other 16 clubs, the lowest game-average
attendance over the last 20 years is for Brisbane at just under 25,000. (North
and the Bulldogs are next above them on the list, both just under 27,000.) Sydney
is 11th out of those 16, at just under 31,000. Placing second teams
near Brisbane and Sydney, given those numbers, might be questioned in hindsight.
The result? The average combined attendance at Gold Coast and GWS games since their
entry into the league seven and six years ago, respectively, just barely equals
that of Brisbane.
Gold Coast has had perhaps the most
exciting player of his generation, Gary Ablett Jr, as its headliner for all
seven seasons of its existence, although injuries the last two years have taken
the luster off that. GWS now claims the title of “Premier Favorites” for 2017,
at least before injuries started decimating their list. And yet – attendance in
those communities continues to disappoint. I won’t pretend that a losing
product the first several years doesn’t hurt; culture issues with the Suns may
have taken their toll on the east coast; code competition is stronger there
than in Melbourne; and the size of the stadiums themselves aren’t going to
threaten any MCG records.
The point is, the AFL has reason
to be conservative about expansion on any level right now.
The best leagues took these
steps slowly, and at some level with the quality of the product in mind
as much as the money to be made. The Canadian Football League tried a massive
southward expansion in 1993 when (despite financial issues for virtually every
Canadian team already) it accepted the Sacramento Gold Miners into the league,
joined the next year by four other US teams. By 1996, however, the “American
Experiment” was history, a financial mess that only produced modest interest in
the States and a whole lot of upset Canadians, as oxymoronic as that concept sounds.
The various American competitors to
the National Football League usually were in it for the fast buck they thought
they could squeeze out of a football-addicted nation. But the XFL, the WFL, the
UFL, the WAFL, and Donald Trump’s USFL all came on with money and television
contracts and the hopes of carving a niche for themselves. Instead, they ran
themselves into bankruptcy, all within five years, usually less, trying to
present themselves at unsustainable levels of competence. (Like our current
president.)
On the other hand, the WNBA has been
playing women’s pro basketball in the US with the financial support of the NBA
for twenty years now, and despite that nest egg has never rushed to expand
unreasonably. The league has ranged from its original eight teams up to twelve,
but never beyond that number – as one franchise began to struggle, another home
would usually be found for the team.
Even the mighty National Football
League, with the resources of a small nation and the American populace in the
palm of its hand, has been smart enough to barely dip its toes into
international waters, putting on once-a-year games in Mexico City (to 150,000
people) and three to four games per year in London (to sell-out crowds in
Wembley). It had experimented over the previous 25 years with the “World League
of American Football” (with teams in the US, Canada, and Europe, to two
years of some success), which brought the CFL expansion the following year to
fill the void left by its closing, and “NFL Europe”, which had some success as
a training ground for NFL players, officials, and even rule experimentation
over the course of fifteen seasons.
So, based on historical precedent,
going slowly on all fronts is the wise move. Based on the “double-G” experiment
in the AFL’s most recent expansion, being cautious is understandable. As
tempting as the Tasmanian market is, if none of the current clubs thinks it can
make an eleven-game go at it each season, tapping the brakes is smart. (And
don’t ask about more games in the NT just yet, either.)
And when ten thousand Chinese (judging
from the broadcast, most of whom weren’t Chinese) coming out in a city of far
more than ten million is considered a reason for excitement? Flying that far to
play in the smog seems like too much wandering even for the Wanderer just yet.
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