Earning the right to friday night

[greenred]

The biggest issue with changing Friday night's is the potential for 5 day breaks. Clubs who have to travel don't shouldn't also have to back up from a short break because it earns the AFL a few more dollars.

Even the playing field and give every club 1 'home' Friday night match and offer the remaining games to the top 5 clubs, working down the ladder if they elect not to accept.

 

[YellowandBlackBlood]

How about a ground breaking thought?

Delegate Friday nights evenly through the competition, so that all teams get an equal exposure to them.

Maybe we can also have travel to interstate venues by Melbourne teams equalized too while we are at it!

We could also schedule teams to play each other on a rotating basis that is fair all round.

OMG! We might then have a fair and equitable competition.

Vlad and Ando would have an epileptic fit!

 

[The Zebra]

Please, take Essendon off Friday night footy.

Shocking team to watch. Have had enough Friday nights to last them the next 10 years.

They suck ass.

 

[absfab]

How about a ground breaking thought?

Delegate Friday nights evenly through the competition, so that all teams get an equal exposure to them.

Nope.

I have no interest whatsoever in seeing Freo play Port on a Friday night just coz it's their turn.

 

[serenityNow]

Yep i like the idea


Personally i wont be watching this weeks game. Essendon are Rubbish and the Pies will shit it in. Boring match for a neutral.

Essendon 7 friday night games FFS

 

[mediumsizered]

This week it maybe should be Melbourne who earn the Friday night spot. They have been playing great footy and come up against a wobbly Hawthorn. IMO, this game would probably be of the most interest to the football purist. (The Dog v Cats were allready in a suitable timeslot).

Friday night football is all about ratings/advertising revenue. A Collingwood/Essendon game will always attract more viewers than a Melbourne/Hawthorn regardless of the respective teams' position on the ladder.

Channel 7, much like Channel 10 (& Channel 9 previously), do not broadcast football as part of some sort of community service, they do it for the advertising revenue they can generate. Therefore certain teams will get more Friday night games than what other teams do. The interests of football purists (I would have thought football purists would much rather watch Essendon & Collingwood get stuck into each other anyway) bear no relevance to the allocation of Friday night games.

 

[Rob]

Nope.

I have no interest whatsoever in seeing Freo play Port on a Friday night just coz it's their turn.

Rate it's ass off in Perth though. Up until the masterchef final, Freo's only FN game to date was the highest rating TV program in Perth all year.

Funny, I feel just like you when I see Carlton play North.

 

[Boxhead_31]

My Friday night formula would be to have every club who wanted a home game to have one, but offset that by having at least one of the four preliminary finalists from the year before involved in every Friday night game during the season.

You know you are either going to watch a great team at the peak of their powers or watch a former top team starting to struggle. You virtually lock in a game not involving two bottom dwellers.

This is the best idea for the scheduling of the Friday night spot I've seen

 

[Charlotte]

Please, take Essendon off Friday night footy.

Shocking team to watch. Have had enough Friday nights to last them the next 10 years.

They suck ass.

but they get the audience hence why they get the timeslot for

How about a ground breaking thought?

Delegate Friday nights evenly through the competition, so that all teams get an equal exposure to them.

Maybe we can also have travel to interstate venues by Melbourne teams equalized too while we are at it!

We could also schedule teams to play each other on a rotating basis that is fair all round.

OMG! We might then have a fair and equitable competition.

Vlad and Ando would have an epileptic fit!

It's too sensible to do that! plus certain teams always draw a crowd hence why Essendon have played a lot of friday nights as the broadcasters and AFL know that even if they are travelling bad they will still pull biggish numbers due to their supporter base

 

[bigdog54]

Friday night football is all about ratings/advertising revenue. A Collingwood/Essendon game will always attract more viewers than a Melbourne/Hawthorn regardless of the respective teams' position on the ladder.

Channel 7, much like Channel 10 (& Channel 9 previously), do not broadcast football as part of some sort of community service, they do it for the advertising revenue they can generate. Therefore certain teams will get more Friday night games than what other teams do. The interests of football purists (I would have thought football purists would much rather watch Essendon & Collingwood get stuck into each other anyway) bear no relevance to the allocation of Friday night games.

I think ur confusing attendances with television audiences. Yes Coll/Ess would pull a bigger crowd than Melb/Haw but the key is as u mentioned the TV ratings.

I wouldve thought the majority of football fans, impartials would watch fri night footy regardless of whos playing.

I willl tune in tonight just like I would if it was Haw/Melb.

