Analysis: Stuart Pearson (Rugby Tragic)

Participation rates: (2006 ERASS Report Australian Sports Commission)
All players over 15 years.- participation rates
Revenue: All figures from 2006 Annual Reports
Sweeney Sports Report 2007: combines participation, attendance,
television and radio audience as well as print readership in sport, and
is expressed as a percentage of the population
Summaries

AFL

In many aspects it couldn’t have been a better year for Aussie Rules - revenue up, crowds up, interest in the game up - yet for all the positive data there are some disturbing developments. According to the Australian Sports Commission participation rates for people aged 14 and over fell by more than 80,000 or 15 per cent across Australia. Secondly, AFL’s drive to expand its presence in NSW and QLD is still not working despite allocating more then $100 million to the project over a five year period. These two States, which already have a strong Soccer presence and are also League and Union strongholds, are proving very difficult to expand AFL’s modest presence.

NRL

It was a bumper year for League in Australia. Crowds and TV audiences came back in record numbers. Even participation for League grew after remaining relatively flat for the previous three years. However, like AFL, not everything about of the code is rosy. There were more PR disasters with continual allegations of drug-taking, violence, and assorted criminal activity against elite league players. Further, attempts by League to offer international tests did not resonate with the paying public. Tests played in England, Australia and New Zealand performed to disappointing crowds. But the most disturbing aspect of the code is happening off the field behind the closed doors of NRL headquarters. Rugby League in Australia is struggling financially as costs are rising faster than revenue. At the moment the NRL is papering over the cracks, but it is only a matter of time before some drastic decisions will have to be made to rescue the game.

Soccer

At first glance 2007 looked like another good year for Soccer in Australia. Its national domestic competition, the A-League, was in its 3rd year and attracting ever-higher audiences. Participation rates grew significantly across the country by about 80,000, which might be explained by AFL losing approximately the same number of players over the identical period. However, as with all the major football codes in Australia. Soccer is coming under considerable financial pressure. Soccer is discovering that operating the A-League across a country which is the same size of a continent is very expensive indeed. But in Soccer’s case rising costs is exacerbated by a steep decline in revenue. Of all the codes in Australia only Soccer and League suffered an actual reduction in income, but in Soccer’s case it was down a massive 20 per cent, through mainly a reduction in corporate sponsorship.
Further, Soccer’s expensive campaigns to succeed in international competitions in Asia and elsewhere ended in ruins. At the end of 2007, Australia’s FIFA world ranking has actually declined 19 places from its high of 33 at the end of the FIFA World Cup a year earlier. Soccer is finding out the hard way that sponsors will only back winners. Unless its international record improves soon, Soccer in Australia is heading for yet another of its periodic crisis which unfortunately has plagued the code in the past.

Rugby Union
An eminently forgettable year for rugby in Australia. Everywhere one looked at the game one saw a litany of mistakes and missed opportunities. The Wallabies performed poorly and national coaches came and went. The ARU administration performed poorly and the CEO was replaced. Everywhere people were complaining about the style of rugby played on the field. It had become too defensive, too negative and for many people simply boring. Crowds stayed away from the Super 14 series and half the Australian teams in the Super 14 performed poorly. The once-proud Queensland and New South Wales teams suffered the ignominy of ending the season disastrously in last and second last place. Even the Rugby World Cup in France during 2007 did not stimulate the expected level of enthusiasm in Australia. The tournament may have been an overwhelming success elsewhere, especially South America, Africa and Europe, but in Australia it came and went with hardly a ripple. A new domestic competition (ARC - Australian Rugby Championship) was launched with very little fanfare and although the games were enjoyable – the teams played under new experimental laws which promoted running rugby again – only an average of 3,000 people turned up to watch each game.    

But there are some positive signs that suggest Rugby’s “annus horribilus” might have been a one-year aberration and that better times are ahead. One of the world’s most respected sports administrators, John O’Neill, has returned to take up the reigns of the ARU. Internationally the new experimental laws mentioned earlier will be fast-tracked for rapid implementation and it is likely that the Super 14 series will be played under these new laws from early 2008. Surprisingly, participation rates held firm and a whole crop of young emerging players were identified in the ARC competition which will soon revitalise the ranks of the Wallabies. Finally, sponsors remained solidly behind Australian rugby for reasons that remain unclear.    

