AFL to take the NRL's lead and take a game to the US?

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Just to address the absurd notion of the NRL (or AFL, for that matter) ever making any decent broadcasting money via the US...

Cricket Australia has a seven-year $US250m deal with Disney Star in India, which covers all international and domestic cricket played on Australian soil including Aus v Ind Tests/ODIs/T20s. Works out to $55m per year in AUD with current conversion rates.

A great bonus for CA, no doubt. But if that's "all" a massive cricket-crazy country is tipping in, it highlights how dumb a reporter would have to be to run with the baseless estimates made by the NRL's chief snake oil salesman.
 
Johnny Bananas said:
I don't have kids so I can't speak much on this subject. All I'm saying is that something catches the pop culture zeitgeist for a little bit but it rarely creates a lasting fascination with another culture unless they're pumping out content for decades, like Japan with anime. I can't think of a single foreign sport that has become big in the US in the past century.
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Ice hockey, technically. Though it was a little more than a century ago.

Teen Wolf said:
Just to address the absurd notion of the NRL (or AFL, for that matter) ever making any decent broadcasting money via the US...

Cricket Australia has a seven-year $US250m deal with Disney Star in India, which covers all international and domestic cricket played on Australian soil including Aus v Ind Tests/ODIs/T20s. Works out to $55m per year in AUD with current conversion rates.

A great bonus for CA, no doubt. But if that's "all" a massive cricket-crazy country is tipping in, it highlights how dumb a reporter would have to be to run with the baseless estimates made by the NRL's chief snake oil salesman.
Click to expand...

For second tier cricket (shield, BBL etc) and international cricket that they have no direct interest in it makes sense that it’s not going to be an exhorbitant amount. There aren’t that many games to watch anyway.

If Americans get into NRL it will be the only league comp they watch, it won’t be like Indian cricket fans who follow their own cricket side and watch some overseas cricket periodically as a secondary follow-up.

There are 180-odd games and it’s all at the best level.

That’s not to say it will reach supersonic levels of overseas TV revenue but it’s a different scenario to cricket given the product
 
PhatBoy said:
Ice hockey, technically. Though it was a little more than a century ago.



For second tier cricket (shield, BBL etc) and international cricket that they have no direct interest in it makes sense that it’s not going to be an exhorbitant amount. There aren’t that many games to watch anyway.

If Americans get into NRL it will be the only league comp they watch, it won’t be like Indian cricket fans who follow their own cricket side and watch some overseas cricket periodically as a secondary follow-up.

There are 180-odd games and it’s all at the best level.

That’s not to say it will reach supersonic levels of overseas TV revenue but it’s a different scenario to cricket given the product
Click to expand...
I believe super-league is available in the US?
 
3207 said:
I wouldn’t say that they’re not going to crack it. I had a mate who I met on a Caribbean Cruise a few years ago messaging me on Facebook about the rules etc as he was watching it from his lounge room in Northern Michigan.

I wouldn’t discredit this move by the NRL yet. It is the closest sport they have to their biggest sport and there is a lot of downtime for those sports fans who don’t watch Baseball to have a code they can sit back and enjoy.
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I live in a state that shares a land border with the state with which NRL is most closely associated. For 120 years, this has been the case.
There was a team here 25+ years ago which failed, and there've been a handful of other games here which have been well attended, with crowds bigger than were seen in Las Vegas (including a SOO a few years ago).
Does this mean the game has ‘cracked’ SA? Not even close. People are always up for novelty and something different, but ultimately they turn up for the big event they’ve stopped caring by the time they arrive home.
Show me a sport or any other cultural practice from a country that is not a net exporter of culture (ie. Australia) that has taken off in another place?
It doesn't happen.
No doubt they’ll make hay for a few years, but the shine will wear off.
The AFL needs to just focus on here.
 
Jim Prideaux said:
A few things;

NRL (and AFL for that matter) gambling revenue would be around its peak now. Without growing the game in non heartland areas there won’t be much more to get.

Both state and federal governments have been making noises for years about cracking down on the local gambling industry, so the amount they have now could shrink soon(ish)

With a gambling market over there, they Will potentially open other foreign gambling markets, and increase subscription services and with that advertising.