 

[DaVe86]

Essendon and Collingwood have huge fan bases. The game will still draw around 70K even though it is on TV....but there are another 100,000 fans at home who aren't willing to brave the cold.

It will rate.


It's not about interest...it's about ratings.

 

[wonna]

I love all these Essendon people saying that we r the most supported club and no matter where we are on the ladder we get people to our games.

I really enjoyed watching all the essendon people go missing earlier on in the season as they all decided to go into hiding after getting smacked a few times.

After a just 5 losses in a row they only managed to attract 26 tho to their Saturday night, round 16 match at jihad stadium against an interstate opponent.

Another loss (in which lecras kicked a huge bag) was followed by further abandonment only 30 thou managed to pull on their red and black jumpers and make it to their Saturday night round 17 match at jihad stadium against north.

Winning against the roos gave the crowd numbers a slight boost bringing 37 thou through the gate for their Friday night game against the sainsts. Still nowhere near enough for one of the premier clubs playing in a premier time slot against a decent opposition.

Luckily carlton gave their crowd numbers a boost in round 19, collingwood will give them another boost.

So y do essendon have so many premier time slots? 15 Friday and Saturday night games and an anzac day game gives them 16 premier time slots out of 22 possible. Surely even the most biased of you should be able to see that this is inequitable when esseendon supporters jump off as quick as any other club.



Oh, and premier time slots for North Melbourne-6

Premier time slots for Melbourne- 5

Edit: and don't even get me started on FTA designations

 

[RizzoTheRat]

My Friday night formula would be to have every club who wanted a home game to have one, but offset that by having at least one of the four preliminary finalists from the year before involved in every Friday night game during the season.

You know you are either going to watch a great team at the peak of their powers or watch a former top team starting to struggle. You virtually lock in a game not involving two bottom dwellers.

I can't remember the last time Sydney played a Friday night, and that's because Channel 7 would have to show it prime time and put it up against the NRL (and lose the ratings). For the same reason, the Lions didn't get a Friday night game this year either. GWS (Spartans?) and the Suns will have to have the same consideration.

Channel 7 are so gutless they won't even compete with the second Friday night NRL game and we have to wait until 11:30pm to watch the game...and that's with a second channel, 7TWO, where they would prefer to play second rate US dramas or B-Grade movies.

If the AFL really wants to expand in NSW and QLD they need to sort out this broadcast partner. 10 do a much better job.

 

[The Donners]

Essendon, regardless of ladder position is a huge drawcard, TV or at the game.

Under Knights, every second week, they're the the best spectacle in the country and an awesome advertisement for AFL football.

 

[im_a_lazy_sod]

I'd still rather a couple of games at the G than a couple Friday nights - though our 2 this year have/will be good drawers

 

[Godzke]

****ing lol @ the little clubs bashing Essendon. Not the faintest idea of how ratings and commercial revenue work.

 

[Dont be a lemon]

The AFL should leave the Friday timeslot free and fill it with the form/interest game of the round 21 days in advance........notifying the club of their 'win' in being allocated the timeslot. They do this with Gridiron in the states and it is a huge success.

In the NFL only games provisionally scheduled for Sunday afternoon can be moved to Sunday night. The AFL (obviously) doesn't play afternoon games on Friday so it wouldn't quite be the same arrangement.

 

[Beckers]

****ing lol @ the little clubs bashing Essendon. Not the faintest idea of how ratings and commercial revenue work.

Is that you Vlad?

If so, perhaps there is a line between maximising revenue and keeping the competition even and perhaps it is leaning too much towards maximising revenue at this stage. Just maybe it needs to be adjusted to keep all clubs on a somewhat even keel?

Just a thought!

 

[Tas]

****ing lol @ the little clubs bashing Essendon. Not the faintest idea of how ratings and commercial revenue work.

Average Friday night FTA ratings for the 19 rounds to date is 698,473. The average Friday night FTA ratings for games including Essendon is 655,000. The average Friday night FTA games not including Essendon is 718,538.

So, Essendon is pulling in below average and dragging down the average Friday night ratings, that is taking into consideration the number of token games the AFL gives to clubs for Friday night which draw well below average.

Based on how ratings and commercial revenue work, that would be bad for the TV stations.

It was a forgone conclusion that North would score well below average for our game, we are in rebuild mode and we played an opponent nobody thought or expected us to beat, which is expected we got the numbers we did but there is no grounds for us to expect or demand more Friday night games until we are playing at a standard which will attract more neutral supporters.

But, Essendon have consistently been under average on Friday nights for several years.

