There are two key reasons why the AFL season will get underway at the MCG on Thursday night, with barely a soul in attendance.
The first is TV. While there won't be 90,000 in attendance for the traditional Richmond-Carlton clash, there will be about one million footy-starved TV viewers around the country who will be hanging out for every kick, mark and tackle as if they were.
Perhaps even a few thousand more will be drawn in by the curious spectacle of AFL football purely as a made-for-TV event.
The clubs make plenty from gate attendances, but it is the TV rights that underpin the game, and Seven, whose ratings are struggling and whose share-price is crashing through the floor, will be delighted to have the games – and the hefty advertising revenue they bring – back on its channels.
Over the course of the season, it must be remembered that as large as the match day attendance figures are, they are dwarfed by the numbers who watch on TV. Last season, the gross national audience for the home and away season was more than 91 million people.
As long as the players are fit and able to play, why not get the season started and let those numbers start to accumulate once again.
Which comes to the second reason why the season will get underway, even in these less-than-desirable circumstances. The AFL just saw no reason not to get started. It’s time to play, and any momentum is better than none. A start, a break and a resumption was viewed at AFL headquarters to being more preferable than sitting and waiting for the all-clear.
How many weeks we get in before the inevitable disruption? Who really knows? All it will take is for COVID-19 diagnosis at any club to bring the competition to a screeching halt, just as it did the Australian Grand Prix, the NBA and now English soccer.
But having some games in the tank will be good for the players, who are feeling a bit stir crazy by now and allows the AFL some flexibility with the fixture going forward when, as appears certain, the game goes into a full hiatus at some stage in the next four-to-six weeks when the pandemic is expected to be at its worst.
The decision on Friday by the AFL to proceed, but with doors closed to fans, was taken with a heavy heart. And there are plenty more meetings to come and decisions to be reached.
Can the season extend past the traditional last Saturday in September? The midseason bye rounds and the pre-finals bye weekend gives the League some fat to cut into if entire rounds are lost in the few months when the virus hits hard.
Discussions with various stakeholders will continue over the weekend but the complication is that the first of the ICC T20 World Cup matches takes place at the MCG barely four weeks after the scheduled September 26 Grand Final. The MCG can be converted from cricket to football in three days if need be, as was the case in 2015 after the Cricket World Cup. But football to cricket takes much longer, ideally three weeks.
If it was a regular Cricket Australia fixture, you’d think some sort of accommodation would take place. But the ICC’s contract is with the Victorian State Government, so the AFL might be able to extend the season by perhaps another week in order to play the Grand Final at the MCG, but no more than that.
There is also a watertight agreement between the AFL and the MCC, brokered by the state government as well, to keep the Grand Final at the MCG until 2057, so the chances of playing through till late October and playing the flag decider elsewhere (we’re looking at you, Optus Stadium) are minimal at best.
What also needs to be considered is what sort of softeners can be offered to fans, who have every right to feel miserable at not being able to attend games for the ‘foreseeable future’ (the AFL’s choice of phrase), particularly when memberships and ticket sales aren’t cheap.
This column proposed some ideas on social media and will repeat them here. Pretty much every AFL fan now owns a smart phone or tablet, so why not make live matches and replays data-free across every carrier and not just Telstra, which owns the League’s digital rights.
And for the games played in Victoria but broadcast exclusively on Fox Footy and Kayo, is there a mechanism for one of Seven’s secondary channels to screen the games, either live or on a short delay?
And while full refunds will be paid to those who have purchased tickets to matches they now cannot attend, what of club members? Do they get money back for the matches they cannot be at? It poses the more philosophical question around the purchase of club memberships. Are they purely more transactional, or more of donation to a cause. Those who rattled the tins to save their clubs from merger or extinction back in the day might have a different answer to those who never had to.
These are the questions being thrashed around by the AFL as you read this piece. The League plans to make some sort of concessions to the fans it knows to be the lifeblood of the game and they will be made clear early next week.
But as these last few crazy days have demonstrated, things can change very quickly. What will seem like a good idea on Monday might not even get off the ground by Wednesday. Contrary to what our Prime Minister might have you think, the Coronavirus doesn't discriminate when it comes to sport and it doesn't take days off.
