AFL is on the decline - the younger generation is just not that into you

[Filthy Sanchez]

As a high school teacher it’s still hilarious to me that I see more girls kicking a footy than boys at lunch time.

With Australia’s population growth and natural immigration the “everyone’s gotta have a team” mantra in Victoria just isn’t going to survive and to me that’s just evolution of our society.

The real worry is whether the kids who have grown up in footy families would rather just watch an NBA or EPL game on their laptop instead of actually going to the games.

How many of those NBA and EPL teenage fans are actively supporting the A-League or NBL?

Tradition will always keep AFL strong with crowds etc. but I do wonder how our local soccer and basketball codes capitalise and don’t perish in this global sports market.

 

[falcons2]

I don't think the AFL is in decline as is a holding pattern but in the meantime have made a few poor decisions. The landscape of life is changing and I'm going to suggest rapidly and the AFL like most others don't really know where its going and what to do next.

The AFL have over commercialised the game and the clubs, players etc have all contributed to this with financial demands. The move from sport to a business is a dangerous decision. No-one wants to be associated with a bad business.
This leads to sanitising the game with financial decisions about protecting brand being more valued than the game itself.
Then there is the constant rule changes that are either just not needed, poorly implemented or just lead to confusion.
Score review - get rid of it or only for clear major errors. A couple of weeks ago Brisbane kicked a goal against Hawthorn. The Goal ump among players, the sun, a very high ball called a point. Clearly a goal. Score reviewed fixed it. Footballs touching fingernails, mm over lines etc, umpires call only.
The tribunal is another area of confusion. Largely because of a sound grab hungry media wanting to label similar but different incidences as the same. Think the four umpire touching incidents, similar but different.

 

[Collins-Langford-Ayres]

Anywhere you go overseas you hear the same things about their sport. In America all of Baseball, Basketball and now NFL the people claim it is not what it was and has/is losing popularity. You hear the exact same thing in England about the EPL. "It's not for the common man any more", "clubs have no soul" ect.
I think someone eluded to it before; people are just so much more cynical these days.

In the EPL they have a point. Try finding an English kid, let alone one from Manchester, in the Manchester City squad?

 

[demontim27]

Mooroolbark is still very British background aussies, any further in and it's much more multicultural

Yeah. That’s why I thought it may be more area based. Some areas up. Some down

 

[Maylandsman]

Congrats on your nomination.
The post you quoted was 100% correct.

The womens game will be the fastest growing part of the industry and will be great for the game.

are you looking for a nomination?
did op attack or slight women's footy?
no problem here with the chicks playing footy. I encourage it at grassroots.

 

[Maylandsman]

In the EPL they have a point. Try finding an English kid, let alone one from Manchester, in the Manchester City squad?

and I theorise our football is following the same path. so many players now come out of the private school system 'commoners' are getting less of a look in.

 

[Tiger2709]

My personal experience is that I was an absolute fanatic as a kid, yet ever since I turned 16/17 or so, my interest has steadily declined to the point where I'll only watch a game every few weeks.

Obviously Brisbane being terrible is a part of that, as well as the bullshit around the Essendon saga and the make-it-up-as-we-go-along rule changes/umpiring/suspensions being major turn-offs, but I think the wide availability of other entertainment is a more universal reason for any decline amongst younger fans. It would be a lot harder for me, 20 years ago, to find niche interests that attract me away from AFL, certainly none that I could access as quickly as I can today.

Not sure of your age but mid twenties early thirties I dropped off a bit, too busy having fun then starting a family, at 54 Im right back into it and not just because Richmond won a flag as my interest resumed fully quite a few years ago, so maybe what your experiencing is fairly normal?

 

[PowerForGood]

Just one sentence to sum this up.

This has been said every year for the last 20 and it doesnt happen.




Record crowds, both TV and live last season.

I did this.

https://afltables.com/afl/crowds/yearly.html

Pick a club... look at attendances... look at 1997 crowds to 2017.... and compare home averages.... and think about how the population has increased over that time. Also consider the decimation of the SA and WA state league attendances over that time, and addressing constraints that were already there which were alleviated by the introduction of taxpayer funded Adelaide Oval (Adel crowds up) and private funded Docklands instead of Princes Park) (Carl crowds up) as city stadiums, a taxpayer financed upgrade of Princes Park (Geelong crowds up). This year add new Perth Stadium.

