AFL is still the number one sporting code in Australia but soccer (football) is rising substantially and has been doing so for the past ten years since we qualified for the 2006 World Cup in Germany for the first time in 32 years and the A-League was established in the same year of 2005.
The NRL seems to be massively popular in two states in New South Wales and Queensland but doesn't gain that popularity in other states as Aussie Rules is the dominant sporting code in states like Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.
Soccer will continue to rise and I think it's actually outgrown the AFL in Western Sydney with the locals taking a greater interest in the Western Sydney Wanderers than the GWS franchise. I'm a massive fan of soccer and have been following it passionately for about 15 years now (I'm 20) but still my attention is drawn towards European football rather than the A-League which I've struggled to embrace properly not because the league is bad or anything but because the two Melbourne teams haven't appealed to me so much and there's still a lot of work to be done for it to be a successful league in the long-term in my opinion.
Cricket is the sport that's declining in support in Australia as people have grown disillusioned by the match-fixing scandals that rocked the ICC a few years back with Pakistan and then further back with South Africa and Hanse Cronje. However it will be interesting to see how successful the upcoming Cricket World Cup will be in terms of crowd capacity and TV viewership.
Tennis is another sport I thoroughly enjoy watching and despite a lack of success from Australian tennis players in the past decade or so I do wonder whether the emergence of Australian youngsters in Nick Kyrgios, Bernard Tomic and Thanasi Kokknakis may galvanise the sport in Australia. After all the Australian Open had a record crowd attendance of nearly 704,000 people this year clearly beating last year's figure of 643,000 however it should be noted that the hot weather last year disrupted the crowd figures and kept people away from Melbourne park. I do see tennis growing ever so slightly if these three players improve as many expect of them.
swoop42 wrote:http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/the-super-bowl-culture-that-the-afl-should-avoid-20150203-13565n.html
Thanks for linking the article Swoop!
I think it's a good article and it further highlights the fears that many have about the AFL becoming too Americanised for it's own good. Australian Rules has always been a pure and clean game away from extensive corporate advertising and gimmicks that are seen in the NFL in particularly in the Super Bowl. Sadly remnants of the NFL have crept in AFL match days with the kiss, hug and smile cams and the dance troupe being the most notable examples of the Americanisation that we have seen in the game in recent times.
The best thing that Gil and the AFL can do is preserve our traditions rather than trample over them so we can become more like the NFL which I don't follow at all nor do I ever intend to follow in the future. A quick glance at the Super Bowl is enough for me to suggest that we shouldn't head down a similar path as the NFL has in the US.