North want to sell a home game to the Dockers or Eagles

[threenewpadlocks]

This sounds like major first footy world problems for the unorganized. If you want access over here, you need to be a signed up member with a seat or plan ahead at least a month out to get one. We don't have half the stadium GA like over in Victoria and the chances of a walkup game are very slim. It's because we have a city of 2.2m people with 2 teams and 1 game on a weekend. In comparison to Melbourne with 9 teams & 4-5 games for 5.3m people. Don't get me started on the price difference for footy in the different state that has created.

I think this just shows how unbalanced the comp is and moving 2 games over a year is only a pebble on the giant scale but better than nothing.

But this provides a home ground advantage through geographic realities of Perth being a far away, isolated city, that is one and the same that people want to square away through less burdonsome travel.

If the whole purpose of the league is to try and equalise every single advantage gained by historic fanbase and geographic realities, the natural conclusion isn't just to give Freo and WC additional games in WA, it's to try and equalise the league in such as way that every team has an equal opportunity to have an equal amount of fans through the gate (such as through marquee fixturing), or by killing off Melbourne teams.

Given that we're not either giving Anzac Day to North or either killing them off (which is only fair to do one or the other by your arguments), we also should not be giving extra games in WA to Freo and WC.

 

[Philth]

Anyone who doesn't think WA3 would be a success has rocks in their head in my opinon.

I am genuinely interested to hear how you think it would be a success.

 

[Purple Suit]

But this provides a home ground advantage through geographic realities of Perth being a far away, isolated city, that is one and the same that people want to square away through less burdonsome travel.

If the whole purpose of the league is to try and equalise every single advantage gained by historic fanbase and geographic realities, the natural conclusion isn't just to give Freo and WC additional games in WA, it's to try and equalise the league in such as way that every team has an equal opportunity to have an equal amount of fans through the gate (such as through marquee fixturing), or by killing off Melbourne teams.

Given that we're not either giving Anzac Day to North or either killing them off (which is only fair to do one or the other by your arguments), we also should not be giving extra games in WA to Freo and WC.

To equalize the league, we need less teams in Vic and more in WA. It solves both these issues, hence why North selling games to WA is part of the solution.

There is no issue big vic clubs not travelling much and playing 2 games a year vs the big 4. If one is up while the other three are down, then they get a free ride (Collingwood of late, Richmond before). No one bats a eyelid at that because it's about money, exactly what this deal is.

 

[Philth]

People would 100% jump ship, not everybody or not even most, but there would definitely be enough to justify the clubs existence.
All the interstate fans in WA would more likely favour the WA3 club and potentially even jump ship so they can get to regular games, and a chunk of WCE and Freo fans would support them at least initially just to get them going, like how Tassy has so much support despite 95%+ of those people having 0 intention of actually wanting the club to win.

Perth is a city that is under-represented in the AFL, compared to Melbourne at least. People still go to North, Saints and Dogs games every week, WA3 will get a far larger marketshare than any of those clubs.

Good post. The bolded part is a good point. We wouldn't jump ship, but could certainly get behind a new club.

If I was living in Sydney for example, I'd certainly go to GWS games and get behind them. It looks like a fun time at their home games. So, you can say that interstate fans in Perth might do the same thing.

Freo and WC fans are pretty rusted on though. It would take a long time to get a decent size support base.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

To equalize the league, we need less teams in Vic and more in WA. It solves both these issues, hence why North selling games to WA is part of the solution.

I would argue that WA teams' travel disadvantages is not even as strong as their overall net home ground advantages owned by the average of all the other clubs in the league. You get 50,000 home fans to a game and 1,000 away fans, when you travel to Melbourne, you often play in front of 5,000 fans with only 20,000 home fans. I believe this is a greater advantage overall across 23 games is far greater than 12 plane trips vs, 6, and a few more hours on a plane once you're in it.

This overall advantage is then further strengthened by the additional travel on North, the lesser travel on WA teams, and the greater home ground advantage and disadvantage being swung around, by flipping around a couple of home games that make North travel 7 times, Freo and WC only 11 times, and 12 home games vs 10.

