BLOG POST: What does the Wellington Phoenix bring to the A-League?
Incredible stamina. No shame. Yellow Fever.
Great article, I think all these articles are coming out because they are worried about how the Nix are doing as well as the fact that the license is up in the air and no clear message has come from FFA. It's been proven each time they don't actually look into the numbers, (crouds, TV ratings) and just go with the same old argument.
You can see on Twitter, more and more people agree that the Nixs should be in the league, but you are always going to have the people who are just naturally against a NZ team in an Australian league and have been since day 1.
I'm an optimistic pessimist.
I'm positive things will go wrong.
Why does Lynch see it as a choice between The Nix OR a tenth Australian side?
Why can't you imagine a world in which the Nix exist AND a tenth (and even an 11th) Australian side exist.
The FFA want to expand the league.
So why would you want to get rid of a finiancially sound team, at the top of the table, with home crouds in excess of some existing Australian clubs, and that is without the benefit of their crouds being boosted by local derbies and intra-state away crouds like the NSW clubs enjoy?
And why would you piss away a market of 4.5 million extra people in an either/or choice when it clearly isn't about either/or?
Incredible stamina. No shame. Yellow Fever.
Phoenix fans. We have to win them over one fan at a time.
I have been a bit of a broken record on this lately but the whole thing about us not rating well on TV is also a myth.
Fox viewership:
CCM 57k
Jets 54k
Nix 52k (bearing in mind most nix fans arent with fox)
Percentage of subscribers who watch A league every weekend:
Fox 2.76%
Sky 2.08%
It's purely about trying to shake more money out of Sky/NZF/nix - as Smithy said in the above blog.
Allegedly
It's an interesting blog.
Objectively when you look at people posting here, it seems a few get the main thrust that this is about squeezing more cash out of NZ. The masses outside of this site don't see it this way, or, should I say, talk about it in public in this way.
Is there cash there though? If NZF invest in this at the expense of other items, and I guess top of the list is the rubbish that masquerades as a national league some weeks, they are going to cop it in the you-know-what and I would expect the 248 crew to be here enmasse spouting about it. John Fellet... er Sky, has showing he is too fudgeing thick to do his job and has largely sat on his chuff banking rugby money that the paying public have forked over blindly (in part because the fan experience is a bit shark) so what gives us hope that Fellet is going to pay more for something where he knows he does not have to because of lack of competition. As Tegal types, 2%... Not a compelling number and he has shown he is not smart enough to keep up with what is going on now regarding new platform.
The kicker is if the Phoenix make the final or win it. It's going to be a poor look for the FFA if they punt the Phoenix because they can't get any more money out of NZ. It makes their bargaining position weaker so I guess in a lot of respects, if the Phoenix do well, they can't punt them so Sky know they don't need to pay. If the Phoenix are crap, no one watches so they don't need to pay. I can't see how the FFA get more money out of Sky.
Grumpy old bastard alert
Why does Lynch see it as a choice between The Nix OR a tenth Australian side?
Why can't you imagine a world in which the Nix exist AND a tenth (and even an 11th) Australian side exist.
The FFA want to expand the league.
So why would you want to get rid of a finiancially sound team, at the top of the table, with home crouds in excess of some existing Australian clubs, and that is without the benefit of their crouds being boosted by local derbies and intra-state away crouds like the NSW clubs enjoy?
And why would you piss away a market of 4.5 million extra people in an either/or choice when it clearly isn't about either/or?
This is the best argument.
You can talk about all the players we have brought to the league: Ifill, Bonevacia, Smeltz, Rojas and Barbarouses.
You can talk about opening up the New Zealand market.
I think those things are true but I don't think they are why we should be in the league.
The Phoenix should be in the A-League because we are a financially stable club and we get big enough crouds to be competitive on the field. The people who want to get rid of us say that the NZ tv ratings are low. What they don't understand is that the Phoenix actually add to the Australian football rankings. If the Phoenix weren't there it would be a 9 team league, there would be one less game per week and broadcasters would pay less money for the competition.
There just aren't that many places lining up to replace us. People talk about 2nd Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide teams but than again 2nd Melbourne can't even pull crouds. Then you are down to regional areas. The FFA should be aiming for a 12 team league. I can't see them finding 3 places in Australia who can sustain teams.
The Phoenix add as much to the league as a team like Central Coast.
I don't think 2% is that terrible a number. It's on par with how many watch on fox sports (relatively speaking).
The difference is, fox pay $40millon per season (that figure includes Socceroos and Asian cup mind you), sky pay $300k (unsure if included Asian cup - doubt it).
Fox have 3 times the subscribers as sky. So if the % of subscribers watching the A league are the same, sky should be paying 3 times less. That is $13.3million. A discrepancy of $13million. That is getting most of the games filmed for them as well. In my opinion this shows just how much the monopoly sky has over on site broadcasting is worth to them.
It also shows that sky don't value (possibly correctly so) games other than the nix at all. This only furthers Smithys argument that this isn't the nix/NZFs problem at all.
What people fail to add into their equations is what the nix contribute to that $40million the FFA receive from fox per season. Based on tv ratings I have worked out that we contribute $3.02million of the value of that. Add $300k from sky and we bring more value ($3.32M) to the FFA than both the jets ($3.18M) and mariners ($3.28M). So once again, this is nothing to do with tv ratings, or the value of the phoenix to the league. It is purely a mafia style shake down by the FFA to try and get some extra coin.
Allegedly
Gorgeous football.
Individual brilliance.
Trails of destruction.
Caressing of balls.
Boom! (times lots)
"Phoenix till they lose"
Posting 97% bollox, 8% lies and 3.658% genuine opinion.
Genuine opinion: FTFFA
he clearly did his research before publicising those comments.....not...
Allegedly
Andy Harper is not very clever. Just provocative theories in pseudo smart talk. 'My own personal opinion', sure it's you own opinion that's why I don't care.
By 'my own personal opinion' he means 'what de Bohun told me to say'.
Marquee
Kotahitanga. We are one.
"Ive just re-visited this and once again realised that C-Diddy is a genius - a drunk, Newcastle bred disgrace - but a genius." - Hard News, 11:39am 4th June 2009
By all accounts, Channel 7's coverage of the T20 cricket a few months ago was great too.
:
People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. You can't trust people.
Marquee
By all accounts, Channel 7's coverage of the T20 cricket a few months ago was great too.
:
And now this...SBS saying if you don't want us, we don't want you! Though, knowing SBS charter there could be other machinations at work.
Kotahitanga. We are one.
Can I have some lungs please miss
It's all posturing - the same stuff happened with NRL/AFL rights.
E + R + O
Marquee
Kotahitanga. We are one.
We've seen this before.
Seven had the rights to the NSL and Socceroos matches and basically buried it alive so that it wouldnt affect their coverage of the AFL. Showed major Socceroos games live with ads at regular intervals during matches and only had a 1 hour highlights package of NSL which they aired at 10:30pm on a monday night.
And they will do exactly the same again if they get the chance!
Fudgeing disgrace!
"Ive just re-visited this and once again realised that C-Diddy is a genius - a drunk, Newcastle bred disgrace - but a genius." - Hard News, 11:39am 4th June 2009
Amongst all of this..... I heard Dome say something about the Nix looking at ways to increase the revenue from (Sky) coverage. If that is the case, why? Unless AFA are putting some pressure on.