This artical was taken from the Lions website, it hilights my point that week in week out the AFL is growing very nicely here in QLD, leaving Sydney as the only clearly dominant NRL market.
"TV audience grows in north
8:00:04 PM Mon 17 January, 2005


The all-important television market continued to embrace the AAPT Brisbane Lions in 2004, with another stunning increase in ratings for games in Queensland in particular.

With some big games again in 2005 - starting with the Round 1 Easter Thursday blockbuster against St Kilda - the AFL club will be hoping to continue to become a regular fixture in more Queensland households in the coming season.

Despite a massive 25% increase in 2003 in 2002, the Lions boosted their viewership by 19% in Queensland and 11% around Australia in 2004. And that was despite the Olympic Games’ virtual monopoly on viewers over the last three weeks of the home and away season.

Apart from the Easter Thursday blockbuster against Collingwood in 2003, the Lions had never averaged 200,000 viewers for a qualifying rounds game before. They did it no less than five times this season – plus exceeded 300,000 again on Easter Thursday.

“There is no question that we are now a serious player in the Queensland sporting TV market,” said Lions CEO Michael Bowers. “We have made enormous strides over the past three seasons and our successful relationship with Channel Ten coupled with an exciting football team will hopefully continue the momentum.”

The Lions averaged 94,000 viewers per game in 2001 under the old TV deal, with an average peak of 115,000, before finals. This year the average was 175,193 with a peak of 250,000 tuning into each game. Taking finals into account, the 2004 average was 194,851 and peak 284,680.

Nationally, the Lions attracted 13.01 million viewers over the season, third only to Victorian heavyweights Collingwood (16.6 million) and Essendon (16.1 million). Both those clubs had the benefit of extensive Friday night exposure, however, with the Lions having just the one Eastern Thursday night game.

St Kilda enjoyed a whopping 60% increase in their national TV ratings, and were the fourth most watched team with 12.6 million viewers.

The Lions’ ability to continue to make serious inroads into the Queensland television market was also reflected in ratings when the team went ‘head-to-head’ with other codes.

In Round 18, the Lions played Sydney at the SCG, while rugby league’s Brisbane Broncos played Cronulla the same night across town, and the Wallabies played a rugby union Test against South Africa in Perth. All games were shown in prime time on the Saturday night.

The rugby union averaged 274,000, a much lower figure than if the Test had no rivals. The rugby league and AFL were almost identical – the Broncos averaging 156,000 to the Lions’ 155,000. The Lions had more people tune in to their game overall – 244,000 opposed to the rugby league’s 219,000.

The Lions and Broncos went prime time again on the same Friday night in September, although the Lions played in a qualifying final against St Kilda whereas the Broncos were involved in the last home and away game that had no bearing on the finals. The Lions averaged 228,000 compared to 195,000.

The other head-to-head programming occurred a fortnight later when the Lions met Geelong in the preliminary final and the Broncos played fellow Queenslanders the Cowboys in a much hyped semi final.

The rugby league averaged 380,000 compared to the AFL’s 299,000, although again the AFL had more people tune in overall with 655,000 tuning in compared to 575,000 for the rugby league."

No one disputes the attractiveness of the State of Origin, but this clearly shows that the statement "Rugby League surges further ahead in SE Qld" is not as accurate as you would like to believe. 5 years ago, these figures would have been unheard of here.

Good figures indeed for the AFL in Qld.

The true test will come when the current superstars in the team move on and the side is brought back to mediocrity. I'm thinking there will be a fairly big drop off as there won't be 30,000 people wanting to be members of a side that has a midfield led by Black and Hadley, that will be there draw card! Alot of talk up here that Brownie is keen to move back to Geelong at some stage which will cost them their marquee player that they'll need to attract the crowds and TV ratings that they get now.

A couple of points.

1) the AFL game that went head to head with the Broncos & Cowboys game ony got a higher rating a half hour after the RL game finished. During the game the RL audience was in front by a good 200,000 viewers.

2) All Broncos games are shown on delay (except finals & not in prime time) while the Lions games are shown live, generally in prime time. One of the good things to come out of the axing of Burke's Backyard on Friday is that NRL games could be shown live.

3)NRL matches not involving the Broncos donkeylick AFL games not involving the Lions. In fact, Queensland Cup games shown on the ABC on Saturday regularly outrate AFL games shown at the same time-sometimes by a margin of 2 to 1.

So the assertion of the theme is generally correct but I acknowledge that the AFL TV audience when the Lions play has improved dramatically. I wonder what this audience will be like in 10 years when the current crop of stars has well & truely gone. I would think on these figures union has to be worried.

In last Monday's Financial Review (21 Feb) there was an article on TV rights. The gave figures that showed Channels 9 & 10 lost $39m televising AFL last year. Although the article had an AFL bias the (author was Neil Shoebridge) it is apparent that there will be less revenue for the AFL when the rights are re-negotiated late next year. IfPacker can not get the AFL finals I predict he will pull the plug on the AFL.

Hello Russ,

I corrected your figures in the "Channel 9 is not good for football" forum, I suppose I will do it here as well. Your issue of the TV stations loosing $39 million last year is simply not true. The following figures also come from the AFR.

News Ltd holds the TV and internet rights to the AFL. It pays the AFL $100 million a year and on-sells the rights to the following groups:
* Ten Network, $23 million per year for Saturdays coverage & the finals
* Nine Network, $23 million per year for Friday and Sunday coverage
* Foxtel , $34 million for the pay TV rights, gives them the rights to have the 24 hour "fox footy" channel and 3 live games per week
* Telstra $20 million for the internet rights

Taking this into account the FTA networks only paid a combined total of $46 million not $100million by themselves. Also the article mentions that Channel 10 had a return of $31 million and channel 9 had a return of less with $21 million as it does not get the finals and does not broadcast live on Fridays etc in the northern states. Read the article yourselves, it is in the forum as mentioned.

Don't just throw figures around, quantify what you are saying. I do not believe for a second your statement on QLD cup games beat the AFL coverage by 2 - 1, where is your evidence ?Channel 10 have stated they will show all Saturday night games live this year due to the improvement in ratings, regardless of the Lions involvement, so this further contradicts your statement. By the way is "donkeylick" a real word? Anyway moving on,

You imply the article says that Packer will pull the plug if he does not get the finals, wrong again, this is not mentioned anywhere in the article and it is not an issue of 9 pulling the plug, as mentioned in the other forum, its a case of the AFL taking some coverage off 9 due to poor coverage in the northern states and regional areas.

Unlike the NRL the AFL is not 50% owned by Packer (or is it Murdock, I get them confused sometimes...lol) so there is a chance they may actually do this as 7 has last bidding rights and is desperate to get some coverage back.

Lions fans should not be worried about the stars leaving, they should be worried about Leigh Mathews and the board moving on, it is these guys that did the incredible job of building the club and while they are there I can not see the Lions ever missing the finals.

The AFL will not be forced into taking a pay cut as mentioned, I hope though they do accept less money for better coverage.

I hope I have helped clear up some confusion here.

What a great little debate this is!

Sure they will still have a decent team and won't need to be worried about being cellar dwellars but what brings the biggest crowds and TV audiences in for sport are the household names that play for the teams. It is especially shown in Brisbane, the Broncos crowds and interest took a hit when the household names left (even though they kept winning) and now crowds are increasing again with the town becoming more familiar with their players. The Bullets' crowds and interest are also bigger when they familiar names (if that is possible for basketball in Australia). The Reds, well they'll always have at least a 15,000 private school clan that gets legless at Ballymore whenever the rugby is on.

I reckon that it is inevitable that the Lions crowds and TV ratings will take a dive as the household names gradually leave the club even though they may not miss out on the Top 8.

The games last year in the QC outrated the AFL Saturday game two to one was when Toowoomba played NQ in Toowoomba. I can not remember what the AFL game was.

There is thread on another site about the QC viewing figures. I'll get it for you.

Btw Saturday afternoon 's TV audieces are fairly tiny. The Toowoomba game got an average of just under 100,000 from memory.

The AFL team in Brisbane is still mostly a team of imports from down south. My hunch is that when Bruisbane lose their recruitment advantages & certain subsidies from the AFL they will not have enough quality local talent to replace them.

Have you ever watched a local AFL game?

I have more faith. with all the Vics moving north for a seachange you may get some talented AR people. Also, the success of the current mob may encourage others to take up the game.

That’s where a few mitigating factors come in to play. I admit Brisbane will loose its salary cap advantages but this will be helped also by several factors:

The issue of Aussie Rules only being played in OZ is in many ways a blessing, you are always seeing the best players in the world at this game. This factor helps increase the talent pool. Unfortunately this harms many of the other codes, especially Football (ok soccer) where I believe over 250 Australians are playing in Europe alone, so you will never get to see the best here. This to a lesser degree also harms NRL with Union and English RL poaching players

Couple the talent pool with the Salary cap and the draft (which is not perfect) does a good job of spreading the talent around. This is one of the reasons I do not believe Jonathan Brown will go back, Geelong could not fit him in unless they offloaded several stars.

What I am getting at is you need the management and coaching staff to be able to pick the talent and manage them and this is where the current Brisbane management and coaching is equal to, if not better to any club in the league.

Also QLD is now producing some very good players, namely Michael Voss and Stkilda's Nick Rewolt as two examples, so it is slowly starting to happen here.

So at the end of the day, Brisbane will always have one or two future superstars coming through the ranks

Ozabyss, the lack of competing international leagues does not improve the local talent pool - it prevents it from being dilluted, which are entirely different things.

On the topic of the talent pool - what is the situation with grass roots development in QLD, apart from AFL injected funds? I understand that Southport have extremely strong off field revenue sources, but do they use these funds for junior development, or just to build up the warchest for their constantly rejected AFL push?

Also, are there any other local SEQ clubs with a strong administration/revenue stream, or is Southport on its own? I seem to recall a forumer here say that Mt Gravatt (or some other club, can't remember) actually has its social club facilities owned by the Queensland Meow soccer club?

Fair point on the talent, but I do think it helps.Also yes there are some strong local clubs and leagues here. Gold Coast and Cairns are both very healthy from my understanding I know the AFL and QLD had a "summit" (hey they love a good summit the AFL) about where to spend the money up here. I will see if I can find the info and will post when I can.

So is it more then just expat Vics going to the Footy now?

Like I have repeated, it will take another 75 -100 years but the way AFL is spending millions in Queensland and New South Wales, it will eventually become well established...and soccer, rugby league, union and all other codes have to begin to match the expense in this city.

And that is why AFL is worried in Perth all of a sudden Nick Tana is planning to spend more on the Glory with the team floating next year and the club looking to stay at the top.

And the ARU, WRU spending millions to get a foothold in Perth, the AFL are realising that Perth will need to have more money spent on it...had people leaving Footy to play soccer...leaving soccer to play Rugby at my school.

And AFL funding for the WAFL needs to get up otherwise, the Perth Gold will be more aspiring then getting to play for Subiaco or Sth Fremantle.

And that is why the AFL is worried, years of neglect is going to bite them, because Rugby and Soccer are getting a hold on the Perth market, while AFL is strong...the levels underneath it are an absolute joke.

So the AFL is threatening into non-traditional hinterlands, but it is also being threatened in its traditional heartland, and better put its act together or the playing base may be diluted in 75-100 years as they are all playing Rugby and Soccer.

It is more than expat Vics at the GABBA but I'd say they would make up a sizeable proportion.

AFL is already well established in Sydney and Brisbane. The average person knows about them. The mission is to get people to the ground in good times and bad (that's when you've "made it").

Here is a quote from a thread on the LU site from July 2004





Enemies of the AFL:



From the same thread I also found this about RU's TV rating for their big games:



......................




On these figures you would think union is over optimistic about the popularity of their code down south & out west. No womder the lesser ranked RU games such as the Super 12s have been taken off the FTA TV.

Hey Chicken Run is a damn good film....Go Rocky Rooster... That will not concern the AFL, there could have been any factors involved. was it the sold-out game in Brisbane or the sold-out game in Melbourne between the two clubs we are talking about ? Although concerning for RU the consistant low ratings....