There is no issue big vic clubs not travelling much and playing 2 games a year vs the big 4. If one is up while the other three are down, then they get a free ride (Collingwood of late, Richmond before). No one bats a eyelid at that because it's about money, exactly what this deal is.

I can agree with this - I'm saying that if we're so up in arms about WA's travel than we should be equally up in arms about all elements of fixturing such as the double-ups, away fan access to games in Melbourne etc. It creates an overall unfair system that hurts the small Melbourne clubs, accepting that they travel less, than the fact that WA teams travel more are also disadvantaged (though this disadvantage is nowhere near as great as ticketing, fan and size of market influences on crowds and other fixturing).

Like you said it's about money, but I would argue that North are naturally disadvantaged in the Melbourne market unfairly, but creating additional unfairness that requires them financially selling off further HGA, reinforcing the existing unfairness.

I agree that it's "about money" but I could equally argue that North wouldn't have to be in a financial position to sell off their home ground advantage if they were e.g. compensated by a direct payment by Collingwood and Essendon by the fact that these clubs can generate more revenue by the fact they have access to Anzac Day every year, locking North out of that as a marquee fixture and it not being rotated around, and can sell membership packages that gives them equal away game access to North's home games than North fans purchasing a GA membership.

 

[stallon]

Good post. The bolded part is a good point. We wouldn't jump ship, but could certainly get behind a new club.

If I was living in Sydney for example, I'd certainly go to GWS games and get behind them. It looks like a fun time at their home games. So, you can say that interstate fans in Perth might do the same thing.

Freo and WC fans are pretty rusted on though. It would take a long time to get a decent size support base.

What about in the future when the guys who just get involved to support the new team have kids, and the kids decide to want to support a local team? Even any kids or families who want to go to a game will look at the WA3 home games first as theyll be way cheaper for a long time.
Then look at the amount of migration into WA, its massive. A lot of those people dont have teams yet

New fans will pick the one they can to a few home games for, the team they can get a membership with, and thatll be WA3.

If I was living in Perth and WA3 entered the comp id 100% go to a handful of their home games each year despite being a mad WCE fan. Id even buy a membership and a hat/scarf to wear to games. I wouldnt jump over but for a few years id support them as my 2nd team.

 

[FlowersByIrene]

I am genuinely interested to hear how you think it would be a success.

As has been flagged previously, Western Australia is the most significant footballing state outside of Victoria, that is evident in the away fans based in WA that consistently turn out for their teams - see Carlton, North, Richmond, Essendon, Collingwood that all have substantial fan bases in Western Australia. There are by far the most proportionate number of football fans in Perth than there are anywhere outside of Melbourne.

For those like me, who are a fan of interstate teams, we don't get to participate in the same football every week culture that Melbourne fans do. I go to four to five games a year, whenever Carlton is playing and I'll randomly go to a few West Coast / Freo games just to see football live. But would love that Melbourne-vibe of seeing football 10-20 times a year.

For those fans WA3 will be an amazing opportunity to regularly go to games, more seats will be available, likely at a lower cost than Freo / Dockers games, allowing football starved Perth fans to get to games. I, and the tens of thousands like me in Perth, would likely buy or consider buying a WA3 membership just to get cheap access to being able to see the footy. WA3 would pass GWS and GC membership figures on day 1 i'd suspect.

There are some who would never actually support WA3, but would still be financial members to get access to games. Many would likely use them as a second team to support against Freo / WCE. Over time, some may change allegiances, children may grow up supporting WA3, migrants may back the new team.

It is the only clear option. In fact I would argue that any argument for any other team is equalled or better by WA3. It would have more fans, more members, more attendance than any other option.

 

[stallon]

I would argue that WA teams' travel disadvantages is not even as strong as their overall net home ground advantages owned by the average of all the other clubs in the league. You get 50,000 home fans to a game and 1,000 away fans, when you travel to Melbourne, you often play in front of 5,000 fans with only 20,000 home fans. I believe this is a greater advantage overall across 23 games is far greater than 12 plane trips vs, 6, and a few more hours on a plane once you're in it.

