By DAVID HAYWARD
WITH the NRL left “powerless” to change the most unpopular scheduling of matches on Thursday night and 6pm Friday for 2018, the only mechanism left is for people power to take control and enact a fan strike.
This latest NRL round has seen back to back Thursday night and 6pm Friday matches at Homebush drawing fewer than 7,000 fans each. This is the final emphatic statement from the fans having voted with their feet against matches in these time slots this year. Although it can be argued this is not a form of fan protest, when it is virtually physically and logistically impossible for these thousands of fans to get themselves to the stadium given the activities, duties and responsibilities they have to execute during these time slots.
The next step to complete the fan strike is to disrupt the TV ratings so the TV networks and the NRL are forced into a change.
Such a protest would be similar to the old The Simpson’ episode which saw the giant advertising mascots of Springfield coming to life and destroying everything in their path. The satirical message to the story was that advertising goes away if people stop paying attention to it, so Lisa Simpson created a jingle named “Just Don’t Look” to get people to stop looking and ultimately it worked.
Given the messages provided by the NRL this year on this issue, if the fans treat ‘advertising’ as Thursday night and 6pm Friday NRL matches as this perhaps gives the fans one last hope to make it disappear forever. All the fans have to do is simply “just don’t look” at the remaining poorly scheduled matches this season.
NRL fans should also take heart that they can make a difference by resorting to a form of strike or protest as there have been recent success stories in European football leagues.
German football fans have protested on multiple occasions to block planned Bundesliga ticket price hikes which has resulted in the league having the cheapest tickets amongst the top four leagues in Europe. Coincidently they also have the highest domestic football attendances in the world by some margin. Further, the loss of revenue has been offset by curbing club spending through keeping player salaries and transfer fees at sustainable levels (i.e. not matching the spending of club giants in England, Spain and Italy) and focusing on domestic youth player development programs. This system has resulted in Germany not only having arguably the greatest domestic league match atmosphere of any sport in the world, but also World Cup champions. Much credit for these results goes to the fans and the stance they took to greedy corporate growth plans that can often kill the fabric of sport.
In February 2016, around 10,000 Liverpool fans also staged a walk-out during a home match after hearing the news the already considered too expensive ticket prices would increase further for the next season. This resulted in Liverpool owners, Fenway Sport Group, immediately backing down and freezing ticket prices to the previous season.
There have been a few informal / unintentional fan protests in the NRL. One example would be the response to the Super League War in 1995 which saw tens of thousands of fans switch either to support AFL in Sydney and Brisbane, or the newly formed Super Rugby competition. In this instance, the TV warlords weren’t threatened by such a walk out from rugby league as they would still be capturing their eyeballs watching the different sports leagues on their TV network anyway.
The TV ratings for 2017 make it very difficult for Channel Nine or Fox Sports to want to change the status quo. Thursday night rugby league matches are averaging the same as Friday night matches at a combined 412,000 for Sydney and Brisbane for Channel Nine. For Fox Sports, Thursday night is averaging around 221,000 nationally compared to 224,000 for the Friday Channel Nine match, while the 6pm Friday match is averaging around 210,000 viewers nationally.
For the 6pm Friday match, the logical night time slot replacement for fans is 6:30pm Sunday night. Its bleedingly obvious to all attendances would be greater in Sydney on a Sunday night compared to 6pm Friday as Sunday doesn’t coincide with peak traffic periods. The four Sunday night matches in 2017 so far averaged crowds of 13,328, 13 per cent more than 6pm Friday which has averaged 11,769 overall, including a paltry average of 9,871 for matches in Sydney.
While crowds are suffering, the key to convincing those in power to make the switch to Sunday night is TV ratings. Pleasingly the ratings for four Sunday night matches this year averaged 250,750 nationally on Fox Sports, 20 per cent more than 6pm Friday which is averaging 211,429. Further, a reported basis for the 6pm Friday timeslot for Fox Sports is that it can hold and attract more viewers for the prime time Friday night match which is watched by most on Channel Nine. However, this theory has been effectively proven to be of no use to Fox Sports, given, as noted above, the Thursday night match on Fox Sports (without the exclusive lead in NRL match) has averaged the same as the Friday night Channel Nine match.
