Soccer Set To Challenge Football, Study Finds
The Age
Thursday May 22, 2003
Powered by its global reach and the attractions of its international competitions, soccer is now poised to challenge Australian rules as the country's No. 1 football code, according to a major sports marketing and research study released yesterday.
In its survey of the Australian sports landscape, the 16th annual Sweeney sports report also reveals that the Melbourne Cup is now the most significant sporting event of the year (relegating the AFL grand final to second position) and suggests that Wayne Carey's off-field misdemeanours have hit the former Kangaroo champion hard, with a dramatic decline in his ``sponsorship attractiveness" recorded in the past year. In contrast, Australia's all-conquering Test cricketers found their sponsorship ratings soaring.
The Sweeney research, which measures sports and sportsmen across a range of commercial and community interest indicators, shows that the market position of soccer has increased substantially in recent years, particularly in 2002-03.
Interest in the game has been rising in all areas - participation, attendance, radio listening, television viewing and print media readership - according to Sweeney director Martin Hirons.
``The round-ball game, bolstered by interest in last year's World Cup and Oceania's direct qualification into the next soccer World Cup, registered record levels of interest in the summer of 2002-03 . . . it could soon be challenging Australian rules for football code supremacy," Hirons said.
While soccer showed the most spectacular growth, rugby union tracked its upward trajectory for similar reasons and has now caught up in popularity with the other ``traditional" Australian football code, rugby league.
``(It) is now virtually equal with rugby league on all measures. With its World Cup to be played in Australia later this year, expectations are that it will eclipse league," Hirons said.
Swimming (with 59 per cent of the population declaring themselves in some way interested) remains the most popular sport, but its rating fell 5 per cent. Swimming's ranking surges when there are major events, of which there were few in the survey period. It holds its high overall ranking because of its huge participation rate of 41 per cent. If measured purely on television viewers, swimming is only the fifth most popular sport, behind cricket, Australian rules, tennis and soccer.
Australian rules, with an interest level of 52 per cent, remained where it was last year. It ranks poorly as a participation sport (only 5 per cent compared with swimming (41 per cent), tennis (26 per cent), golf (23 per cent), fishing (27 per cent), and soccer and cricket (11 per cent). But it is the most popular sport for attendance (27 per cent), just ahead of cricket's 25 per cent, and ranks second best for television audiences, just behind cricket but ahead of tennis and soccer.
In a separate analysis of sponsorship effectiveness, the Sweeney survey found:
• The Melbourne Cup has overtaken the AFL grand final as the nation's ``most important" sporting event.
• Wayne Carey's sponsorship attractiveness ``fell dramatically" following his off-field misdemeanours - illustrating, says Hirons, that as with Shane Warne, Mark Philippoussis and Jelena Dokic, ``Australians are not impressed by sporting heroes who appear to transgress accepted moral or behavioural standards".
• Test cricketers Adam Gilchrist, Ricky Ponting, Matthew Hayden, Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee, along with golfer Adam Scott, greatly boosted their sponsorship potential.
© 2003 The Age