Add Category
Updated
There was a time when summer sport in Australia was all about the cricket, with a bit of tennis and golf thrown in for variety.
Key points:
- Crowd and TV viewing figures are on a downward trajectory in most Australian sports
- One analysis called broadcast numbers from this year's summer of cricket "awful"
- Sports like the NBL are wary of expanding too quickly as they have been burnt before
Those days are long gone.
There is no busier time in one of the world's most competitive sporting markets than right now thanks to the proliferation of summer competitions, the growth of women's sport and the ever-expanding football seasons.
Men's and women's competitions are all running concurrently in cricket, football and basketball.
The AFLW competition has already begun, while men's and women's rugby union will start in the coming weeks. All this on top of the summer's big international sports: cricket and the Australian Open Tennis.
Yet this season, cricket — in all its forms — has been hit particularly hard both in terms of live crowds and viewing figures.
The Big Bash League expanded this year by an extra 16 games with a new broadcast deal, but as the competition has drawn on, punters have voted with their feet and eyeballs. Yes, it's still the summer behemoth, but the competition has clearly lost its lustre.
Crowd figures this season are down almost 20 per cent at an average of 21,000 per match, compared to 26,000 last year and 30,000 the season before.
The average BBL television audience this season, since broadcast rights went to Fox Sports and Seven, is down on last season. Fox Sports has been averaging 195,000, per game, while on Seven it's been 694,000.
Last year, Network Ten was averaging 969,000 viewers per match.
Steve Allen, an analyst from Fusion Media, described the broadcast figures for this summer's cricket as "awful".
"You can't have [cricket] six and seven nights a week. It's insanity."
The paywall backlash
Cricket Australia is talking up the coverage of its new broadcast partners but has acknowledged there are problems with its golden goose and hasn't ruled out making changes to the BBL fixture list.
"We were very aware that growth would plateau with the number of matches being increased. As we do at the end of each season, we will review the feedback and experiences of fans, players and officials and assess what makes sense for the sustainability of our great game," a spokesman said in a statement.
One Day Internationals were once the jewel in cricket's crown. But this season, both One Day and T20 Internationals have gone exclusively to pay TV which has seen viewing numbers decline dramatically.
For example, 282,000 people watched this season's final ODI on January 18 on Fox Cricket — just 25 per cent of the 1.13 million that watched the same match last year on Channel Nine.
"The sport administrators at the Big Bash League at Cricket Australia should really take a cold shower and have a long look at themselves, because they're about to ruin One Day Internationals and the Big Bash League," Mr Allen said.
"They are really heading down the wrong path."
Lengthy broadcast deals can be a curse
If cricket has shown the biggest decline this summer, it is at least coming off a big base and has the backing of a $1 billion TV rights deal.
Football does not have that luxury and has continued to show a slide in viewers since the competition peaked five years ago.
The A-League this season is averaging crowds of 10,795, down 3 per cent from last year and from just under 13,500 in 2013/14.
But the numbers since January declined further to 9,284 per game as the A-League has gone head to head with cricket's Big Bash and the highly successful Australian Open by staging mid-week games.
The situation for the A-League has been particularly dire on television.
Of the five games played in round 17, the highest viewing figure on Fox Sports was just 36,000 for the clash between Adelaide United and Brisbane Roar — a game where the Reds fought back from three goals down to win 4-3 in stoppage time.
Greg O'Rourke, head of the A-League said the competition was "not satisfied with the numbers".
"However, when you look at our one free-to-air game [on Network Ten], that's up by 18 per cent year-on-year for hours viewed," he said.
"In terms of people watching, that's 75,000 per game."
Mr Allen said the football competition's viewing numbers were "appalling".
"The A-League is a complete tragedy and it started over 10 years ago with the formation of the A-League signing a seven-year exclusive deal with Foxtel," he said.
The next two seasons will be telling for the A-League, with an extra two teams joining the competition.
The question is, will they dilute the market or provide more fans, viewers and sponsorship dollars?
Expansion is not always the solution
The history of Australian sport over the last two decades is proof that you can only expand so much before something snaps.
Rugby league, rugby union, basketball and A-League football have all at one time grown beyond their means; before clubs folded, players, coaches and administrators lost their jobs and fans lost their passion.
Are we heading there again in this era of a fragmented media, declining TV audiences and changing social behaviours? The chief executive of the National Basketball League, Jeremy Loeliger, believes so.
"If you're only looking at the domestic market, and you're only looking at linear channels, then absolutely something does have to give," he said.
"And there are going to be big winners and big losers."
The NBL is the cautionary tale for Australian sport. Since it began in 1979, an extraordinary 24 teams have come and gone.
Now with just eight teams and another coming next season, Mr Loeliger said his sport is "very cognisant" of not expanding too quickly.
"There just isn't the market to support too many clubs and that's not just basketball clubs, that's [all] professional sporting clubs."
The NBL is growing — albeit off a very small base. This season its crowds have grown by 7 per cent to an average of 6,300.
The TV audience has increased by 5 per cent on Nine's subsidiary channel, Go, to 30,500, but the pay TV audience is down to a mere 12,700.
Mr Loeliger said the situation is sustainable for basketball.
"What we've been able to do is build a sustainable business model that isn't dependent on media rights fees."
Although he is hopeful that will soon change.
In the meantime, he is looking to a new model to showcase the sport in Australia and overseas — online streaming.
"There are only a finite number of linear broadcast networks in Australia, but there are so many more digital networks. There is a lot of talk around there being a lot more sporting content being available through streaming," he said.
"So, something has to give, but that can be an opportunity as well as a threat."
Sport fans are passionate, and no one wants to see teams fold or competitions become irrelevant. But if Australia is going to sustain the current — and growing — amount of professional and semi-professional sport, a shake-up seems inevitable.
Topics: twenty20, australian-open, a-league, super-rugby, nbl, sport, australia
First posted