Population growth is overrated. For example, most of Melbourne’s growth is from Asia. There are half a million people of Chinese background in Melbourne. And nearly as many Indians, Does this really help the viability of AFL clubs?
20th AFL Team
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Good point. Unless they start getting into footy, it won’t help grow the game.
If it's for Team 20, WA3 does make more sense than SEQ3. But if WA3 misses out, SEQ3 might edge ahead if there's ever another expansion round.
Both SEQ and Perth have similar population growth, so that's not a factor.
But currently, SEQ has about 1.5m more people than Perth. SEQ has the population of Perth and Adelaide combined.
SEQ also has more defined regions than Perth.
At this stage the assumption for WA3 is another team Perth team, likely based in Joondalup. Joondalup is only 25km from Optus, it doesn't offer much other than "another team".
Whereas Brisbane only has the one team. It has room for a Brisbane derby. Or the Sunshine Coast will be big enough for a team in a few decades.
So I don't think SEQ3 makes more sense than WA3 now, but that won't always be the case. Especially if footy continues to make gains in SEQ.
There will always be more footy fans in Perth than SEQ, where the vast majority of people prefer NRL. And the Sunshine Coast is a bunch of towns and villages. If they can’t sustain an NRL team (there is no talk of that), there is no chance of an AFL team.
There actually has been talk of an NRL team on the Sunshine Coast, it's just way down the list.
You could put an NRL team on the Sunshine Coast, but why would you when you could put one in Ipswich or south of the river in Brisbane, not to mention Perth, NZ, Adelaide, etc.
That might be considered less incentive to put in a team.
Reiterating that I'm talking well down the track. If Team 20 comes in after 2030, there's a good chance that the 21/22 expansion wouldn't happen for another 25-30 years.
By which point the Sunshine Coast (plus Noosa) will have nearly 700k people. Those towns and villages will have infilled and become suburbs.
And the northern suburbs of Brisbane will be encroaching and could be included in the catchment (the Moreton Bay region will be pushing 1m).
As Badger said, the NRL have bigger fish to fry.
Given the southern influx expected to fuel the growth, the Sunshine Coast could be quite AFL-friendly.
And imagine the scenes when the AFL is the first to plant the flag in Queensland's third largest city. Could give them a massive headstart.
But like you said, Brisbane is a one team city with room for another in the future.
A 2nd Brisbane side could always play a home game on the Sunny Coast to incorporate them.
I still think Auckland and Newcastle would have more to offer if they ever expand to 22 teams as they’re new markets but if the AFL were cautious about the risk then Brisbane 2 and Perth 3 would make more sense.
Bjo187
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I think for the afl, once they have good and solid representation in nsw and qld and are closer to matching the nrl there (let's say 75 percent the size), only then would they look overseas to a place like Auckland.
Currently nsw and qld make up 25 percent of participants in Australia, which is better than I thought, so they are half way to matching their population, of around 50 percent of Australia.
Yeah, I think you’re right.
I would be looking to Brisbane 2 and Perth 3 after Canberra. I really don’t think these two expansion options would fail. Perth already underrepresented and Brisbane eventually will be, so it makes sense.
Auckland and Newcastle maybe after that, and then Darwin and Cairns but not in our lifetimes and possibly never because of the climate and small population growth.
Hopefully I don't come off too pedantic, but the Sunshine Coast is a region, not a city, and I'm not sure exactly how Queensland defines it's cities, but I highly doubt that the towns on the Sunshine Coast like Noosa, Caloundra, Maroochydore, etc, will ever grow bigger than some of the cities that boarder Brisbane like Ipswich, Logan, or on the Gold Coast.
The AFL won't beat the NRL to the Sunshine Coast either, at least not unless they pull the tigger way too early. There's been a Qld Cup (2nd tier state league) team on the Sunshine Coast on and off since the mid 90s and continuously since 09 (IIRC), and NRL matches and events have been played there semi-regularly for the better part of a decade now. The Dolphins are meant to play at least 1 or 2 games there a season from now on as well, but we'll see if that lasts.