Mate you keep bringing this up, we want to lessen the travel. Its been shown to shorten players careers, impact recovery, impact home life, mental health, etc
The crowd sizes are a much lesser impact. When non vic clubs go to vic they have that same 1% of the crowd that the vic teams do when travelling.
It all evens out EXCEPT the travel

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Mate you keep bringing this up, we want to lessen the travel. Its been shown to shorten players careers, impact recovery, impact home life, mental health, etc

Provide a link then. Prove where this has been studied or at least referenced to WA teams other than just a "I'm going to state it because it self-evidently feels vibes-based obvious. Other than just saying it, there's no difference to me just saying "there's no proof that it's been shown to shorten players' careers, impact recovery, impact home life, mental health etc". I can just spurt it out.

FWIW I don't disagree that it probably makes a difference but I'm very scepitcal that it makes a difference more than an equivalent amount than anything more than 10-15 on-field points a year.

At least with home ground advantages there is a direct statistical relationship of match results that we can study. Academic articles, the book Footbalistics, the mathematical modelling of bookmakers and tipping models. We know that the advantage that Freo and WC have over the Dogs is about 100 points a season relative to if both teams played all 23 games on the moon.

The crowd sizes are a much lesser impact. When non vic clubs go to vic they have that same 1% of the crowd that the vic teams do when travelling.

As someone who has gone to many Dogs home games vs. interstate teams and travelled with the Dogs to away interstate games, this is patently untrue.

A typical Adelaide, WC game in Melbourne or whatever has several thousand away fans. It's a minority, but in a crowd of 25,000, its's still notable - more than 10% of the crowd or whatever. It is not hard to visually see this around the stadium. Maybe 3-4,000 West Coast or Adelaide fans. Granted, I will admit that there are fewer Port or Fremantle fans for these types of games.

We can literally infer this mathematically.

All Western Bulldogs vs. WC games at Docklands - average crowd of 24,000

All Western Bulldogs vs. Freo games at Docklands - average crowd of 20,500

I know that the averages miss a bit about which specific year, previous year winning the flag, the increase in potential crowd making it more a "marquee" game that would mean that more home fans turn up as a snowball effect etc. but even accepting all that, agreeing that generally an equal amount of Dogs home fans go to our home games irrespecitve of opposition, we can infer that a couple thousand of West Coast fans are going to an away game at the Dogs that they can go to because they're a bigger club than Fremantle etc. which diminishes the Dogs' home ground advantage by a point or two, which aggregates for every game over a season. I confirm this visually anecdotally with my eyes when I notice more WC fans in the stand, they make more noise during these games, than Freo fans, etc.

When the Dogs travel to Adelaide Oval or Perth Stadium, which I have done, it is clear that there are less than 2,000 people in the crowd that are Dogs fans. I am among that less than 2,000 fans. I have visually looked around the stadium and estimated this. This lines up with common sense in terms of number of members of the away team based in each city, extent of travel, etc.

That's 5% or less of that crowd. The distinction is small, but it adds up in the aggregate over each game in a season and seasons as a whole to be worth at least dozens of on-field points across the season.

 

[blueboy25]

I am genuinely interested to hear how you think it would be a success.

Similar to how Tassie will work.

How many Tassie people will continue to support their existing clubs in the AFL but also follow the Tassie side. Sounds like a lot will continue to do that.

If the team was going to be based at Joondalup they would need to initially play their home games at Joondalup arena which would need capital works along with some amendments to public transport but as they build their base they would slowly move more and more games to Optus.

Remember most of the Eagles and Dockers supporters have jumped ship from their original VFL/AFL team once, nothing to stop them doing it again.

 

[FlowersByIrene]

Who would support them? Everyone in WA already has an allegiance and plonking a team in Joondalup isn't going to make the rusted on Northerners jump ship.

West Sydney is still battling and it dipped into an entirely new market.

The only way WA3 could work is a team in the South-West, and that would be years away with the infrastructure required

You're looking at it entirely backward.