In my opinion crowds are slightly up (AFL only) due to capacity issues relieved, not because of increased desire to go.

TV is where is the real growth has been, however i read somewhere on BF that overall viewership is down 15% this year which I doubt.

Thanks to Bunk Moreland on another thread, the massive drop in TV viewership IS real.

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/nrl/nrl-on-course-for-tv-ratings-victory-over-afl-20180527-p4zhsd.html

- AFL ratings down 13.9% overall
- Average free-to-air audience: NRL 413k, AFL 317k
- Average Fox audience: NRL 245k, AFL 180k
- Melbourne total audience: AFL down 17.5%, NRL up 2%
- Perth total audience: AFL down 8%, NRL up 17%

 

[PowerForGood]

I definitely think, despite appearing poorer, the average player is more skilful thanks to professionalism, they simply don't have as much time and space. All that extra training is going improve skills. Give them time and space and they would all hit targets.

Goal kicking is still poor.

Yet goal kicking is when you DO have more time and more space?

 

[domus]

The biggest lie from the AFL is that attendance numbers are increasing. While the AFL keep believing/selling this story it covers up any problem.

It is true, even given this less supported season. There may be multiple reasons for it but it is nevertheless true. Playing big games at the G rather than suburban grounds, packed houses in Adelaide and Perth most weeks.... but we do have short memories. There were some abysmally small crowds throughout the eighties and nineties. Coverage in the media was shrinking and basketball was making huge strides. I am a teacher and I cannot tell you how depressed I was I the eighties watching all the kids shoot baskets and swap NBA cards-a footy being kicked was a rare sight. That is why I have embraced the expansion of our game and even the business like approach. The game would have died years ago if they hadn't bitten the bullet.

 

[btdg]

In the EPL they have a point. Try finding an English kid, let alone one from Manchester, in the Manchester City squad?

Manchester city have 8 English players in their squad. 4 of those are from Manchester?

Every year some version of this thread gets made by some old bloke who finally casts off the rose coloured glasses of their youth and realises that footy isn't the perfect, idealistic paradise it was for all of us when we were 7 years old. The rest of us have made peace with That, accept that things change and that they generally get better, and still love the game, even if we dislike parts of it...

 

[Dwhale44]

I was born in the 70s and I lived for footy.

I played as often as I could, and I listened to games on the radio, watched highlights and was generally engaged with my club, obsessed even. I was in the majority as well, most kids my age, most people I knew, even older where the same.

Nowadays, with kids, even adults under say 25, that level of commitment and engagement is the exception, not the rule.

Most people take it or leave it as far as the AFL goes, some have a passing interest, I would put it to you that most people do not really care.

I feel like the glory days of the AFL are over. Crowds when you compare apples with apples over time will decline, and ratings will continue to go down as well. This is especially true with these two things when you adjust for population growth.

The AFL is in trouble, maybe not now, but in the future this comp will be battling, and the reason is that rusted on supporters are a dying breed. Plastic corporates like Gil running the show do not help either just quietly.

Mate I feel ya, I hope your kids play junior footy or netball or whatever sport your family decides on and you get the early Saturday/Sunday morning experience with the other parents. If there is a facility for it organise a Sunday arvo catch up with all the parents in your kids team - communal cook up and a bit of a social thing for the parents. That's what it's all about.

 

[The Meerkat]

The great players are gone and will probably never be back. No one really worth watching anymore

 

[SurreyBlue]

Quality of football has deteriorated and that is the key to the decline. The high marks and exciting runs and even big hits are non-existed.
We now have the soccer/rugby setups and strategies that have made our great exciting game a bore. We are actually re-training our young to enjoy a game of soccer with our defensive/zones, low scores and small opportunistic forwards winning the ball over the back. It's no wonder TV coverage is down in numbers.....

