Should the AFL market the game as Football?

[Puddy]

With the further expansion of Football into Queensland and NSW, Football has been marketed as AFL, especially with Rugby fans and Soccer fans referring to Football as AFL, but the game isnt called AFL, its called Football, or Australian Football.

Australian Soccer branded themselves as football 7-8 years ago and it failed miserably costing them millions and alienating Football and Rugby supporters from soccer and still 99% of Australia calls it soccer.

With the failings of Australian Soccer, should Football be marketed as AFL? or has the AFL done the right thing marketing Football as AFL to appeal more the states where Football isnt the dominate code?

 

[RUNVS]

No. Trying to market ourselves as "football" just sounds like a giant waste of money to me.

 

[The Passenger]

no but i wished they'd stop referring to it as AFL.

refer to it as "Australian Football"

 

[Docker Clint]

no but i wished they'd stop referring to it as AFL.

refer to it as "Australian Football"

Exactly, rugby league fans and players dont refer to the sport as NRL.

 

[Unfinished]

no but i wished they'd stop referring to it as AFL.

refer to it as "Australian Football"

This this this

 

[legend166]

I think they're missing a trick not using the Australian Football moniker (well, it's not really a moniker, since it's the name of the sport, but you catch my drift).

There's a lot of nationalistic bogans in NSW and QLD (and everywhere else). That's what I use to say to the guys in my cricket team who'd have a dig at footy. "Why do you hate the Australian game?" Hating it doesn't go well with their Southern Cross tattoos.

 

[The Speaker]

They fear the wrath of Fozzie.

 

[Kwality]

Truth is soccer managed to get football as it tried to rebrand itself & the media went along with it.
Calling our game AFL gives me the tomtits, to me its footy OR Aussie Rules - the AFL is our premier competition. Even Andrew Demetriou refers to the game as AFL - call it footy, thats who we are.

as an aside, spent a couple of years living in Adelaide & they called our game foopball, not football.

 

[Ando727]

no but i wished they'd stop referring to it as AFL.

refer to it as "Australian Football"

The ship has sailed on that, I'm afraid. I teach a lot of young kids and they universally refer to the sport as AFL. There is nothing that can stop it now short of a massive media blitz (not going to happen). In time, the name might revert to "football" or "footy" again, but only once the current young generation gets tired of using "AFL". I'm not a fan either, but trust me, it's very much entrenched in younger people. People born after 1990 use the shortest words they can get away with. "Australian Football" is simply too young. Nobody is going to text that. "Footy" is our best hope on that reasoning.

 

[Tulip]

I call it AFL. Don't know why.

I also call Rugby just that and soccer football.

 

[TheSunGod]

Should be marketed as Australian Football. If you don't like it, go live somewhere else.

What annoys me is that our national newspaper "The Australian", calls soccer "Football", and Australian Football "AFL". In fact, their website doesn't even provide an AFL tab at the top of the sportspage, but provides tabs for Rugby and Soccer ("Football" )

Footy gets a little section about halfway down the page


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/sport/football

 

[Unfinished]

I call it AFL. Don't know why.

Hey mate d you want to go out side and kick the 'EPL' ball around

 

[Roddy]

It sounds perfect in theory. To me, AUSTRALIAN football is football in AUSTRALIA. Just like Amercan football is football in America. I always call it football, no matter what. AFL is the premier competition of AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL.
And it's so ridiculous, because if you went to watch Norwood vs Centrals in the SANFL, or Claremont vs Subiaco in the WAFL etc, and you said 'what a great game of AFL' I imagine the locals would probably throw you out of the ground.
It used to be simple, Australian football was football in Australia, rugby league was rugby league or league, rugby union was rugby or union and soccer was soccer. Nice and easy. These days we have the ridiculous situation where you say 'football' and people don't know exactly what you're refering to. Sad and really stupid.
Unfortunately 'AFL' as the name for our game will stick, if it hasn't already, because it's also the BRAND NAME of the premier comp, and like any money making entity, the be all and end all of everything spreading the brand name. That's why AD etc refer to the game as 'AFL'. So even the custodians of the game are spreading the nonsense.
Luckily, it appears that soccer will forever maintain its present course in this country, and remain a strictly minority sport, so the English sport of soccer will not be known as 'football' in Australia in too widespread a fashion.

 

[Tulip]

Hey mate d you want to go out side and kick the 'EPL' ball around

One singular first division professional league in the world, makes sense.

Also call it footy

 

[bradrowe#32]

Why is rugby called Football? They kick the ball 10 times a match.

 

[GhostofJimJess]

No. Trying to market ourselves as "football" just sounds like a giant waste of money to me.

