By ON A FRIDAY night back in September, the Moore Park sporting precinct in Sydneyâs east was the site of a football feast unlikely to be matched anywhere on the planet. Australiaâs two most dominant football codes â Aussie Rules and rugby league â were going head-to-head, staging finals games on the same night in stadiums just a couple of hundred metres apart.
In the AFL, the Sydney Swans took on Port Adelaide at the SCG, while in the NRL, the Cronulla Sharks clashed with the North Queensland Cowboys at the adjacent Allianz Stadium. Four teams, two tribes, one passion: what each refers to as âfootyâ.
As fans poured into the stadiums, this dazzling riot of colour and cloth would likely have caused a visiting overseas sports fan some confusion: how can two rival forms of football exist side by side? How can each attract so many fervent supporters? If you were then to tell our overseas visitor that, as a matter of fact, two other codes of football are also played in this country â in rugby union and football (hereafter referred to as rugby and soccer) â theyâd likely be utterly confounded. It wouldnât make a lot of sense. Importantly, though, it does make a lot of dollars.
If the concentration of the Australian football market strikes you as the kind of trivial yet knotty subject that might make for a fascinating PhD, youâre too late. Hunter Fujak, a lecturer in sports management at Victoriaâs Deakin University, wrote his doctorate on the topic, before going on to write a book, Code Wars: The Battle for Fans, Dollars and Survival (2021). âThe genesis of the PhD was this sense that Australia had this unique sporting landscape,â says Fujak, who chats to me today inside the luxe surrounds of the Sporting Club of Sydney, a torpedo punt, kick for touch or sweeping goalieâs clearance away from the fluttering flags of the SCGâs Membersâ Pavilion. âAnd that stems from the fact that we have a sports market that has the capacity to cater to multiple sports at the professional level without one sport having an absolute monopoly. Thatâs unique compared to anywhere else in the world.â
Unique, it may be. But is it healthy, or more to the point, sustainable? That depends on whom you ask. From a consumer perspective, thereâs no doubt Aussie sports fans are spoilt for choice. Competition, it can be argued, elevates the standard of the respective on-field âproductsâ â and make no mistake, thatâs exactly what these codes are. But does Australiaâs performance as a sporting nation at international level suffer from the dilution of talent that our competitive football environment brings? If there were one dominant football code, as there is in many countries, would that team be the equivalent of the All Blacks on steroids? Similarly, with an infusion of prime physical specimens, would our Olympic team climb even further up the medal tally?
âIf all the best rugby league players played rugby union, then Iâm pretty confident [the Wallabies] would be much better than the All Blacks,â says Fujak, a Sydneysider who now lives in Melbourne.
Veteran journalist Roy Masters, a former rugby league coach, agrees. He argues that having four codes dilutes the talent pool to the detriment of less popular sports. âItâs not good for Australia because essentially the third and the fourth-biggest sports donât have the best quality players,â says Masters, whoâs been living in Melbourne since the mid â90s, an existence he describes as a âProtestant minister living in the Vaticanâ.
Your take on whether this matters may vary. Itâs a fun topic to kick around over a few beers at the pub. But the battle is real and the stakes â in terms of TV deals, advertising and gambling revenue and funding of these sports at grassroots level â are eye-wateringly high.
While having one code of football is inconceivable right now, itâs a prospect some see as a possibility, others an inevitability, in the long term. The spectre of concussion looms as a threat to the viability of collision sports, while increasing globalisation could serve to elevate one code â most likely soccer â above all others.
Indeed, itâs possible four codes of footy may prove to be too much of a good thing, something we look back on and regard not so much as unique but as a historical anomaly, a relic of colonialism that lasted longer than it should have. In other words, the balls are in the air. Where they land could tell us lot about who we are as a sporting nation.
IF YOU WERE looking for one player who embodies the battle between Australiaâs football codes, you might start with Sydney Swans midfielder Isaac Heeney. The sandy-haired superstar famously grew up in the rugby league heartland of Maitland, NSW, excelling as a kid in league, soccer, Aussie Rules and cricket. Heeney likely could have made it to the top in whichever sport he chose.