They don’t need America to love it, and they won’t have much of a presence, they just need them to know it exists, and that they can punt on it.
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As someone who was once a very serious punter, the gambling thing confuses me.
Look through the sportsbet app. There are probably over 200+ leagues you can bet on at a given moment.
Every five minutes you’ll have multiple new events starting.
On top of this, there are horse and dog racing meets all over the world, 24/7, where the length of time between the bet and the result is a matter of minutes.
Maybe if youve got a massive gambling problem its different, but i’d never have bet on the Honduran soccer, or US college football, or Japanese baseball, or Croatian basketball because i didn't know a thing about them. You’d have to be a mug right? And what’s the fun in better on a event you know nothing about that occurs while you’re asleep?
Like most punters, i had my handful of sports that i focused on (plus horse racing). I imagine most punters in the US are exactly the same.
I know these guys would’ve done their homework, they probsbly know things i don’t. Doesn't really make sense to me though.
 
I posted something similar in another thread, I’m not sure how League would be successful over Union which is obviously a similar game just way more popular and actually has a base already in America.
It’s pie in the sky stuff.
American sports grab our and most of the Wests attention because of our obsession with American culture. With the millions of migrants Australia has and being the worlds largest sport soccer will always have a presence here.
Australia is insignificant and it really doesn’t matter how good a sport is it’s highly unlikely our sports will ever be able to break down cultural barriers to become a meaningful niche overseas
 
PhatBoy said:
For second tier cricket (shield, BBL etc) and international cricket that they have no direct interest in it makes sense that it’s not going to be an exhorbitant amount. There aren’t that many games to watch anyway.

If Americans get into NRL it will be the only league comp they watch, it won’t be like Indian cricket fans who follow their own cricket side and watch some overseas cricket periodically as a secondary follow-up.

There are 180-odd games and it’s all at the best level.

That’s not to say it will reach supersonic levels of overseas TV revenue but it’s a different scenario to cricket given the product
Click to expand...
State of Origin is a higher level of rugby league than the NRL Premiership, so you've glaringly contradicted yourself.

And the rest of your post is just nonsense. "If Americans get into NRL"... um, they won't. Not even close to the 55m Indian viewers of just the BBL which adds up to 3.75 billion minutes of watch time per season, never mind popular fixtures like the Border-Gavaskar Trophy etc.
 
Not as sexy as America, but I think the best places to play games would be New Zealand, Ireland and India. The first two you're going to smaller markets, but they have some familiarity with our game, so could make a little money to add to the revenue on betting and tv rights.

I'm a fan of India, the pie is massive and it might attract some Indian athletes, which indirectly attracts Indian expats living in Australia. That is a local goldmine of fans to tap into.

All 3 have ovals most importantly and a sporting relationship with Australia already. Sportsbet is actually an Irish company.

A much cheaper way to do it is simply get afl shown on tv in these countries, build a small support base first, then go play there. I'd even pay them to put it on tv initially to get a foot in the door.
 
The problem for both NRL and AFL is that the sporting landscape is already insanely crowded here in North America.

At any point on the weekend people can tune into NBA, NHL, NFL, MLB, Nascar, Indycar, MLS etc. There's only so much time people can spend watching sports and it would be borderline impossible for aussie sport to claim a decent chunk of that TV revenue.

There's also a growing trend in the US particularly of people following athletes, rather than teams. LeBron has an army of fans, Messi would be more popular than the rest of the MLS combined, even the Taylpr Swift/Travis Kelce combo made a big impact on the superbowl this year.

AFL and NRL just don't have anything near that kind of superstar draw at the moment, barring Chris Hemsworth wearing a dog's guernsey in the next Thor movie.
 

