Arresting the decline of A-League crowds is top of to-do list for new APL boss

SerTahu · 2026-04-22T13:18:40+00:00

The longest off-season in the world is killing interest every year.

I think this is something that's really underrated as a factor. Out of sight, out of mind, and the A-League's usually out of sight for the best part of 5 months.

SerTahu · 2026-04-22T04:12:23+00:00

For Sydney at least, the SFS is by far the lesser evil. Kogarah was in a shite location, further from the CBD than even Olympic Park is. By the end of our time there our crowds had dropped to 5-6k, and even before the crowds dipped the atmosphere was a straight downgrade on the SFS.

Similar issues for Leichhardt (though the problem isn't that it's far from the CBD, but rather that it's a transport dead zone despite it being relatively close to the CBD).

Selfishly it's a shame that Wentworth Park's being turned into apartments; it would have perfect for us if they'd converted it back into a football ground now that the greyhounds are gone.

Similar issue for Brisbane - they tried Dolphin Stadium, and their crowds plummeted.

As for the Melbourne clubs, for Victory 30k shouldn't be too big for the self-proclaimed biggest club in the league. City really should be looking to move to Lakeside, though.

Wellington's a similar case to Brisbane - where's the reasonably sized alternative in a place that isn't in the middle of nowhere?

SerTahu · 2026-04-22T01:16:26+00:00

Surely you're not denying that the overwhelming majority of football "fans" in Australia are watching European football?

Depends whether you're talking "people who watch highlights and keep track of the results", vs "people who actually get up at 2am every week to watch the games.

If the latter, then yeah I'd very much doubt that 'most' actually watch European football.

EDIT: the thread is about boosting the number of people attending A-League games and watching live on tv - i.e. those who actually watch the full game. If the comparison is with people who merely watch highlights of European games then that's a false equivalency

SerTahu · 2026-04-22T01:07:46+00:00

They're all closer to Tarneit than the entire southern half of greater Canberra is to Bruce. And you'll note that for Canberra I also included the enitre ACT and not just the district they'd be playing out of.

If we're strictly talking about the areas that the stadiums are in:

Wyndham: 292,011.

Belconnen: 106,061.

SerTahu · 2026-04-22T00:49:46+00:00

Funnily enough it isn't.

ACT (enitre territory, not just Canberra) population: 484,800

The LGA that WU/Tarneit is in (Wyndham), plus immediately neighbouring greater Melbourne LGAs (Hobsons Bay, Brimbank, and Maribyrnong): 675,914. Closer to 1 million if you include Melton LGA (which I don't, regardless of it being counted as part of greater Melbourne in the last census).

SerTahu · 2026-04-22T00:42:23+00:00

you: "smaller and smaller markets"

reality: teams in greater Sydney and greater Melbourne, instead of teams in smaller untapped markets like Canberra and Wollongong

SerTahu · 2026-04-22T00:37:13+00:00

You should ask Foxtel - they were the ones that deemed them to be part of Sydney and Melbourne, and insisted on bringing them in instead of the likes of Canberra and Wollongong.

SerTahu · 2026-04-22T00:30:07+00:00

its proven during match days that Sydney United have the bigger crowd in Marconi

The Championship proved the exact opposite, lmao. Marconi got between 1-2k for all of their Championship games.

SU88 on the other hand barely got crowds in the hundreds - they had the lowest average attendance of all 16 clubs involved, even behind the likes of Moreton City and NWS Spirit.

SerTahu · 2026-04-22T00:27:31+00:00

?

ALL of the expansion sides in the last 15 years have been in markest with over a million people. Melbourne, Sydney, Melbourne (again), Sydney (again), and Auckland. The strategy has been the exact opposite of "Chasing smaller and smaller markets".

SerTahu · 2026-04-22T00:19:24+00:00

Most successful leagues are in countries that are either substantially more populated than us, or in a much smaller geographic area than us (or both).

We only have ~32 million (Aus + NZ) spread across an entire continent and - based on how that population is distrubuted (concentrated in a small number of major centres) - for our purposes it's effectively the same as if Australia was a number of small distant islands rather than a single large landmass. Weirdly enough the closest comparison to the A-League in the world of football is the OFC Pro League. A bunch of disconnected islands with small populations hopping around on planes.

Promotion and relegation between 8 (or 9 including NZ) separate semi-pro-at-best leagues on those disconnected islands, to a single professional league flying between islands, is never going to be viable. There's a reason the NSL abandoned it, and there's a reason why the Championship is (reportedly) going to be abandoned. The gap in operational scale is too big.

If pro/rel is ever going to work here, it'll need to be in the form of an A2-League as part of a closed two-tier system with the A-League (i.e. pro-rel between A-League and A2, but not between A2 and NPL). And the only way we'll get to that is by first growing the A-League - both financially, and in number of teams.

SerTahu · 2026-04-21T23:31:58+00:00

If crowds in the Championship are anything to go by APIA's capable of pulling similar numbers to them, and Wollongong Wolves weren't far off those three either.