Consequently, there is now no valid excuse for the NRL and TV networks to continue the 6pm Friday match in 2018 and not replace it with a Sunday night match.
In terms of Thursday night matches, it is a more challenging task to shift the timeslot to Friday, Saturday or Sunday to the TV networks satisfaction.
The impact of Thursday night on attendances speak for themselves, with the average in 2017 being 13,121, 34 per cent fewer than the Friday night prime time attendance average of 19,899. While the Friday night prime time average is boosted by the plethora of highly attended Brisbane Broncos home matches, the three Thursday night matches in Brisbane this year have averaged 25,369 which is 25 per cent fewer than the Friday night average of 33,946. Therefore the NRL stand to gain one match per week increasing by around 30 per cent if they move the Thursday night match into a more fan friendly Friday or Saturday night prime time slot.
There is a limited range of practical options for where the Thursday night match could be relocated to. There is only so much time in a given weekend, many stakeholder needs to be met and it is a challenging task to maximise match TV ratings and attendances within night time double headers when 15 of the 16 NRL clubs are located in the same time zone.
One option would be a 6:30pm Friday night for a New Zealand match followed by a second Friday match with an 8:20pm kick off. And on the weekends there isn’t a match in New Zealand, a 7:45pm Friday night match on Australia’s east coast can be scheduled followed by a 9:30pm (EST) match in Perth. However, Channel Nine are unlikely to replace the 6:30-7:30pm time slot with rugby league given it currently rates well with news and current affairs shows. It will also be a challenge getting the 9:30pm Friday match to rate as well as the 8pm Thursday match to make it palatable for Channel Nine.
Another option would be have Channel Nine start showing Saturday night football throughout 2018, perhaps under a four match ‘Super Saturday’ match schedule 2:30pm, 4:30pm, 6:30pm and 8:20pm schedule with Channel Nine hosting the last match. In terms of TV ratings, this should maintain the strong ratings Fox Sports currently receives on Saturdays (Fox Sports ratings dropped by just 5% with Channel Nine broadcasting the last two Saturday nights) and be an improvement on the 221,000 Thursday night average this year. The impact to navigate is Channel Nine given the two recent Saturday night matches have attracted 30% fewer viewers in Sydney and Brisbane compared to the overall average for Thursday night matches this year. It should be noted this gap is magnified by the fact the two Saturday night matches did not include the Broncos or a bigger drawing Sydney club which are usually saved for Thursday or Friday night.
Therefore the only practical mechanism available for Thursday night matches to be moved to Saturday night next year is for fans to vote with their remotes and refuse to watch the remaining four matches on Thursday night and 6pm Friday. To minimize disruption and provide solidarity to NRL supports, fans can instead turn on the radio broadcasts.
While it is difficult to rally enough people to create a movement of the magnitude that makes authorities stand up and listen, the fans do have social media on their side in 2017 to realistically mobilise even 50,000 Sydney and Brisbane NRL fans to switch off Thursday night and 6pm Friday matches in the coming weeks. Fans should be encouraged by the efforts Bundesliga and Liverpool fans who protested in different forms with much success with the added benefit this protest requires no effort at all.
And if the NRL players continue to threaten strike action which is to the detriment of the game and fans, why not NRL fans in return express their frustration for the good of the game by hitting the NRL and TV networks where it hurts them the most?
The NRL seem to be trying to emulate the AFL as a means of closing the financial divide between them. However, all they have achieved in the last five years is to fall further behind them, even though they have managed to significantly reduce TV revenue gap that presided 10 years ago.
It is worth noting here that the AFL looks to NFL for inspiration in economic capitalism intertwined with communist style public relations and homogenization of its clubs and fans to maintain its status as the most popular and powerful in Australia. This clearly isn’t working well for the NRL. In return, the NRL fans and administrators should look to the Bundesliga (and America’s equivalent the National Hockey League and Major League Soccer for that matter), to improve its current plight and make the game the greatest it can be over the next decade. And who knows, maybe the sport that is the most genuine and supportive to its people and grass roots will end up becoming the most popular in Australia in time?
#NRLfanstrike #nothursdayNRL #no6pmfridayNRL #justdontlookNRL