Conclusion

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics the sport and leisure market in Australia is a $6,000 million industry directly employing over 100,000 people (ABS Cat No. 4156.0, 2007). It is estimated that the various codes of football combined may represent up to a third of this figure and therefore be worth approximately $2,000 million and employ about 30,000 people.

Nevertheless there are some people who believe that the size of the football industry is insufficient to maintain four major football codes indefinitely. No other country in the 30-strong OECD supports four football codes. The average is two and mainly consists of soccer and union. If one accepts the proposition that there are too many football codes for a market which has too few people and too much space to cover then it seems inevitable that there will be some degree of rationalization in the marketplace. What makes the situation with the various football codes fascinating in Australia is that this process has no precedent anywhere else on the planet. Once established, a football code tends to hang around through good times and bad like a security blanket for the people, but in Australia we may be witnessing the “commodification” of football – a phenomenon whereby the various codes become “brands” and the spectators become “customers” and finally the game is treated just like another “product”. If football in Australia is undergoing this transition to commodification then concepts like club loyalty and tradition become less important than customer satisfaction which means that people will follow the code that is more satisfying, more entertaining. If this phenomenon is actually taking place in Australia then the final realization is that the popularity of each football code and the relative pecking order they are compared to each other can and probably will alter. But to what ?

Updated analsysis October 2008

"Each year the Australian Sports Commission conducts a national survey of citizens 15 and over who are participating in organised sport (ERASS - Exercise, Recreation and Sports Survey). The figures do not include the million or so 5-14 year olds who play organised sport. Nevertheless, one can still use the Australian Sports Commission data as it is the same age group of people they are tracking over time and therefore it is valid to draw general participation trends.   http://www.ausport.gov.au/information/scors/ERASS.


Raw Data

Code . . . . 2001 . . . . . . 2007 . . . Percentage change
Soccer . . 551,300 . . . 683,000 . . . . 23.9%
AFL . . . . 353,300 . . . .308,700 . . . -12.6%
RL . . . . .165,500 . . . .175,200 . . . . . 5.9%
RU . . . . . 96,400 . . . . 127,900 . . . . 32.7%

  Interpretation:

Point One: Soccer is unquestionably the No.1 football code in Australia, even though the other codes refuse to acknowledge this fact. Since 2001, more than 130,000 new players have joined up to play the game.

Point Two: AFL is buckling under the pressure of Soccer's rise. Almost 45,000 players left the sport since 2001, which is a decline of 12.6 per cent and the only football code to shrink.

Point Three: After supposedly some of the best years of coverage for the code, the national figures for League's participation remains static. But if one looks at little more closely at the State by State figures then a very different picture emerges. Over 90 percent of Australia's league players are concentrated in just two States, Queensland and New South Wales. In fact, over the past seven years League numbers have collapsed in every State and Territory, except for Qld and NSW.

Point Four: Despite two woeful years of coverage, promotion and performance from Rugby Union, playing numbers continued to defy logic by expanding. In seven years, Rugby Union has enjoyed the strongest growth of all the football codes and in playing numbers has significantly closed the gap on League. If viewed on a State by State basis, Union is facing intense competition from League in NSW and Qld where Union is admittedly struggling to maintain numbers. But the code is growing well in every other State and Territory, especially Western Australia and Victoria where Union player numbers in the 15 years and older age group now number in the tens of thousands. In fact, Union now outranks League in every State and Territory outside Queensland and New South Wales. Thirty-one per cent of Australia’s Union players aged 15 and over come from outside NSW and Qld, whereas only 10 per cent of Australia’s League players do.

  It appears that Soccer may have already defeated AFL to become the No. 1 football code in Australia, but Aussie Rules just doesn't realise it has been mortally wounded. It also appears that Union is gaining the upper hand over League. Outside League's heartland of NSW and Qld, Rugby Union has League beaten and encircled, but League is fighting defensively to hold on to those two States at all costs. If League buckles in either New South Wales or Queensland, then Rugby League is finished as a significant sport here in Australia.