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Are We Letting A Grand Final Slip Through Our Fingers?

28/09/2022
Publication
London, UK
351
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LBB’s Delmar Terblanche speaks to three industry professionals about the state of creativity around the most-watched TV event in Australia


This past weekend, the Geelong Cats beat the Sydney Swans to win the AFL Grand Final, and at least 2.179 million Australians watched them do it.

These figures are considered a disappointment. They’re a clear dip from the nearly 4 million who watched in 2021, and represent the lowest ratings for the grand final since 2001. And yet, even so, it stands as the most watched Australian television event of the year. In an age of scattered eyeballs, viewing figures like this are significant.

“Live sport, AFL in particular, provides an opportunity for us, as an industry, to reach users in a single moment. Which I think is so hard to do these days.”

So says Sasha Smith, head of media at Howatson+Company. She was one of three industry professionals I spoke to this week, reflecting on the final that had just come to pass. We discussed viewership trends, recent campaigns and activations, and above all, the simple question of whether or not the creative industry was making the most of this event TV moment.

“I don’t think we’re doing it currently,” offers Tom Wenborn, executive creative director at Thinkerbell. “Right now the AFL is doing such an amazing job of building up the day. So I hope the trend in advertising begins to match it. The week leading up to it consumes all the media, that's where all the conversation is. There’s a parade, there’s a festival of footy at the MCG - all this stuff. So the eyes are on it. But right now, advertisers haven't really kind of paid that much attention to it, and I do wonder whether that's based on the fact that budgets these days are being used for evergreen campaigns, and it's really hard to do a specific job for a single event. It'd be a big brave marketer that wants to do a one-off big film just for a Super Bowl.”

The Super Bowl comparison is a prescient one. The halftime ads are practically an international institution, let alone for the American creative industry. The AFL grand final, despite its viewership, has no equivalent in Australia. The ads, creative as they may be, are minimally different from those that run across the season - if they’re different at all. Tom highlighted the structural barrier of budgets, but when I spoke to Vinny Panchal, the group managing director for Jack Morton and Weber Shandwick Australia, he offered some further points of distinction.

“The age-old problem for Australia is that there are too many codes and just not enoughpeople. But that shouldn't stop the AFL. It has a captive audience during grand final weekend. But there just aren't enough moments to connect at the grass-roots level in the lead-up to the final game. By contrast with the Super Bowl, there's more than just the halftime ads and show; there are stadium experiences and tailgating, brand-led watch parties around the country, an ongoing campaign of activations and events, and PR-able media moments throughout the run-up to capture fan anticipation nationwide.”

Australia, famously, finds its wintertime sporting attention split three ways. The south is consumed by the AFL, while the north is rugby league (NRL) territory, and a few stragglers in between (like myself) cling, hopelessly, to rugby union as our sport of choice. 

Tom agreed that this divided attention was likely a big barrier. “It’s good in the southern states (we live and breathe it down here), but even in Sydney, attention paid to the AFL is 50/50 at best, and by the time we get to Queensland, it's NRL only.”

Does this mean, then, that the problem is a cultural one? That AFL’s viewership is being insufficiently capitalised on because even though it’s big, it’s not big enough to consume the country? Or perhaps its (traditionally working class and male) audience doesn’t overlap enough with the creative industry for marketers to really understand what they have?

Sasha agrees with this notion, but only in part. “There is a disconnect between what the AFL audience looks like, or is thought to look like, and then the people outside that world. Unless you’re already into AFL, it doesn't feel easily accessible. The Super Bowl, for instance, has everything else going on around it, so it has other ways to pull people in. That doesn’t really exist within the AFL, but it could. That's what Channel Nine was trying to start this year with their State of Origin competitions… I think the new broadcast rights deal with the women's AFL league will help because I think that's bringing in people who probably didn't traditionally watch AFL.”

The deal Sasha’s alluding to is a $4.5 billion agreement to broadcast the women’s league on Channel Seven until 2031. Vinny considers the cultural implications of this moment to be vast. “It was a very particular type of person who supported the code, and now all of a sudden it's really showed some depth and now, I would argue that maybe there is an opportunity to create more diversity.”

So how can this diversity, and the shifting cultural stature of the AFL, best be leveraged? Is there a path forward for marketers who want to capitalise on this enormous national audience? Sasha, Tom, and Vinny all say yes.

“The answer is building the hype,” offers Sasha. “If you look at the ICC T20 Women’s World Cup, they had Katy Perry play in the finals. And their web traffic went through the roof when that was announced… but it’s a lot harder to justify the kind of ad spend something like the Super Bowl gets if you don’t feel like there’s a national conversation around it.”

Vinny agrees. “I think there’s honestly too much differentiation around the states and regions. There are fans all over Australia, and I think we can build a national moment by picking up all those little fan zones bit by bit and talking about the shared love of the game and its history.”

Much of this hype-building will have to be done by the AFL itself. Marketing can only generate so much conversation. But there is an opportunity here. The old image, not just of who watches the AFL, but of what types of brands (a lot of beer, traditionally) can activate in that space, is changing.

“I think the industry has a responsibility, frankly, to give you and I, as punters on the ground, the best experience possible,” says Vinny.

This time next year, we shall see if the industry has taken up that call.


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