The biggest surprise of the 2022 AFL fixture was the trio of weeks with Friday double-headers.
Round 3 will see Melbourne host Essendon into the Showdown, Round 5 has the Good Friday clash between North Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs followed by West Coast versus Sydney and Round 8 has Port Adelaide hosting the Dogs followed by Fremantle and the Kangaroos.
While this caught many off guard, there are clear reasons for all three double-headers, as explained by AFL Head of Broadcasting and Scheduling Marcus King.
“There is a rationale (behind the Friday double-header) … the reason for that (in Round 3) is that’s the weekend of the AFLW Grand Final,” King told Sportsday.
“So by having a second game on the Friday, it does clear out space on the Saturday for the women’s Grand Final, which we think is really important.
“The AFLW Grand Final will be the Saturday.
“Then in Round 5, which is Good Friday, we have the two games there, which we’ve done the last couple of years.
“Then in Round 8, the two games, Round 8 is Mother’s Day, and the feedback from fans and clubs has been that attending footy on Mother’s Day is not ideal.
“So by having a second Friday on that round, it does reduce the number of games on that Sunday.”
The Friday double-ups in rounds three and eight overlap and King said they had to find a way to balance the broadcast and attendance side of things.
“We were trying to find a balance between a broadcast outcome and achieving as much separation as possible, but also providing for an attendance outcome for both games,” he said.
“Balancing those factors, we landed on the times with about an hour’s difference.
“We understand that there is an overlap, but each game does have a half in clear air and we’re really excited about both games.
“Speaking with the Crows and Port, there’s a high degree of excitement about a Friday Showdown.”
When asked why the AFL continues to schedule overlapping games, particularly on Saturday nights, Sunday afternoons and now even Friday nights, King said it was a delicate balancing process.
“There’s a lot of different factors that go into the fixture. Broadcast is clearly an important one, but there’s other factors, attendance for example, and with nine games per round it is tricky to have all games in clear air,” he said.
“What we try to do with the fixture is try to find the optimum balance with all of these factors and this does mean that there are games that overlap, but we feel that overall we’ve got an outcome that’s the best one for the industry.
“I think there would be fans out there that would love to see more standalone games, but also for a lot of fans they want their teams to be playing at times that work for them.
“We like to have a variation of timeslots for clubs to try to cater for that and that does mean sometimes there’s overlapping games.”
The season will get underway on March 16 with another first, Melbourne and the Bulldogs facing off on a Wednesday night.
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