The market of football fans in Western Sydney is significantly lower, likely magnitudes lower than the number of non-Freo / WCE fans in Perth. Despite there being more people in Western Sydney, there are significantly fewer football fans.

There would be at least 100,000 Western Australian football fans that are not fans of West Coast or Freo.

Those people will like going to the football, even if it isn't their team. Even if 20% of them want to watch football every week, you have 20,000 WA3 members right away, add in the freebies that the AFL will give out to children and families and you add another 10,000, that's already more weekly fans than GC and GWS.

I would place a large stake on WA3 having higher crowd attendances than all of GWS, GC, St Kilda, North and Western Bulldogs - year 1.

 

[stallon]

Provide a link then. Prove where this has been studied or at least referenced to WA teams other than just a "I'm going to state it because it self-evidently feels vibes-based obvious. Other than just saying it, there's no difference to me just saying "there's no proof that it's been shown to shorten players' careers, impact recovery, impact home life, mental health etc". I can just spurt it out.

FWIW I don't disagree that it probably makes a difference but I'm very scepitcal that it makes a difference more than an equivalent amount than anything more than 10-15 on-field points a year.

At least with home ground advantages there is a direct statistical relationship of match results that we can study. Academic articles, the book Footbalistics, the mathematical modelling of bookmakers and tipping models. We know that the advantage that Freo and WC have over the Dogs is about 100 points a season relative to if both teams played all 23 games on the moon.


As someone who has gone to many Dogs home games vs. interstate teams and travelled with the Dogs to away interstate games, this is patently untrue.

A typical Adelaide, WC game in Melbourne or whatever has several thousand away fans. It's a minority, but in a crowd of 25,000, its's still notable - more than 10% of the crowd or whatever. It is not hard to visually see this around the stadium. Maybe 3-4,000 West Coast or Adelaide fans. Granted, I will admit that there are fewer Port or Fremantle fans for these types of games.

We can literally infer this mathematically.

All Western Bulldogs vs. WC games at Docklands - average crowd of 24,000

All Western Bulldogs vs. Freo games at Docklands - average crowd of 20,500

I know that the averages miss a bit about which specific year, previous year winning the flag, the increase in potential crowd making it more a "marquee" game that would mean that more home fans turn up as a snowball effect etc. but even accepting all that, agreeing that generally an equal amount of Dogs home fans go to our home games irrespecitve of opposition, we can infer that a couple thousand of West Coast fans are going to an away game at the Dogs that they can go to because they're a bigger club than Fremantle etc. which diminishes the Dogs' home ground advantage by a point or two, which aggregates for every game over a season. I confirm this visually anecdotally with my eyes when I notice more WC fans in the stand, they make more noise during these games, than Freo fans, etc.

When the Dogs travel to Adelaide Oval or Perth Stadium, which I have done, it is clear that there are less than 2,000 people in the crowd that are Dogs fans. I am among that less than 2,000 fans. I have visually looked around the stadium and estimated this. This lines up with common sense in terms of number of members of the away team based in each city, extent of travel, etc.

That's 5% or less of that crowd. The distinction is small, but it adds up in the aggregate over each game in a season and seasons as a whole to be worth at least dozens of on-field points across the season.

Im not going and finding research papers lol, this is just something that is common knowledge for anyone who has been around FIFO at some stage in their life.
The constant travel while doing physical activity does not promote longevity.

As I said idc about crowds, it all evens out and if it doesnt, then thats a problem with your fanbase not showing up which frankly has nothing to do with the WA teams wanting a fair go

 

[Spirit Level]

You're looking at it entirely backward.

The market of football fans in Western Sydney is significantly lower, likely magnitudes lower than the number of non-Freo / WCE fans in Perth. Despite there being more people in Western Sydney, there are significantly fewer football fans.

There would be at least 100,000 Western Australian football fans that are not fans of West Coast or Freo.

Those people will like going to the football, even if it isn't their team. Even if 20% of them want to watch football every week, you have 20,000 WA3 members right away, add in the freebies that the AFL will give out to children and families and you add another 10,000, that's already more weekly fans than GC and GWS.