The problem for the stations is they can't know a year in advance who is going to be playing reasonable footy to give them more air time. Ie, if Fremantle took a lot more of Essendon's games this year then the TV stations would have rated a whole lot better. Who was to know at the end of 2009 that Freo would play as well as they have?

TV stations need to have more power to decide within a shorter time frame which game is match of the week and deserves to be on Friday night.

 

[boncer34]

Not the point.

Yeah it kinda is. You want good close games on friday night. Which Essendon has delivered.

 

[shintemaster]

I think a lot of people are confusing attendance with television. No one is doubting that certain clubs are bigger drawcards. What they are disputing is that these clubs will always draw more viewers. Obviously that is flawed.

Let's say *as an example* that there are 6 million regular football watchers out there divided between the teams. Now obviously different teams will have different numbers of supporters who will be more likely to watch their own teams.

Imagine that Collingwood are playing Essendon on a Friday night. Between them lets say they have a massive combined viewing audience of 1 million potentially. That still leaves a potential 5 million other viewers who may or may not be interested in the game. Obviously it's more likely that the viewers of the teams involved will watch the game however that is still a massive pool of neutral viewers that is potentially being ignored.

Neutrals, IMHO, are interested in
a) Good quality games
b) High result games (ie. season defining, closely placed teams, finals shaping etc)
c) High impact games (ie. Off field dramas, fiery previous encounters, big name signings etc)
d) Variety

Tas covered it earlier when mentioning that the lack of flexibility in the fixture is a real problem. They can't predict the popularity of games so they pick the low hanging fruit. It's low risk, low reward but understandable - they are paying a lot of money for these rights and this way the risk is lower in their eyes. Unfortunately it means that the potential highs aren't as good.

 

[DivideandMultiply]

Essendon, regardless of ladder position is a huge drawcard, TV or at the game.

Under Knights, every second week, they're the the best spectacle in the country and an awesome advertisement for AFL football.

You forgot to add the sarcastic *rollseyes* at the end of your post.

 

[shububu]

meh

i would just like to have Friday night games live on FTA up here.

 

[jim boy]

what about scheduling two Friday night matches?

Then the broadcaster at least ahs an option of deciding the more appealling match

 

[LordLucifer]

How about a ground breaking thought?

Delegate Friday nights evenly through the competition, so that all teams get an equal exposure to them.

Maybe we can also have travel to interstate venues by Melbourne teams equalized too while we are at it!

We could also schedule teams to play each other on a rotating basis that is fair all round.

OMG! We might then have a fair and equitable competition.

Vlad and Ando would have an epileptic fit!

Thank-you young man, you've beaten me to it and I'm pleased to be beaten in this case.

Why the **** should Friday night footy be the domain of mainly Victorian-based teams and then to make it worse, basically the same 3-4 clubs all the time.

Why isn't it shared around evenly so that ALL of the clubs can share the spoils ??

It's a 22-week season and there are 5 states hosting games so why not rotate it around the country ??

1. Melbourne (Blues VS Melbourne-based club)
2. Sydney (Swans VS Melbourne-based club)
3. Adelaide (Crows VS Melbourne-based club)
4. Perth (Eagles VS Melbourne-based club)
5. Brisbane (Lions VS Melbourne-based club )
6 Melbourne (Magpies VS Melbourne-based club)
7. Sydney (GWS VS Melbourne-based club)
8. Adelaide (Power VS Melbourne-based club)
9. Perth (Dockers VS Melbourne-based club)
10. Brisbane (Suns VS Melbourne-based club)
11. Melbourne (Hawks VS Melbourne-based club)
12. Sydney (Swans VS Melbourne-based club)
13. Adelaide (Crows VS Melbourne-based club)
14. Perth (Eagles VS Melbourne-based club)
15. Brisbane (Lions VS Melbourne-based club )
16. Melbourne (Bombers VS Melbourne-based club)
17. Sydney (GWS VS Melbourne-based club)
18. Adelaide (Power VS Melbourne-based club)
19. Perth (Dockers VS Melbourne-based club)
20. Brisbane (Suns VS Melbourne-based club)
21. Melbourne (Cats VS Melbourne-based club)
22. Sydney (Swans VS Melbourne-based club)

This is a really rough layout of how it could work (and it's based on 22 rounds in a season), there are 22 overall opponents who have to be put into those games so with 10 Victorian teams, it means that they all get at least two Friday night games.

Overall, this approach should give every club in the competition two Friday night appearances apart from the Swans who would get three.

Seems like a better way of divvying it up across the board.