Sunday night football might work well in America, and it may have had some limited success in the National Rugby League, but it’s been, unequivocally, a disaster for the AFL. Last night’s experiment, with Collingwood and Carlton at the MCG – traditional rivals with a history of drawing big crowds for their confrontations – drew a paltry crowd of 40, 936 to the Home of Football, the lowest crowd for the rivalry since 1921.
Melbourne’s poor weather should be no defence, because we’ve seen bigger crowds turn up for lesser contests in conditions far more deplorable than last night. Yes, it was cold, but it didn’t rain throughout, and the quality of the game wasn’t weather-affected. Simply put, AFL fans just don’t like venturing out on a Sunday night, regardless of whether the game is scheduled for 7.10pm or 7.40pm.
Despite a bug match-up and the fixture leading into school holidays in Victoria, there was no market traction. The AFL expected at least ten thousand more fans than they got, and McGuire was furious, promising whoever would listen that, at 9.00am on Monday morning, he would be on the phone to AFL headquarters, demanding compensation to the tune of a six-figure sum to cover the losses that the Collingwood Football Club would’ve taken as a result of last night’s poor turn-out, which he says is the equivalent of the equalisation money gurgled down the drain.
Now, I don’t quite agree with Collingwood calling for compensation, not with their financial security well assured through massive corporate sponsorship and a giant base of members. Let’s face it: they get well looked after by the AFL, with big games on public holidays and plenty of other nice timeslots. This was just…well, Eddie being Eddie. But the root of the message was a good one: fans don’t like it; look after the fans.
Most disturbing is that a large number of people who had pre-purchased or reserved seats, an estimated thirteen thousand people, simply didn’t bother to turn up. Whilst a smaller crowd probably suits Channel Seven, in terms of ratings, it’s not a good look for a contest that was featured, amongst other places, on cable television in America. A sparsely-populated MCG will not encourage international views to tune in again.
Twilight footy in Melbourne has been tested, and has produced reasonable crowd numbers, proving that most fans don’t mind a game that starts mid-to-late afternoon, but want to be on their way home by seven or eight o’clock. That’s understandable, particularly if they have a long journey to make, and particularly in the teeth of what’s often a bitter Melbourne winter.
As I alluded to above, the opposite is true of Channel Seven, who covet primetime slots – look at their Friday night ratings to see why – and don’t care that no one turns up. In fact, you might say that the programmers at Seven prefer a smaller crowd, because that’s likely to bump up television numbers. Eyeballs equal valuable advertising revenue.
Furthermore, McGuire is right when he says that fans shouldn’t view going to the footy as some sort of test of their endurance. It should be made easier given the economic climate we currently live in – and, you know, that’s probably the smartest and most sensible thing to come out of Eddie’s mouth in some time.
Obviously, the AFL is looking for additional broadcast windows ahead of opening negotiations for the next broadcast deal, and they can continue to do so, but these should absolutely not come at the expense of the lifeblood of footy: fans rocking up to games at venues across Australia.
I don’t care if Channel Seven drew astronomical numbers last night. I don’t care if a third of the television sets in the country a third of Australia were tuned into the game, because there weren’t enough fans at the ground and, in my opinion, that hurts footy more than low television ratings.
Whilst I don’t follow either team (and tend to carry around a fair dislike of Collingwood) there should be no disputing the major draw-card that Collingwood vs. Carlton is, and should always be. If even that traditional rivalry fixture cannot put a good crowd into the MCG, then Sunday night football needs to die a quick death, like Monday night, and the AFL has given every indication that it will.
If the League is looking for another primetime window that also seems to resonate with those fans that trek out to the game, they’d be best off working to further enhance the profile of Thursday night football. Recently, we’ve seen good crowds in Adelaide and Sydney. It seems that the average punter is happier to head out to a game on the last working night of the week knowing that tomorrow is Friday, and they’re on the downhill run to the weekend.
Thursday night works – Sunday night obviously doesn’t. The idea of a Sunday night game should fall by the wayside at the end of this season, never to be resurrected.
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