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Consolaçao said:
As someone who was once a very serious punter, the gambling thing confuses me.
Look through the sportsbet app. There are probably over 200+ leagues you can bet on at a given moment.
Every five minutes you’ll have multiple new events starting.
On top of this, there are horse and dog racing meets all over the world, 24/7, where the length of time between the bet and the result is a matter of minutes.
Maybe if youve got a massive gambling problem its different, but i’d never have bet on the Honduran soccer, or US college football, or Japanese baseball, or Croatian basketball because i didn't know a thing about them. You’d have to be a mug right? And what’s the fun in better on a event you know nothing about that occurs while you’re asleep?
Like most punters, i had my handful of sports that i focused on (plus horse racing). I imagine most punters in the US are exactly the same.
I know these guys would’ve done their homework, they probsbly know things i don’t. Doesn't really make sense to me though.
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As I said earlier, from what I’ve read it seems that in app (gambling app) viewing of the matches is one of the revenue streams. If that becomes successful, they may be able to negotiate more, and it may give them more bargaining power with foreign owned companies out here. It may not work, it probably won’t. But I’d say that’s what they’re hoping for. I reckon after 5 years there’s a fair chance they can it.
 
Teen Wolf said:
State of Origin is a higher level of rugby league than the NRL Premiership, so you've glaringly contradicted yourself.

And the rest of your post is just nonsense. "If Americans get into NRL"... um, they won't. Not even close to the 55m Indian viewers of just the BBL which adds up to 3.75 billion minutes of watch time per season, never mind popular fixtures like the Border-Gavaskar Trophy etc.
Click to expand...

It happens 3 times a year. It’s not like test cricket which is a rolling, ongoing competition that is clearly higher than domestic cricket and gives the viewer a simultaneous choice. ‘Do I watch one or the other.’ The NRL is highest level of rugby league you can watch that doesn’t happen as often as Ireland or Afghanistan play a test match.

I haven’t contradicted anything. It’s 3 games. It’s virtually a non-factor.

Where did I even remotely speculate that 55 million Americans would get into NRL? I haven’t. That’s a seventh of their population. In what universe is one seventh of the American population going to adopt a foreign game?

But why do they have to? Do you think money all has to be done in equivalencies to have any sort of chance of matching something that cricket manages?

Again, they would have done their sums and they are a sport that is based around TV rights, owned partly by the biggest media group in the western world, and run domestically by a man who’s credentials are based round running a sport that exists solely for gambling purposes.

At the very least, they are not going to be losing anything out of this and the fact that some guys on an afl forum are talking about it and the head of the afl was on the code’s flagship program talking about how good it was, already tells you that it was a success in some capacity.
 
PhatBoy said:
It happens 3 times a year. It’s not like test cricket which is a rolling, ongoing competition that is clearly higher than domestic cricket and gives the viewer a simultaneous choice. ‘Do I watch one or the other.’ The NRL is highest level of rugby league you can watch that doesn’t happen as often as Ireland or Afghanistan play a test match.

I haven’t contradicted anything. It’s 3 games. It’s virtually a non-factor.

Where did I even remotely speculate that 55 million Americans would get into NRL? I haven’t. That’s a seventh of their population. In what universe is one seventh of the American population going to adopt a foreign game?

But why do they have to? Do you think money all has to be done in equivalencies to have any sort of chance of matching something that cricket manages?

Again, they would have done their sums and they are a sport that is based around TV rights, owned partly by the biggest media group in the western world, and run domestically by a man who’s credentials are based round running a sport that exists solely for gambling purposes.

At the very least, they are not going to be losing anything out of this and the fact that some guys on an afl forum are talking about it and the head of the afl was on the code’s flagship program talking about how good it was, already tells you that it was a success in some capacity.
Click to expand...
They would have to get a following that is somewhat comparable to Indian viewership of the BBL to land the broadcast deal that is being fantasised about by Peter the Ponykiller. Not gonna happen.

The venture has already burned a $2m hole, meanwhile another year threatens to go by with no progress of women's rugby league in Melbourne (which combines the NRL's two biggest and most realistic longterm growth opportunities). What a success.
 
Consolaçao said:
I live in a state that shares a land border with the state with which NRL is most closely associated. For 120 years, this has been the case.
There was a team here 25+ years ago which failed, and there've been a handful of other games here which have been well attended, with crowds bigger than were seen in Las Vegas (including a SOO a few years ago).
Does this mean the game has ‘cracked’ SA? Not even close. People are always up for novelty and something different, but ultimately they turn up for the big event they’ve stopped caring by the time they arrive home.
Show me a sport or any other cultural practice from a country that is not a net exporter of culture (ie. Australia) that has taken off in another place?
It doesn't happen.
No doubt they’ll make hay for a few years, but the shine will wear off.
The AFL needs to just focus on here.
Click to expand...
I’m not advocating for the AFL to go there? It would be stupid as the football codes are totally different.

