Media Coverage Overall

It's not Auckland's fault, it's football's? Give me a break.

Auckland and apathy for football go hand in hand.

Set. In. Stone.

How does this guy not electrocute himself firing up his laptop as he is that thick.

Hang on, though, Auckland's participation in football is huge. And you have the large immigrant population who don´t give a tinkers´ cuss about no eggball. Why wouldn't those people come out to see a well-performing pro team?

All on this.

It was the same 15 yers ago and for the first two seasons the Kingz went okay but crowds barely topped the Phoenix average.at Westpac in a market over 3x the size.

In my experience there are two reasons:

1, More Auckland football people are Premier league snobs.

2, Joe lunchpail in the 09 finds reasons not to go to events (well football games) rather than finding a way to make it work.

The numbers of times I heard 'you don't know Auckland traffic' about attending a Friday night game when I had driven from much further away through the same traffic was laughable.

Wasn't A-League though was it? A-League now a much diff beast to the old NASL.

This is heading waaaay off topic. 

The media suck. /end.

Good isn't it...

You are mis-quoting me and putting your own spin on what I said.

Which is just what a journalist would do.

Boom! Back on topic...

Have to laugh that at the same time as Cockerill, The Roar and their NZ mouthpieces write this, Gallup and co are talking up how the next TV deal needs 12 teams...

So the FFA don't want the Phoenix that cost them nothing but want two new teams they will have to fund?  As someone I know would say.- Yarn.

HN tis not in any way a Nix’s issue… has as I have said before a NZF issue as well as Sky.. The Nix’s are part of the story but only a part…

Recently say over the last two years maybe three years Football in Australia has kinda exploded out of the blocks…. What caused this, credit is given to three separate lines in the sand, first WSW and getting Western Sydney back in Football has been almost too hard to ignore, second and this was a brave decision by FFA they knocked back it is rumoured a 60 million dollar media deal to have the A-League on SBS, as well as Socceroo’s WCQ & ACQ on one hour delay on SBS, third the breaking of the ABC’s summer of cricket to the extent all A-Leagues and many W-League matches are called by the ABC.

Just yesterday the ABC paid 1.4 million for the right to broadcast 3 or 4 Socceroo matches on a two hour delay from the Asian Cup.

What this has achieved or resulted in has been a total change in the amount of main stream media, often supportive, mainly today by Football folk… Football enjoys in Australia today and as I said earlier media buyers believe there is a correlation between media coverage; and ratings, crowds, and memberships.

This has not happened in NZ and as other have correctly said the A-League has not taken hold in NZ to the extent it has in Australia…. The reasons are many only having one team I accept is also an issue.

FFA in many ways reflect this forum in tearing out their hair and saying where is the reporting… this is as I see it the issue FFA has and I don’t think they are happy with either Sky or NZF efforts.

FFA want a NZ team, you have to separate the too. FFA can be mad as hell with NZF and happy with the Nix … What does hurt is the Nix’s can get caught in the cross fire. 

I kind of agree with you MidF. It seems to me that the FFA are very pleased with the explosion of football in Australia. They are now looking at growing their market. With a NZ club already in the A-league they have probably looked at NZ as one other possible area of growth. Not in the area of extra NZ A-league teams but by trying to increase earnings from TV, sponsorship merchandising etc from NZ. I would consider that they see undeveloped potential in NZ

Hence the mutterings about SKY and the pitiful amount they pay to get a whole season of A-league games. Plus the way SKY has put almost zero resources into developing their football audience. The Nix have been caught up in the cross fire IMO. You are probably right....the FFA are probably pissed off with Sky and NZF but happy enough with the Nix

Like anything there are a number of angles ... NZF could argue its not their role to promote and Australian Domestic competition ... Further they could argue if you want the NZ media to talk about the A-League then you come over and do it... Further they could say its only the Nix that benefit so why should we bother...

FFA may counter having a team in NZ actually helps NZ Football and how can we as we are not their promote Football generally and the A-League in particular...

From a far Sky seem lazy and make money from Rugby and from Football given the small amount paid..

There appears to be no simple answer as FFA appear to like the Nix's management team and think as a club they are doing all they can but lack support from other Football bodies in NZ ...whether this is right or wrong I have no idea ...

However as JD said while back its naive to think there is not something under the surface between FFA & NZF & Sky ... 

Maybe its time for a big debate in NZ about having the NZ-League and whether having a team in the A-League brings the benefits wanted and if so then we do ***** if not we start an 6 or 8 team competition ourselves...  

that is a rather giant leap you make in that last sentence! More along the lines of what your usual message is too, I was starting to worry someone has hacked your account until I read that as you were actually starting to make some sense. 

Sky is the big issue here. They don't put any money in. If Sky were paying $5m for the rights, we wouldn't be having any of this discussion.

NZ already has a top tier domestic competition.Sky does not cover it, and would only broadcast it if NZF pays for the privilege.

Some breaking media news... Football going FTA Saturday night rounds 5 & 6.... 

http://www.a-league.com.au/article/saturday-night-...

2B - Edit: Can't reproduce a whole article here. Copyright issues.

I see your point about Auckland. The FFA could see the NZ as part of the whole Australasian market. Auckland is the last big metropolitan centre in Australasia without an A-League team. It could/should work. However it won't happen for many reasons.