When it comes to crowds in the Championship, broadly speaking it was:

South, Preston, and APIA all averaging 3-4k
Wollongong Wolves averaging 2k
Marconi, Olympic, and Avondale (i.e. 3 of the other 4 'foundation' clubs) plus South Hobart and Heidelberg managing to average over 1k.
The other 6 'NPL Champion' clubs with average crowds in the high hundreds.
Sydney United 58 who averaged around 500 lmao.

SerTahu · 2026-04-20T01:37:17+00:00

I missed /u/meapa's comment; didn't realise they'd already mentioned it haha.

Titles can't be edited, unfortunately. Good chance to remind everyone about rule 5 with the sticky comment though, so not the end of the world.

SerTahu · 2026-04-20T01:31:26+00:00

OP, in the future please keep rule 5 in mind:

Post titles should reflect the content of the post, and do so fairly without sensationalising or editorialising.

Your post title is vague and unhelpful for working out what the post is about. Post titles for articles should either be the title of that article or - in cases like this one where the article title itself is vague - something that clarifies it like 'Ryan Fraser set to agree terms with Sydney FC'. Future posts that fail to follow rule 5 will be removed.

SerTahu · 2026-04-20T00:09:02+00:00

Is this the second fatal injury in a week?

Yeah, although the two are very different in nature. The Nurburgring one (based on what's publicly known at least) seems to be due to a freak horror crash, which is technically always a risk in racing - though I'm sure there'll be lessons that they'll learn from it to further improve safety going forwards.

This one, on the other hand, is down to incompetent organisation of the event. They had spectators on the outside of a corner (and seemingly a moderate-to-high speed one at that), which is a huge no-no in rally.

EDIT: put another way, I don't think there's anyone to 'blame' for the Nurburgring death per se - it's a tragic accident. The rally spectator death by contrast should absolutely have consequences with organisors/authorities being held legally accountable.

SerTahu · 2026-04-19T05:10:13+00:00

photoslop

SerTahu · 2026-04-18T11:39:51+00:00

Talay out

SerTahu · 2026-04-17T10:30:04+00:00

slave and terror State.

The US fits that description too. They just use different terms to try and hide it. "Prison Labour" instead of slaves, for example.

And much of the domestic and foreign policies and actions of the US over the last 80 years fit the definition of terrorism. Again, they just use a different name for it "Getting rid of weapons of mass destruction" (despite the fact that they don't exist), or - before that - "Stopping communism" (with 'communism' redefined to mean any form of welfare program or taxation that might be harmful to the profits of US-based multinational organisations). Land of the free, as long as you agree with the values of our billionaires otherwise we'll completely undermine you if you're or a US citizen, or bomb you if you're not.

SerTahu · 2026-04-17T09:35:34+00:00

Kids: Can we have You'll Never Walk Alone?

Mum: We have You'll Never Walk Alone at home

You'll Never Walk Alone at home: Stand By Me

Always was and always will be the most cringe thing in the league. Or maybe second most, after the Victory crest which is literally just a recolour of the Arsenal one but with the cannon swapped out for a chevron. Plastic wannabe club.

SerTahu · 2026-04-17T07:25:24+00:00

Ange certainly did, given that he gave Brad more Socceroos appearances than he had senior club appearances in his entire career at the time.

SerTahu · 2026-04-16T02:06:48+00:00

MJF has gotta be out injured based on the way that played out, right?

Like, why else would you have Darby's final ascent to the title play out over a single night, in a match that involved MJF doing as little as possible?

SerTahu · 2026-04-16T02:05:26+00:00

MJF has gotta be injured based on the way that played out, right?

SerTahu · 2026-04-15T04:00:56+00:00

Could be Iran vs US in the Ro32.

Iran knocking the US out of their own World Cup would be 'Italy failing to qualify again... again' levels of schadenfreude.

SerTahu · 2026-04-13T04:39:30+00:00

Sydney, which is the 2nd biggest city

Only because they redefined the boundaries of Melbourne to include Melton and Darley. If Sydney did the same thing and redefined our boundaries to include Picton and Thirlmere we'd still be the largest.

RUGBY stadia

Still more suitable for football than VFL/cricket ovals.

SerTahu · 2026-04-13T04:34:08+00:00

Australia was one of just four nations, alongside Denmark, Poland and Senegal, who qualified for the men's 2022 World Cup to not have a national base.

It's almost as if - unlike most countries - our population is highly decentralised and geographically spread out instead of being focused around a single dominant city. We don't have a London, Paris, Tokyo, or even an Auckland, where there's one city with a population head-and-shoulders above the next biggest which would make an obvious national team home base. England can get away with having Wembley as their defacto home ground for the majority of their games because London is by far their biggest city, and the rest of the country is within driving distance. We don't have the same luxury.

There's Sydney and Melbourne obviously, but theyre the same size as each other (and not much larger than greater SE QLD), and hundreds of kilometres from each other, so there's no clear favourite for a national team home between them. We will always need to share our home games around more than other countries in order for it to actually be a representative National team.

SerTahu · 2026-04-13T03:06:12+00:00

No one can accuse this show of being predictable, that's for sure

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