280,000 viewers tuning-in to SBS on Friday night to watch the opening match of the A-League is a welcome improvement, but is it enough?
If ever there was any doubt about the importance of free-to-air (FTA) TV, it was evident in this media release from Free TV Australia on Friday. This deals with TV only and not other platforms such as radio, tablet, online and mobile.
It showed that 11.7 million Australians watch sport on commercial FTA TV every week, an increase of 11.6% in metropolitan areas and 11.7% in regional areas in the past year. 97% of all sport viewing is of a live broadcast.
The question for football fans is: where is football? Not even the World Cup made the top 50 list.
SBS said here that its combined audience across all platforms for the World Cup Final was 1.4 million; the television audience was 1.14 million. Yesterday, it issued another media statement pretty pleased about the 280,000 viewers who tuned-in to SBS 1 to watch the opening round of the A-League season. (The 647,000 viewers referred to by Les Murray is again across all platforms).
While all these numbers are a welcome improvement for football on previous versions of both the World Cup and last season’s A-League opener, they show the magnitude of the gap that still exists between football on TV and other sport on TV.
They also suggest that FFA’s next move to help broaden the base of football support in this country might be to move football away from SBS.
A quick glance at the data from Free TV Australia shows that not one of the top 50 sporting broadcasts is on SBS. No disrespect to other sports, but the Sochi Women’s Snowboard Slopestyle Final attracted more viewers with 1.348 million (Australia’s Torah Bright came 7th) than the World Cup Final.
Is the incremental growth via SBS enough to help boost the game into the position where we want it to be? For many ‘old’ football fans, the thought of moving football away from SBS is heresy; but it may be the one element of ‘old football’ that we need to ditch sooner rather than later – for the good of the game.
