Whateley: Why Thursday's non-fixture reflects as “bad practice”

In Round 23, the AFL opted against a Thursday night fixture, allowing clearance for the AFLW’s clash between Hawthorn and Melbourne.

As Gerard Whateley explains, the decision reflected only as “bad practice”.

While the good-willed scheduling permitted a substantial rating boost for the AFLW, the significant fall from a business perspective could have cost the AFL considerably amid their battle with the NRL over prime-time dominance.

With the NRL hosting a clash between the competition’s top two teams in the Roosters and the Panthers, the AFL lost out sizeably, bringing an extended streak of Thursday night superiority to a crashing halt.

And while the AFLW received exceptional ratings as a result of the decision, Whateley believes this isn’t a move the AFL will want to make too regularly.

“Thursday night, the AFL left its timeslot for AFLW, which rated really well for a women’s game, but terribly for a Thursday night prime time fixture,” Whateley told SEN Crunch Time.

“If we put some facts and figures around this, the AFL and the NRL basically went week-for-week for the first half of the season and split the Thursday nights as to who had more viewers.

“But the AFL had won seven of the past eight Thursday nights, with an average audience of 626,000. The average audience for Thursday nights AFLW game was 182,000.

“The NRL had a top of the table clash, just by happenstance, and had its biggest rating since March for a Thursday night game.

“The decision not to play a men’s game in the penultimate round is measurable on that front.

“What long term impact that has, that’s in the eye of the beholder, but running dead is something that the AFL used to do on Thursday night, and that looked to me like bad practice this week.”

Listen to the full discussion below: