Put them up against each other now and it would probably be a close game.

Maybe Freo should trade away Andrew Mcleod for a crack at drafting one of them.

A movie should be made about Freo's drafting stuff ups...

Wow I never knew about that little piece of history. So Yobs joke went zoom straight over my head. Freo could yet still do something stupid with Sandilands or Pavlich...... or one of the younger stars they have like Palmer. I personally wouldn't put it past them, but perhaps they grown just a little wiser over the years. Certainly Gold Coast FC coming in will bring a touch of interesting to the trading discussions table, which for me has been pretty boring the last few years with really there being only one story each year. Like who will draft Cousins. Which Club will get Judd, then what will Carltank give up for Judd. But otherwise trades seem to be very much lower key.

Very droll yob.

http://goldcoastfc.com.au/the-club/gcfc ... ic-impact/

Found this on the GCFC website. IMO that would be a minimum-reasonable target to aim for (currently I think the Titans are on about 15-18k). 221,175 spread over 11 games would be an average of 20106 per game. Lets say they have 3-4 'blockbusters' per year (Brisbane, Collingwood, Carlton, Essendon) drawing capacity 25k, then arguably they would need 4 low drawing crowds of around 15k to even out the figure of 20k. Would this be enough to sustain a team long term? I know the stadium deal has a lot to do with sustainability, but unlike Geelong who could survive on these crowds the GCFC wont own their stadium...



*EDIT



Does anyone have figures or know where to find them for state by state (or city by city) for NRL or AFL?

The ABS put out stats on sports participation rates annually. They are for people over 15.

Is that one of those ABS surveys where if you've seen wayne swann on the news for at least 1 hour in the last 180 days you're an economist?

No, you're thinking of the surveys the AFL does that proves that NSW has half as many Aussie Rules players as Victoria.

I think the ABS actually breaks it down into /casual/registered/administrator.

Oh, the 'are you the brother of somebody who watched auskick' survey.

The ABS are much stricter than that. To register as a participant you actually have to play the game but not necessarily in a formal team.

you should re-phrase your response to include a dig at the AFL

I give him a break on Thursday.

Geelong don't own their stadium, it's owned by the local council, who give them reportedly a very good deal to play there.

From what I can gather, GCFC will be paying an annual rental bill to the QSL. From my own observation, what will possibly make this new stadium highly lucrative is the corporate boxes. The stadium itself really looks pretty ordinary, but the number and location of the corporate boxes looks brilliant. If they can fill the bulk of them every game then they'll make a shitload. Part of the reason some of the basketcase Melbourne clubs bitch about bad stadium returns is that they have such poor corporate support. an article a couple of years ago suggested the Roos were the lowest with $2 million gross, compared to the highest - West Coast with $13 million. The Bulldogs and Melbourne probably don't do much better than North.

It'll also depend on what they can sell their seats for - big reserved seat premiums, especially for the best seats, are critical. An extra $20 on 10,000 seats every game is worth over $2 million a year. No surprise clubs can't make any money when the bulk of their seats are sold as general admission.

Looking at the ABS statistics it's interesting that the only states where soccer is the predominant participation for over 15s are NSW and QLD . The individual contact sports in those two states do relatively poorly .

.