Just today, AFANA received yet more messages from Australian football fans which went like this:
"I haven't joined because I don't get Setanta on my cable system." Which is not much more encouraging than the one that came in earlier: "I just learned about the Internet connection to Setanta [ITVN] so I will be joining soon."
So what would I like both of these prospective members to understand?
The latest entry from my old blog with updates in color:
October 12, 2003Two issues that are at the heart of the future of footy in North America. One is the future of AFANA and the other the future of TV coverage.
As we plan the upgrade of the AFANA web site (the upgrade finally took place this past June in 2006!) and look toward 2004, one issue that keeps coming back is how long we can continue to make our web site available for free to all visitors. It's been a point of pride with us that we have been able to develop this web site and provide the information we do for fans and do it without restricting the site only to members. How much longer we can continue to do that is open to question. (While no change is planned at present,
As many sports fans have heard, the Women's professional soccer league, based in the US and known as the WUSA, has closed up shop just days before the [2003] Women's World Cup gets underway. So what does that have to do with footy?
Everything.
The lessons to be learned in this reinforce everything AFANA has been trying to communicate to the AFL and those working to popularize footy both inside and outside North America since 1996. The youth and young adult development programs in the US have brought millions of kids into playing a sport (soccer) which was unknown to most of my generation. When I played soccer in high school, we weren't even recognized as an official sport. All that's changed. So why didn't sponsors, TV viewers, and live bodies in seats keep the Women's league going? No, it is not as they will tell you, that they didn't get enough multi-million dollar sponsors, though that's true. (When you lose $90 million of an initial $100 million investment you were more than a few sponsors short.)
Another thing I get asked a lot is how I became a fan of Australian football. I was born and raised in the USA (though about 10 different places in the USA!) but I didn't make my first trip to Australia until 1986, when I was 27 years young.
Way back in 1980, I was going to "uni" during the day and working during the evening to pay for it. Ditto with my roommate, George. He was a bit of an electronics wiz and had come upon an abandoned color TV. Which he promptly fixed up and we got it hooked up to this new thing called "cable TV". Not long after that we both came home one fine evening about 11 or so and turned on the TV. We figured we'd watch some sports while we drank a few brews.
Another entry from my blog on the old AFANA site with some updates. This one, written during our last fan survey seems particularly appropriate: (updates in color):
August 29, 2003
As noted at the end of the previous blog, AFANA has a survey of footy fans in the USA and Canada underway at the moment. (The current survey is at:
http://www.afana.com/phpESP/public/survey.php?name=tv2006 )
If you haven't taken the survey yet and you live in the US or Canada at present, do it as soon as you finish reading this blog.
Over the next few weeks and maybe months, I will be reposting (with updates) some of my columns from my blog on the old AFANA site. Some of that material is dated and no longer relevant, and some is still useful. So beginning near the beginning, here we go (updates in color):
August 27, 2003
Every once in a while, someone gets up the gumption to e-mail me and ask me just which AFL club I follow. As chairman of AFANA, I try very hard to be impartial when it comes to "company" business. After all, we represent fans of every footy club, cover 2 countries in detail [the web reaches the entire planet however], and have to deal with the AFL and all 16 clubs at one time or another.
Here is some odds and ends about audio I wanted to pass along:
From my own notes:
A source of Radio Australia is via World Radio Network. However the "international" feed is limited to an hour or so a day and doesn't include sports except for the odd sports new summary. You can get WRN via a variety of sources. See the WRN site:
http://www.wrn.org/listeners/#home-listeners
So far response to AFANA's survey has been excellent. We are on track to a record number of responses and most extensive survey of Australian football fans in the USA and Canada ever. So far, the data is already telling us things we didn't know or didn't expect, which is always good. When the survey is completed in early September, we will be publishing extensive summaries of the results. So I can't say more about what we are seeing at this point, because I don't want to bias the results.
What we aren't seeing, in contrast to earlier surveys, is as many women and Canadians participating. Not sure why but the female participation is lagging. Not as many fans up in North America, that is Canada, have taken the survey as we expected either. So tell all your female footy fans to get to it and remind your friends in Ontario, BC, and PEI, etc. to participate, too.
For those who are interested, we are using the free form responses at the end of the survey as a way to see what we need to add to our TV FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). We have quite a bit of new material you can read at:
http://www.afana.com/drupal/tvfaq
Editorial
Recently, a couple of fans wrote in that they didn't feel that the offering by Setanta was worth $11.99 per month for just one game and since they aren't interesting in anything else offered on Setanta Sports, they planned to cancel their subscription. Another fan told us he was tired of waiting for the highlights and was bailing out.
AFANA feels those attitudes are misguided and if they prevail, will doom any hope of live AFL coverage in the US for the rest of this decade. Instead, we should be doing everything we can to support the live coverage and encouraging more fans to subscribe before the end of this season. Despite the limitation of the coverage to DirecTV and Globecast customers, it needs to be supported for the long term good of footy fans in North America.
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