Both the NRL and AFL are quickly reaching the point where demand for licenses outstrips supply. Once that happens both will be forced to restructure their competitions to allow for further growth (conferences, pyramid, etc), and once they do expansion will happen in larger blocks for broadcasting, draw, and equalisation reasons. Just like if/when the NFL expands it'll have to jump from 32 teams to 40 in quick succession if it's to maintain even conferences and a fair draw and travel schedule.
Once that happens the Sunshine Coast will be one of the first cabs off the ranks in the NRL, and, for multiple reasons, that development is likely to happen in the NRL quicker than the AFL, though it's still a fair way away in either case.
Isn't that just what the Gold Coast was? They only decided to make Southport the CBD a decade ago.
Maroochydore and Caloundra are both already a part of one contiguous stretch of suburbia. And at the southern end of that they're building a 50k-person development.
Still won't rival Brisbane or Gold Coast for population, but will have enough people to sustain a team.
But what number would the Sunshine Coast be for the NRL? I assume at least Perth, NZ2, PNG, Bris3, Adelaide, and maybe Melb2 would come first.
I really can't tell with the NRL because they seem to expand so sporadically, but I would assume the AFL expands to 22 teams before the NRL expands to 24.
I think the NFL is a different comparison when owners are throwing billions to get in. I still think expansion in Australian leagues will have to be more measured, especially after the current more lucrative options for the NRL have been tapped.
But it won’t have enough people to sustain an AFL team. The vast majority of residents prefer NRL. Even with 500k residents in 2040/50 it will still be a much smaller AFL market than Hobart.
Sure, they could turn the Sunshine Coast into a metropolitan area like the Gold Coast, but it'd still be smaller than Ipswich/Western Brisbane, Logan/Southern Brisbane, Moreton Bay/Northern Brisbane, etc, in real terms.
The NRL is already in a similar place to the NFL, where for the last 15-20 years there's been roughly half a dozen viable bids trying to force their way into the league at any one time. They've also openly discussed moving to a system of two conferences of 10 once they hit 20 teams (Sydney + Newcastle and everybody else), which almost certainly won't happen for internal political and competition balancing reasons, but 4 conferences of 5 is a realistic shout.
They're also actively in the process of trying to squeeze Perth, two NZ bids, another Brisbane team (likely Ipswich), and the Bears into two licenses, and that's before we talk about other ideas and former bids that would/could be viable like Adelaide, the Central Coast, and many others including the Sunshine Coast.
It's also much cheaper and less risky to start up and maintain an NRL club than an AFL club. It wouldn't be ideal by any means, but at this point an NRL side can basically survive off the yearly grant if it's forced to. They also have a larger and more diverse global talent pool to draw from than the AFL, especially if we acknowledge poaching from RU.
All of which means they have the ability to expand much more quickly, to markets with a much smaller base, and they don't have to worry about diluting the quality of the product on the pitch as much as the AFL.
Which brings us to what number the Sunshine Coast would be, well it depends. Partly on the NRL's totally unpredictable whims, and, by extension, how quickly they pull the trigger on a conference system.
Setting aside the NRL's unpredictability, if they do end up committing to a 4 conference system after team 20 (i.e. by the end of the decade), the next time they expand after that they'll need to expand by 4, and the time after that it'd likely be a quick jump by 8 to 32.
That could all happen by sometime about 2050 if the NRL really wanted it to (FTR, I'm not necessarily saying it should), and the Sunshine Coast would very much be in those discussions. Alternatively, they could not go to conferences and expand more slowly, or, being the NRL, they could decide to flaff about for another couple decades, or have another self-inflicted cataclysmic internal conflict that sets them back decades. There's really no way to tell with RL. It's just in it's nature.
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