And it is more a chance of working over in the USA because;

1) It is very similar to the NFL
2) It is played in the off-season to the NFL
3) It gives the football mad US fans something to watch that is a high standard - opposed to the XFL for example
4) They don’t have a preconceived idea that is drilled in to them from birth that there is a better football code “just over the border” for them to watch on TV
 
Xtreme said:
AFL couldn't capture the Shanghai market, they have no chance of wooing the US crowd.
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Huh?
USA love their ball sports, China love Olympic sports. Not to mention language and cultural barriers.
US being western English speaking and sports mad IMO would be the easier of the 2 to get a niche foothold.

There would need to be some partnership with schools and proper league invest,ent imo over 20 years to see some fruit bear. AFL won’t do it.
 
Vic pokiesmon said:
Should have happened 20 years ago.Surely we can get better talent into the game than is currently in the AFL This is the starting point to doing that .The uncomfortable truth Of Cox's career is that he was a C grade basketballer who got nowhere near being drafted in NBA yet took apart backlines in finals which included arguably some of the this century's best defenders in Rance and McGovern.He even kicked crucial goal against Taylor etc in the prelim..If he can do it in which in Cox's own words was an unprofessional joke of a process in evaluating talent then imagine if the AFL and its talent finding process was professional and well resourced...If we value watching top class sport we should be demanding bit as the first step in widening the talent base...Yes im also aware we need to also focus on our own backyard and in Western Sydney etc bla bla bla .We can do both surely.
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The NRL strategy in Vegas is not about "growing the game" in the traditional sense. i.e. Its not about players or having kids watch or play the game. Its about one thing and one thing only - trying to get a slice of the huge US sports betting market. That's all it is.

I dont think people should be comparing growing the game in NSW and Qld (which is focused on kids participation) and "growing" the sports betting market.

Vlandys is no fool. Nobody seriously thinks an American kid is going want to play AFL or NFL. I also dont believe Mason Cox is some trend-setter. I think he's a one off.
 
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Teen Wolf said:
They would have to get a following that is somewhat comparable to Indian viewership of the BBL to land the broadcast deal that is being fantasised about by Peter the Ponykiller. Not gonna happen.

The venture has already burned a $2m hole, meanwhile another year threatens to go by with no progress of women's rugby league in Melbourne (which combines the NRL's two biggest and most realistic longterm growth opportunities). What a success.
Click to expand...

It lost 8 million Eddie McGuire said and he would know, he is mates with pvl and indicated he got it straight from the horses mouth. 2 million was the public bullshit figure that the nsw media machine pushed on his behalf. There is absolutely zero chance the venture was only 2 mill, I was expecting losses closer to 20 with stadium hire, business class flights for everybody, hotels, promotion all in u.s dollars. It just shows the amount of shit this guy pulls with figures continually, one of the best liars in the world.
 
Bjo187 said:
It lost 8 million Eddie McGuire said and he would know, he is mates with pvl and indicated he got it straight from the horses mouth. 2 million was the public bullshit figure that the nsw media machine pushed on his behalf. There is absolutely zero chance the venture was only 2 mill, I was expecting losses closer to 20 with stadium hire, business class flights for everybody, hotels, promotion all in u.s dollars. It just shows the amount of s**t this guy pulls with figures continually, one of the best liars in the world.
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I’ve never read that figure of $2,000,000? The stadium hire alone was $1,900,000.

Where did you read that they said it only cost $2,000,000?

I’ve read numbers far greater ($200,000,000 over 5 years)
 
3207 said:
I’ve never read that figure of $2,000,000? The stadium hire alone was $1,900,000.

Where did you read that they said it only cost $2,000,000?

I’ve read numbers far greater ($200,000,000 over 5 years)
Click to expand...
Millions of dollars lost, after income minus expenses, is what is meant by the term "cost" in this context.
 

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AFL to take the NRL's lead and take a game to the US?

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