7 hours ago, Brownie said:

NRL has just announced it's KPIs for 2024.

NRL 2024 season by numbers

    Attendances – total: $4.79m - up 3.8%

    TV viewership – total: $200.5m - up 8.6%

    Participation – total: $1.03m - up 20.6%

    Asset value – total: $322.4m - up 24%

Pretty impressive numbers and claiming to be the number one sport in the country now.

I don't find that many of my friends who watch sports but are not following an AFL club bother to watch any AFL matches these days.

Can't say I really enjoy "being activated" at AFL footy matches much any more either.

I wonder if the AFL may head into a bit of a ARU slide over the next decade?

 

You’re posting on a fan forum dedicated to the AFL…

Must be doing something right.

Regardless of your personal anecdotes of your friend group minus those who don’t like sport and minus those that are already invested in the code - it’s hard to argue the sport isn’t doing well.

There are those that long for the glory days of the unsustainably brutal and increasingly foggy past - but they are the lenses of rose colour.

Rugby league is as boring as [censored]

7 minutes ago, The Jackson FIX said:

Shorter quarters is the way of the future.

I watched the indigenous/freo game the other night and got bored. The quarters go for too long in a world where shorter form content is growing exponentially in popularity. 

prefer the bite-sized chunks, eh?

4 hours ago, The Jackson FIX said:

Shorter quarters is the way of the future.

I watched the indigenous/freo game the other night and got bored. The quarters go for too long in a world where shorter form content is growing exponentially in popularity. 

A game with nothing hanging on the result is always boring...it has nothing to do with the length.

It's why I didn't bother watching.

10 hours ago, BDA said:

Rugby league is as boring as [censored]

D tier sport, as the kids would say. 

For us who have grown up going to AFL matches, we can visualise what is happening out of camera.  We understand the overly complicated set of rules and it just makes sense to us. I now live in Qld and my partner describes watching AFL on tele like ants madly running around but with less structure 🤣. She says it is chaotic and the umpire seemingly randomly stopping play for no apparent reason every two seconds. Our game doesn’t translate well on TV to the unitiated 

NRL is much easier to understand. A rectangular field with the two sides running at each other. Simples. 

 

I’d rather sit through watching 5 days of test cricket twiddling my thumbs, whilst wearing a Collingwood jumper and Carlton cap than watch rugby league. 🤣😂

Edited February 21Feb 21 by VNightCityLegend

27 minutes ago, Robbie02 said:

For us who have grown up going to AFL matches, we can visualise what is happening out of camera.  We understand the overly complicated set of rules and it just makes sense to us. I now live in Qld and my partner describes watching AFL on tele like ants madly running around but with less structure 🤣. She says it is chaotic and the umpire seemingly randomly stopping play for no apparent reason every two seconds. Our game doesn’t translate well on TV to the unitiated 

NRL is much easier to understand. A rectangular field with the two sides running at each other. Simples. 

 

Agree

Would be helped if you could choose different camera angles. Understand why they concentrate on the ball carrier but it doesn't show you the whole game by any means

When it was decided to introduce GWS and GC, 62% of the advertising revenue came from NSW and Southern Queensland.

NRL viewership dwarfed AFL in the top 20 watched games (excluding one offs like the Olympics) most years. They accounted for something like 18 out of the 20 most watched sporting events.

Hence the decision was made to expand the AFL. It was all about money, ad revenue and broadcasting rights. And increasing the number of games on TV.

NRL has a low attendance numbers but huge TV audience. And of course gambling.

That's the key to it all.

You have to go through five uneventful tackles before something interesting might happen.  Then you have to get through another five tackles again and again.  It does my head in.

I don't read replies or reactions 

16 hours ago, rpfc said:

You’re posting on a fan forum dedicated to the AFL…

Must be doing something right.

Regardless of your personal anecdotes of your friend group minus those who don’t like sport and minus those that are already invested in the code - it’s hard to argue the sport isn’t doing well.

There are those that long for the glory days of the unsustainably brutal and increasingly foggy past - but they are the lenses of rose colour.

Thugby a JOY to meatheads IMV

2 hours ago, picket fence said:

Thugby a JOY to meatheads IMV

It's actually a very good game to watch. I used to be a rugby union fan until it was ruined by overly technical umpiring, long penalty kickers and All Black dominance.

I'll watch Melbourne Storm games without taking much interest in other games or the sport in general.

11 hours ago, Robbie02 said:

For us who have grown up going to AFL matches, we can visualise what is happening out of camera.  We understand the overly complicated set of rules and it just makes sense to us. I now live in Qld and my partner describes watching AFL on tele like ants madly running around but with less structure 🤣. She says it is chaotic and the umpire seemingly randomly stopping play for no apparent reason every two seconds. Our game doesn’t translate well on TV to the unitiated 

NRL is much easier to understand. A rectangular field with the two sides running at each other. Simples. 

 

A simple game for simple blokes as Roy and HG would say

There's no (or extremely minimal) skill or strategy in rugby, it's the most boring game on the planet.

There's an amusing story in The Age CBD column today about "NFL legend" Rob Gronkowski. He's apparently been brought out here by V'Landys to promote the NRL games in Las Vegas. He was in Melbourne over the weekend and went to the races where he was raving about...AFL. Hardly the script Peter V'Landys would have been looking for.

It's the second story in the column which can be found here (although could be behind a paywall).

 

Went to my first NRL games last season after living with Union as the expat sport of choice for 10 years. Yeah, it's a different experience to footy. The game itself is attritional, and I can well understand that many footy lovers find it boring - I always did until last season. 

Not sure what changed, but my guess is that I learned to appreciate the physicality, something to do with being entirely certain that I could never play it myself, and something to do with the AFL doing everything it can to take physicality out of footy, to the game's detriment imho. I also learned to appreciate the atmosphere, which is kind of like going to a factory family picnic and over there on the field the boyz are at rugger...

The crowds are pathetic. At a Storm game last season the commentators were ecstatic at the crowd that almost (almost but not quite) filled a 30,050 seat stadium (think the crowd was 28000). It was a final. Most games are fortunate to get 12,000, I believe...

I have a theory that this can be explained by the game requiring a body type that only a small percentage of blokes possess - that being very sturdy of limb and light of mind (dig) - whereas footy requires a much broader range of the population. This limits rugby's appeal as only a small percentage of kids could ever hope to make it. This conversely explains the dominance of NSW and QLD players in the Aus cricket team, as athletic blokes in VIC, WA, SA, TAS and those parts of NSW fortunate to live on the right side of the Barassi Line who might otherwise maximize their cricketing ability, instead maximize their footy ability with a fair chance of making it to the big leagues. This then has a knock-on effect in terms of coaches and infrastructure that only multiplies the phenomenon. 

No evidence. Just an idea...

In any case, I'll be supporting Storm again this season by turning up to games. There's some interesting personalities in the team and there's a special kind of joy at having a team from Melbourne, of all places, that regularly pantses those Sydney knobs at their own game.

Edited February 24Feb 24 by Grr-owl