I would place a large stake on WA3 having higher crowd attendances than all of GWS, GC, St Kilda, North and Western Bulldogs - year 1.

I guess I'm looking at it from the who will actually "support" them angle.

In terms of WA people who want to see more than 1 game of footy a weekend it would probably be viable financially.

Might just be a bit of a hollow money making exercise though?

Oh god it's the AFLs favourite thing to do isn't it? It's almost certain to happen

 

[Philth]

Similar to how Tassie will work.

How many Tassie people will continue to support their existing clubs in the AFL but also follow the Tassie side. Sounds like a lot will continue to do that.

If the team was going to be based at Joondalup they would need to initially play their home games at Joondalup arena which would need capital works along with some amendments to public transport but as they build their base they would slowly move more and more games to Optus.

Remember most of the Eagles and Dockers supporters have jumped ship from their original VFL/AFL team once, nothing to stop them doing it again.

Good theory, but I'm not sure you can compare Tassie to WA 3 - there are already 2 WA teams here.

Eagles and Dockers fans jumped ship because they had an opportunity to support a WA club.

You guys have made some good points though, I'm not as skeptical as I once was.

 

[FlowersByIrene]

I guess I'm looking at it from the who will actually "support" them angle.

In terms of WA people who want to see more than 1 game of footy a weekend it would probably be viable financially.

Might just be a bit of a hollow money making exercise though?

Oh god it's the AFLs favourite thing to do isn't it? It's almost certain to happen

The real support would come with time, all you need is to have a crowd and a half financially viable team and it will have the same number of fans as Fremantle within 30 years I would say.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Im not going and finding research papers lol, this is just something that is common knowledge for anyone who has been around FIFO at some stage in their life.
The constant travel while doing physical activity does not promote longevity.

But I can argue that FIFO workers not keeping themselves fit and in good health (that AFL players are) means that the common knowledge that is appropriate for FIFO workers does not apply to AFL players. They are less physically burdened by airline travel than some fat truck driver driving a truck in a mine, which diminishes the impact of the travel itself.

As I said idc about crowds, it all evens out and if it doesnt, then thats a problem with your fanbase not showing up which frankly has nothing to do with the WA teams wanting a fair go

Sure, then argue for a fair go in all fixturing elements for all teams, such as the inequality among Vic teams (through things like access to the public holiday marquee matches in Melbourne), as much as there's inequality across states. Otherwise you're just biased toward your own team, and not wanting to uphold the principle of fairness for all teams generally.

 

[oak79]

People would 100% jump ship, not everybody or not even most, but there would definitely be enough to justify the clubs existence.
All the interstate fans in WA would more likely favour the WA3 club and potentially even jump ship so they can get to regular games, and a chunk of WCE and Freo fans would support them at least initially just to get them going, like how Tassy has so much support despite 95%+ of those people having 0 intention of actually wanting the club to win.

Perth is a city that is under-represented in the AFL, compared to Melbourne at least. People still go to North, Saints and Dogs games every week, WA3 will get a far larger marketshare than any of those clubs.

Perth isn't under-represented - Melbourne / Victoria is OVER represented - don't equate the two.

Ideally there should be less teams in Melbourne, not more teams in Perth.

I don't believe enough people would jump ship, especially for a metro team playing at Optus. More likely to get a following for a slightly removed market with a boutique stadium, such as the south west - however, I still strongly believe we should be reducing team numbers, not adding to it.

 

[stallon]

Perth isn't under-represented - Melbourne / Victoria is OVER represented - don't equate the two.

Ideally there should be less teams in Melbourne, not more teams in Perth.

I don't believe enough people would jump ship, especially for a metro team playing at Optus. More likely to get a following for a slightly removed market with a boutique stadium, such as the south west - however, I still strongly believe we should be reducing team numbers, not adding to it.

I agree, but the AFL wont remove teams. Need more non vic teams, especially another team in WA to ease the travel burden that is caused by the AFLs unwillingness to actually fix the comp.

I do genuinely think WA3 would get more support than GC or GWS from very early on, and it could support itself.
Give them half their home games at a smaller stadium for a couple of years when they host smaller clubs, that should help bring in more fans and have a bit of novelty by playing at another ground.

