NRL State of the Game Document 2009
The NRL have released their annual State of the Game document for 2009. The document contains information on crowds, ratings, refereeing and much more for the 09 season. Why it is released before the end of the regular season is beyond me, but I’m sure they have their reasons…
For those who would like the read the whole think, click here.
For those who don’t, I will pick out the interesting parts and report.
The summary page picks out the best bits. An impressive stat is that this years comp will set the highest attendance record except for when there were 20 teams. This along with the fact that average crowds are up by 2.12% on last year are a testament to the work clubs and the NRL has done in driving membership numbers (which rose by a massive 27% to about 110 000), promoting games as well as special events for certain days for example family fun day. This is all a step in the right direction.
Overall, channel 9 ratings have increased. It is a bit hard to take any facts out of this as the accuracy of ratings are questionable, but I suppose the increase in viewers is a good sign.
Similar to last year, NRL has 60 of the top 100 rating shows on Pay TV.
One of the most encouraging points for me, was that club player registrations rose by 6.8% from last year to take it to an all time high. A new junior participation record of 124 319 was set. This is great news for the future of the game as it shows that grassroots are stable.
The NRL donated nearly $2 million to charity this season.
The top 3 clubs with the greatest increase in average crowds were the Bulldogs, up 45%, the Warriors, up 36%, and the Panthers, up 26%. The Bulldogs are in fact sitting 2nd behind the Broncos is average crowds, which is a great effort. I imagine that they are the first Sydney team to finish with an average of over 20 000 for a long time. The Tigers broke their home ground record against the Eels at the SFS (34 272) and so did the Bulldogs against the Warriors last weekend (41 835), which was also the highest crowd for a stand alone regular season game in Sydney in 35 years.
The is a ‘research’ section, which displays some strange figures. I don’t know how they got these figures, I suppose a survey went around at some point. But apparently supporter’s passion has increased from 5.9 out of 1o to 6.5. Seems like a bit of a gimmick to me. It also says that 36% of people interested in League attended a game, up from 27% last year. That is a positive sign and one that needs to keep increasing. The Toyota Cup is also growing in popularity. Also in this section is says that fans seem to think that:
-Game play is improving.
-Off field behaviour has gotten worse (Surprise, surprise).
-They are more likely to attend games.
Here are some stats that I found quite interesting. In ’08 340 tries were scored from kicks. This is down to 272 in ’09 (with 1 round remaining). Dummy half runs have also dropped. This could be due to the 2 ref system, it is good never the less. Total penalties have also slightly dropped, video ref decision have also had a significant decrease.
So there you have it, some interesting information there from the 2009 State of the Game document. It seems as though the game is strengthening and I can only see things improving once again next season.