I've been saying this for years, but I reckon Australian Football needs to take ownership of the word "Footy", and market it's widespread usage as the appropriate branding of the sport.

As "Gridiron" is to American Football, as "Soccer" is to World Football, let "Footy" be to Australian Football.

We kick the footy, we go to the footy, we barrack for a footy team, and once upon a time we used to quite enjoy the Footy show. So now let's officially own the name "Footy".

 

[tigers_of_old_08]

Truth is soccer managed to get football as it tried to rebrand itself & the media went along with it.
Calling our game AFL gives me the tomtits, to me its footy OR Aussie Rules - the AFL is our premier competition. Even Andrew Demetriou refers to the game as AFL - call it footy, thats who we are.

as an aside, spent a couple of years living in Adelaide & they called our game foopball, not football.

True. However "footy" doesnt have a global appeal, can you imagine the Yanks calling their version of the game "footy" - it's NFL or NFL football, or American football.

So I can see where the AFL is going with this. The AFL brand needs to be distinguishable in a worldwide market.

 

[Roddy]

This is why 'footy' can't be used this way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1umTYg3Psy8

 

[GhostofJimJess]

This is why 'footy' can't be used this way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1umTYg3Psy8

Surely we're not making American opinion the basis for our decisions here, let alone a late-night light entertainment host desperately reaching for a laugh (and desperately reaching for entertainment, for that matter).

The sport of Australian Rules Football is most likely never going to be a mass-consumption sport on the international stage, just as gridiron, hurling and other indigenous sports have never really been embraced beyond niche/novelty interest outside their home borders.

I think this is primarily about what we Australians call it.

 

[finders]

no but i wished they'd stop referring to it as AFL.

refer to it as "Australian Football"

Im with you 100% it is the ONLY Australian Football played in OZ.Trouble is the public and PR people like abreviations IE: KFC etc.

 

[zachary]

AFL stands for Australian FOOTBALL League and the game has been called "football" in our language in four of 6 states for 150 years. Reference to "AFL" is to distinguish the top league from other leagues and associations such as the VFL, SANFL, WAFL, VAFA etc, and from the game itself. If it needs to be distinguished from other codes it's full and official name is Australian Football.
Soccer was known as soccer in this country for 50 years (and still is as far as the Socceroos are concerned), but because a few years it decided to rebrand itself as football (full and official name Association Football) some jerk-off journalists have taken it upon themselves to refuse to call our game football and rename it "footy" or some other diminutive form. Same old cultural cringe this country has always had - anything Australian must be inferior and has to defer to anything from overseas. And calling the game "AFL" is just plain wrong and insulting.
Football is what we have called our game since 1858, since Tom Wills placed his famous ad calling for the formation of a "foot-ball" club. That we would passively allow some Johnny-come-lately game of McDonaldsball to pinch our name and shunt us sideways is pretty weak.
PS Craig Foster is a fruit loop.

 

[crazywildhorse]

as an aside, spent a couple of years living in Adelaide & they called our game foopball, not football.

Our resident linguist returns.

 

[Roddy]

Surely we're not making American opinion the basis for our decisions here, let alone a late-night light entertainment host desperately reaching for a laugh (and desperately reaching for entertainment, for that matter).

The sport of Australian Rules Football is most likely never going to be a mass-consumption sport on the international stage, just as gridiron, hurling and other indigenous sports have never really been embraced beyond niche/novelty interest outside their home borders.

I think this is primarily about what we Australians call it.

America is obviously the market most sports would love to crack the most. Soccer has been trying for years and years, largely unsuccessfully. And you're right, football will never 'crack' the US market, but it could gain more of a foothold. Which could help with the talent drain in this country at the very least.

And think about the race we're dealing with (in a very general sense, apologies for any Americans reading this). If Letterman says on TV that 'footy' sounds 'gay', then probably millions upon millions of Americans went away from watching that show thinking yes, footy is indeed gay.

The irony of that is that when an Aussie says footy it sounds anything but.

 

[ChrisFooty]

AFL is a sport, not a league. Andrew said so.

It’s one of the reasons why expanding the game of Australian football will fail to have any significant impact in NSW/QLD. It would seem like a no-brainer to market the game as “Australian football”

If you see some school students playing U/10 Auskick, they are playing a game called AFL. I’m sure most of us have played a game of AFL at grassroots level in our younger days. Andrew says so.

 

[radiojake]

My girlfriend is from Brisbane and has never been terribly interested in many sports, however it irks me to no end when she refers to the game as 'AFL' - Especially so when referring to the pub football league that I play in -


I always thought it may have been a Brisbane/Sydney thing that happen to distinguish from Rugby, which seems to be erroneously reffered to as football by our northern state counterparts -