 

[Tiger2709]

The great players are gone and will probably never be back. No one really worth watching anymore

As a Richmond supporter that can remember some of the many greats back in the 70's and 80's I can't agree, time doesn't stand still, there are new players that are or will become greats, we have a player that last year achieved as much or more than any player has before, there's Buddy and Ablett etc, these players would be great in any era whereas many of the old greats would possibly struggle in this era of professionalism.

 

[Ant85]

I'm hearing a lot of this in this thread.

 

[dave123]

My son had one concussion at 10 from footy ...he goes hard at the ball

We didn’t ask him to stop or talk him out of playing ...

He just didn’t like the experience of getting scans ....he said I don’t want play footy dad

 

[caesar88]

As a young(er) footy fanatic, I was born right around the dawn of the death of the 1000-goal kicking forward. I've often heard my grandfather, who used to travel all around Victoria watching the likes of Graham Farmer and Bobby Skilton play, have the exact same complaints that many on here have made. He thinks the game has got less attractive because of congestion (yet he also bemoans when a team is sloppy enough to allow a one-on-one contest - go figure), and we also sat and watched highlights of an old game that was attended by nearly 120,000 people. That just wouldn't happen now days.

From what I can interpret from his point of view, the old fun sport that was competitive but also drew together the 'who gives a ****' people of Australia has become rather clinical and sterile. Everything seems over-regulated and as though it's an entertainment business rather than the sport it should be.

That's just his perspective. From my more recent perspective, I know only a handful of mates who avidly follow AFL. The rest are fans but don't watch every game, don't even know some of the players from their teams, and don't care about anything else happening in the competition outside of their one team. But I think it's the generation we live in. It's a fast-paced generation where information comes and goes very quickly, and we're excited about one thing, and then before we've even had time to embrace it, it's onto the next thing. There's also so many different sports we're exposed to nowadays. My grand-dad only ever grew up on cricket and footy, but a lot of my mates have grown up with the NBA, tennis, and American football thanks to cable TV and the internet. They just have too small an attention span, or too many options, to focus their passion on just one sport.

In other words, these are all things that the game can't help. Even if you took Gil (whose lights I just want to punch out) and his mob out of the corporation at the top, it would do nothing to change the growth of the game. It's the audience that are the problem, not the game.

 

[Bomberboyokay]

With US sports it can't be overstated how helpful their websites are. If you want to see video highlights they're really good. The AFL website is still a piece of shit with videos that look like they were uploaded in 2006. Fixing the website is the best thing the AFL could do in the smartphone era.

why would a kid want to watch 9 games of AFL on a weekend when they could watch 1, a game of soccer, maybe some NBA, then some NFL and finish off with some MLB. Oh and then there is cricket, tennis, golf, fighting ext.

No kids are watching golf.

 

[GreatBradScott]

As someone mentioned earlier, in 19whatever it was, people rarely worked weekends or school/uni work loads weren't bursting at the seams.

Then you've got the choice of content, the fact that more of the game goes behind pay tv with every year.

You actually go outside because a lack of terrified helicopter parents downing the daily horrors of tabloid media.

Or maybe parents could once upon a time afford to take their family to a game, instead they're either working to the bone or not going cause they have to pay off a disgustingly large mortgage.

Footy, like all things in life, used to be for the working man and woman.

I love the game, always have and always will, but neoliberal capitalism continues to erode the equity and access of all sports.

 

[NoobPie]

and I theorise our football is following the same path. so many players now come out of the private school system 'commoners' are getting less of a look in.

What proportion of those are on football scholarships?

 

[Maylandsman]

What proportion of those are on football scholarships?

couldn't tell you.
I know the school my son attends doesn't offer 'football scholarships.'
They do offer scholarships that are sport based but they are for all sports.
Rowing, Cricket and Rugby/Footy would be the top sports.
It is hard for the common man. You go to these places and see so much wank amongst the parents.
I sit with the cockies, salt of the earth.

 

[Vindicater]

Record crowds and TV viewing numbers does not equal the game in danger

 

[HavUEvaSeenTheRain]

What proportion of those are on football scholarships?

I don't know what % of the overall team but I would guess easily 80% of the best 7-8 players.

 

[Hulio]

*the older generation is just not that into you....

There I fixed for you!

Footy is a much better spectacle than it has ever been and more people are actually watching it, so you’re pretty wrong