 

[parano1a]

Marvel Tennants: Dogs, Saints Essendon and Carlton play ALL home games at Marvel.

Essendon and Carlton are never going to play each other or Collingwood or Richmond at Marvel.

 

[stallon]

But I can argue that FIFO workers not keeping themselves fit and in good health (that AFL players are) means that the common knowledge that is appropriate for FIFO workers does not apply to AFL players. They are less physically burdened by airline travel than some fat truck driver driving a truck in a mine, which diminishes the impact of the travel itself.

Sure, then argue for a fair go in all fixturing elements for all teams, such as the inequality among Vic teams (through things like access to the public holiday marquee matches in Melbourne), as much as there's inequality across states. Otherwise you're just biased toward your own team, and not wanting to uphold the principle of fairness for all teams generally.

All I can argue for right now is for the WA teams. I 100% would want the entire fixture to be fair, the marquee games being locked in for certain teams and the MCGs hold on the competition is a disgrace.

One step at a time, but we are in a thread discussing North selling games to WA right now

 

[threenewpadlocks]

All I can argue for right now is for the WA teams. I 100% would want the entire fixture to be fair, the marquee games being locked in for certain teams and the MCGs hold on the competition is a disgrace.

One step at a time, but we are in a thread discussing North selling games to WA right now

Fair enough, but you can see why I get annoyed when WA fans brush small Melbourne teams with the same perceived fixturing advantages brush as the big Victorian teams (which now being exasperated by Freo and WC buying that advantage back from a small Melbourne club and not a big Melbourne club).

 

[amazingjoshy]

At least we can statistically measure the relationship to home ground advantages to crowd sizes. It's been done. Plenty of research on it.

Some Useful Things I Learned About Football - Squiggle

I got into football stats because I wanted to understand why my team was so bad for so long and was there any hope for the future or should I just die. That was about 20 years ago. Along the way, I learned that plenty of common football wisdom is probably wrong. Stats people can … Continue...

squiggle.com.au

The squiggle then factors that into creating a more accurate predictor of results, because it knows that when Essendon or whomever travel, they're at a far greater disadvantage (worth a goal a game or more) driving down to Geelong where Geelong have the entirety of the crowd, than flying up to GC where half the crowd (if not more) at Cararra are Geelong supporter

Other than "vibes", actually try and put the travel burden into some sort of points-per-game equivalent? I agree that all things being equal that it's probably a disadvantage. I can't agree that it disadvantages more than the fact that there's a clear net home ground advantage through crowds that other teams don't get. (ie if the Dogs and Eagles were to play each other home and away, Eagles' advantages at home are far greater than the Dogs' advantages at home for each pairing of games).

From that "research" you provided

"you wouldn’t normally expect any team to win or lose even one whole extra game based on its fixtured home advantage."


However travelling 4+ hours on a plane every single week has a cumulative effect on players and if need that explained to you nothing I can say will help you

One extra week where the WA sides don't have to do that isn't unbalancing a competition that already has the world's most unbalanced fixture

 

[Philth]

Perth isn't under-represented - Melbourne / Victoria is OVER represented - don't equate the two.

Ideally there should be less teams in Melbourne, not more teams in Perth.

I don't believe enough people would jump ship, especially for a metro team playing at Optus. More likely to get a following for a slightly removed market with a boutique stadium, such as the south west - however, I still strongly believe we should be reducing team numbers, not adding to it.

I agree that we should not be adding more teams.

Tassie is coming in whether we like it or not.

That should NOT mean that we need a 20th team to even things up.

WA3, Canberra, NT, SA3. No to all.

 

[Papa G]

Essendon and Carlton are never going to play each other or Collingwood or Richmond at Marvel.

They should. Get 45,000 Essendon supporters in and 5000 Collingwood supporters in, and voila, you have home ground advantage. Problem solved.

 

[dean33]

So again, you would've been perfectly fine with Richmond folding and leaving the AFL instead of selling games to Queensland over a decade ago?

No one is folding these days. It shouldn’t be permitted.