Getting back to media coverage I think you would find media coverage would greatly increase for football if the AW's played meaningful games. The media get right in behind the big WC playoffs because it is a great story. Friendlies are marketing death. Playing other Oceania countries is marketing death. Someone made the comment about Aucklanders not getting out to AW games. Get NZ into the Asian zone WC playoff series....get us playing home games against Asian powerhouses like Korea, Japan and Australia and you will get the media interest and the crowds. The Oceania Confed is like Ebola

all white friendlies are marketing death, yet the media are all over an all blacks friendly against a minnow recently. 

Which teaches us that the real marketing death is that the All Blacks aren't a football team, but a rugby one.

yeah pretty much.

Either that or FIFA needs to rename friendlies to something cooler like "Georgie Pie uber cool test matches"

Then all our problems would be solved.

Hmm even in Aussie no one is actually making money owning a football club

The sooner NZ Football gets into AFC the better I agree.

Went to AW vs Tahiti WC qualifier in Chch, had a good crowd of 10 000 but heard a lot of people say they wouldn't go to another such game.

Asia is where its at and NZF needs to go.

By the way, a lot of fuzz about that Georgie Pie super smash cricket comp but whenever I tuned in there was literally no crowd lol

So I awaiting the Dom Post article about how cricket is doomed and its the end of the sport with only 11 men and security turning up to the North v South game....

I think any reporter with ANY sense of smarts (and that's scraping the barrel bare) would realise that with that game getting fuck all, Lions crowds around 2K, the Phoenix crowds look great by comparison in shitty timeslots. But I doubt they'll take pot shots at those sports. Wellington folk may be turning into Auckland folk and becoming apathetic to live sport. (this is not a knock at Wellingtonians but more highlighting an obvious point)

There is something horrifically wrong with sport in NZ. When I moved to Wellington in 2000 you couldn't buy tickets to the Hurricanes they day of the game sometimes. The average was around 30k.

Tegal, not sure if it was you or a mod but you must change me from No 2 to No 1... had a great laugh on my new status...

This is simply sharing and not meant for anything else than to look at what the Drive Bys have achieved with first making and then winning the ACL... the reaction in Australia is like nothing I have only ever seen when we made the WC in 2005 ...

Last night I watched 7, 9 & the ABC news…

9 send along their top sports host for the entire trip [he made nightly reports] and his report on the match was shown in the news section and went for a long while… given we had a cricket test [a 9 game] and a league test [another 9 game] and a rugby test I was blown away a domestic Football team was afforded more time and before three national games … it actually brought a tear to my eye…

7 also ran it as a news item and a sports item again ahead of the three national games… and had run each night leading into the game footage about the WSW ….

The ABC in the preceding days had sent their middle east correspondent to preview the match and he also did a post match presentation again before the other national teams…

I looked at the Terorgraph today, front page and back page, then three pages on the Melbourne Cup, then 3 pages on the A-League including two about the WSW and one page about SFC…

Yesterday on Offsiders the first 4 minutes on the match, then about a minute on cricket a passing mention of the league test and about 25 minutes on the Melbourne Cup…

On Sunday afternoon on ABC radio just heaps about the match and the A-League …

This also happened in 2005 when we made the WC, however this time we have a strong national domestic competition to re-enforce the message weekly…

The evolution continues …

I reckon it's what happens when you don't invest in facilities. Australian governments invest quite heavily in their stadiums compared to us, and they get good crowds to their games. 

Athletic Park, terrible facilities, access, parking etc. , got good crowds. One game, 'Canes v Brumbies, was oversold and people had to sit on the ground pitch side. Probably over 40k in attendance. 

yeah and Hutt raceway used to be packed in the 70s blah blah blah. 

Times have changed since then. More choice of other things to do, sports to watch on tv etc. 500,000 more people are subscribers to sky since 1999 too.

Yeah, that is part of the point I was making (Athletic Park was a terrible stadium compared to Westpac). I don't think that if investment in Westpac was ongoing and matched that across the ditch you would have been able to maintain attendances. I'm not sure there are really that much more of other things to do now compared to the last few years of Athletic Park/first few years of Westpac - TV is definitely one thing that has changed and possible peoples attitudes (increase in apathy?) to live sport.

my theory was that it seems to work for Australia (and also perhaps America). To counter the popularity of sport on tv as well as to compete with other forms of entertainment, you need high quality facilities. NZs model of self sustaining stadiums that can barely keep up with maintaining itself, while charging it's tenants through the roof to get the revenue to do so is likely to result in declining attendances, and sports teams going broke while having to charge higher ticket prices to recoup costs. 

The counter argument to that is that we don't always have the population to justify the expenditure. Take Dunedins Forsyth Barr stadium as an example 

I can't remember what ticket prices were at the time, but going on CPI $20 in '97 is roughly $29 now. Also, not sure how much better facilities some of the stadiums in Australia are compared to Westpac (apart from them mostly being rectangular). The attendances in major population centres are mainly due to population, less than 1% of Sydney turned up for the Sydney derby which is a lower percentage of Wellingtonians turning up for 'Nix games (with a larger population it is easier to also spread costs of upgrades/tenant subsidies).

Don't know where this is going, other than lets get an appropriately sized and shaped stadium (preferably also taking into account weather and public transport).