But due to the encouragement of his parents and the existence of the Sydney Swans Academy, it would be Aussie Rules that would provide the canvas for his dreams to be realised. âI reckon there was a handful, max, out of a thousand kids that played AFL,â Heeney told me earlier this year of his high school experience at Waverley College in Sydneyâs eastern suburbs. âIt was just never a thing growing up. It was always NRL or soccer and absolutely I copped some flak. Aerial ping-pong is what they called it. But it never bothered me.â
Of course, Heeney isnât the only high-profile player who could have found success in other codes. Newcastle Knights fullback Kalyn Ponga was a junior golf champion in New Zealand, played rugby and league at junior rep level and even dabbled in Aussie Rules, says Fujak. Similarly, Adam Goodes excelled at soccer in the junior ranks, before switching to Aussie Rules, while Sam Kerr followed the opposite path, taking up soccer after being a Sherrin-mad youngster â her older brother Daniel was a star midfielder for the West Coast Eagles between 2001-13.
The talent pool is certainly deep, but of the four codes, itâs been Aussie Rules thatâs been the most active in both plundering and refilling it, as the leagueâs administrators seek to push their game north of the so-called âBarassi lineâ â an imaginary border drawn to delineate Aussie Rules from league heartland, which originally extended from the NSW South Coast to Canberra and Broken Hill, up to Birdsville in Queensland and into Arnhem Land. The AFL has invested heavily in the game at grassroots level inside traditional league territory, including setting up club academies to nurture young talent. âIf it wasnât for the academy, I reckon I wouldâve been playing NRL or some other sport,â Heeney says.
A home-grown NSW player, like Heeney, is the reward for the AFLâs efforts, as was the recent Swans v Lions grand final. But whatâs behind the Victorian-based leagueâs zeal to spread its gospel? âPeople who are on the AFL train can often be called evangelicals,â says Fujak, who says the leagueâs administrators have been trying to grow the game in NSW for more than 120 years. âFor them itâs so important to tell everyone that AFL is the best sport in the world.â In contrast, league has been more insular, Fujak says, while rugby and soccer, perhaps due to their global pathways, have likewise been less intent on extending their frontiers domestically.
The AFL, Fujak believes, is keenly aware that while the Barassi line falls in its favour in terms of territory, if you look at population and market value, itâs a misleading demarcation. âWhen you actually break down the population, itâs pretty close to 50/50,â he says, adding that the Sydney media market has traditionally been bigger than Melbourneâs.
Indeed, the AFLâs determination to spread the âCazaly Kool-Aidâ may also be an extension of the fierce Melbourne-Sydney rivalry. âI think thereâs definitely that broader rivalry,â Fujak says. âYou saw that in the Olympics. Melbourne wasnât super-supportive of Sydney getting the 2000 Olympics.â
Of course, if you ask an Aussie Rules fan or administrator, they will likely claim their desire to promote their game is born out of passion and would put special emphasis on its status as a truly Australian sport. âGeoffrey Blainey put it very well: itâs a game of our own,â says Tim Harcourt, industry professor and chief economist at the Centre for Sport, Business and Society at the University of Technology Sydney and author of Footynomics and the Business of Sport (2024). âI think weâre very proud of that. Itâs the only Indigenous game.â
Harcourt, who hails from Adelaide, wrote his book after reading Soccernomics (2009) by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski. âI like soccer, but there was a line in that book that said that Aussie Rules is nothing. No one goes to it, no one plays it [and] in a centuryâs time, itâll be seen as something like Morris dancing. And I just thought, Gee, Aussie Rules is a big sport and it was a big sport a hundred years ago. How can you say that?â
While the codes have managed to reach a dĂ©tente in recent years, Fujak suspects that if there were a formal peace treaty on the table, the AFL would have reservations about surrendering their weapons. The reason for that is simple: theyâre winning. âI think theyâre the only code who would not buy into a peace accord,â Fujak says. âThey are the most successful and theyâre growing, and to some degree, that growth is coming at the expense of their competitors, in particular rugby.â
Fujak cites figures from his book showing that when rugby went professional in 1995, the AFLâs revenue was four times bigger than Rugby Australiaâs. âAs of the last couple of years, theyâve grown to become eight times bigger. I think weâre seeing this splitting of the market. Itâs like a marathon race where, at the end, thereâs a few who break away from the field.â
IF YOU WERE to compare Australiaâs football environment to another crowded and competitive marketplace, the most apt might be supermarkets, where there exists a duopoly between Woolies and Coles â effectively Aussie Rules and league â with a couple of secondary brands in Aldi and IGA â soccer and rugby. This dynamic is most clearly illustrated in the structure of the respective codesâ TV broadcast deals.
