Rumours of A-League’s demise jumping the gun

Before we all mourn the death of the A-League as it disappears down a basketball-sized hole, a little perspective is in order.

The sellout crowd at Qudos Bank Arena for the King-Hawks game. Picture: Getty Images

Before we all mourn the death of the A-League as it apparently disappears down a basketball-sized hole, a little perspective is in order about the so-called Australian sporting landscape.

There’s no doubt the NBL’s Kings-Hawks game on Sunday was a fine event, and any sporting contest that can offer an almost packed-out venue in the competitive Sydney sporting market can be rightly pleased.

But it’s possible to be a little too pleased, and suggestions in some quarters that such a figure for a one-off game is a game-changer, particularly in relation to the A-League, seem more than a little excitable.

That crowd of 17,514 to watch the Sydney Kings and the Illawarra Hawks on Sunday brings the season NBL average to a fraction over 7000 a game. In the context of the recent history of the sport, that’s a solid figure, and shows what clever marketing and media exposure can achieve.

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But it’s also an average crowd figure 3500 below the A-League’s equivalent for the first six rounds of this season. No one is denying that Australia’s main football competition has major issues of engagement to address, but that’s still roughly 50 per cent more attendees.

Year on year, in fact, the A-League can point to a modest increase, up some 6 per cent on last year’s overall average, though it’s down about 3.5 per cent on the first six rounds of last season.

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And cynics might also note that the A-League has had three crowds this season above that 17,514 NBL figure, and none of them come anywhere near the A-League’s top 20 crowds.

It’s a similar story in terms of TV ratings. The A-League’s Fox Sports ratings are down on last season (an alarming drop of some 24 per cent), but still comfortably 50 per cent ahead of the NBL’s viewing figures on ESPN.

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On free-to-air screens, the switch to ABC is delivering the A-League around 50,000 viewers each week — hardly the sunlit uplands hoped for after the move to a mainstream channel, but still way above the NBL’s average on SBS Viceland of 21,000.

The great unknown in all of this remains the figures for streaming. Kayo Sports has not made public its individual user numbers (as opposed to viewers) for particular sports, though its overall subscriber base has reached some 382,000. Likewise the numbers using the Telstra MyFootball App to watch games are not released by the telco.

A-League owners remain privately frustrated at not knowing the degree to which the decline in Fox Sports numbers is offset by streaming numbers, but that is the same for all sports.

Last Friday the A-League’s new high-profile consultant, former EPL boss Richard Scudamore, poured cold water on the idea of marquees being the answer to the A-League’s ills, and there remains an intense debate about how else the competition can rediscover the public interest of some five or six years ago.

But to suggest that the sound of 17,514 people in a concert venue can be heard as football’s death knell is more than a little overhyped. Or even overhooped.