The AFLâs most recent rights deal, signed with Seven West Media and Foxtel, is worth $4.5 billion over seven years to 2031, or $643 million per year, compared to the NRLâs current $2 billion ($400m per season) deal with Nine Entertainment, Foxtel and Sky New Zealand that expires in 2027. AFL was the most well-attended sport in 2023, with total stadium crowds of 8.1 million, almost double that of the NRL. In terms of TV viewers, 4.06 million viewers tuned in to this seasonâs Swans v Lions grand final, compared to the 3.65m who watched Penrith beat the Melbourne Storm; indeed, the AFL grand final has outrated the NRLâs for the past nine years. An analysis of viewers for the entire 2024 season by the Australian Financial Review, however, found the NRL pipped its rival with 112 million viewers compared to the AFLâs 106.7 million.
In comparison to the top two, Football Australia this year landed a four-year $200 million deal with Paramount Australia for the broadcast rights to Socceroos and Matildas matches. The picture is less rosy for the A-Leagues, which, in contrast to other codes, have been paying to outsource production of their games, which are then broadcast on Network Ten and Paramount+. Rugby Australia, meanwhile, has a $30 million annual broadcast deal with Nine/Stan to screen Super Rugby and Wallabies matches that winds up at the end of 2025. âWhat we look for when we describe a sportâs popularity is obviously its level of fandom and its revenue generation,â says Adam Karg, professor of sports management at Deakin University. âClearly, thatâs the way you split it into the two big brands and the other two.â
In terms of market capacity, the current duopoly raises questions over the viability of four codes, he says. âI think the market would settle on three better than it does on four,â says Karg. âAnd I think the three that are best positioned at the moment are soccer, then the big two, rugby league and AFL.â
Much has been written about rugbyâs imperilled position. It wasnât always thus. In the late â90s and early â00s, a golden generation of Wallabies, led by talismanic skipper John Eales, helped catapult the sport into a position where it threatened the top two, particularly after league had been weakened by the Super League saga.
Rugbyâs problems are at least twofold: it lacks a strong domestic club competition, while the Wallabies, to put it kindly, have ceased to be a dominant force (at time of writing, they sat at a historically low tenth in the world rankings, just behind Fiji). âRugby in Australia has really suffered from the fact that Australia canât beat the All Blacks,â says Paul Bowell, a sports sociologist at Swinburne University in Melbourne. âFor fans, if you look at the whole definition of sport, there needs to be competition, there needs to be this element of chance. If the Wallabies canât beat the All Blacks, then itâs really difficult to create that enjoyment and that fervour.â
Rugby Australia CEO Phil Waugh acknowledges the sportâs struggles but is optimistic that next yearâs British and Irish Lions tour and home World Cups for men in 2027 and women in 2029 can help to halt the codeâs decline. âWe have a runway, which if youâre in sports administration in any sport in the country, youâd want to be part of,â Waugh told me late last year. âHow do we ensure that youâre maximising those events from a revenue point of view? Youâve got to have successful teams at those events. Weâve proven that through the Matildas. If youâre Australian, youâre following an Australian team. AFL canât do that; rugby league canât do that [at least to any comparable degree]. We have national teams in the womenâs and menâs game that the whole country can get behind.â
Itâs a compelling argument. The question is, are patriotism and participation, two factors linked to international success, the key barometers of a sportâs health they are often held up to be?
WHEN SAM KERR received the ball from Katrina Gorry in the 63rd minute of the Matildasâ semi-final against England at last yearâs Womenâs World Cup (WWC), she held the nation in the palm of her hand. As the Chelsea striker approached the box, she gathered herself, before letting fly, her strike rocketing into the top left corner of the net. For a moment, the nation was one.
The collective joy Kerr and her teammates inspired, much like the Socceroosâ lion- hearted run at the 2006 World Cup, showed the potential soccer possesses to enthral and captivate a nation. Australian sportâs âsleeping giantâ, as the game has long been called, appeared to have been awakened.
Performances such as these, achieved despite the sportâs limited talent pool, leave many in the soccer community feeling a little wistful. âI think weâd be a very good chance of winning World Cups,â says former Socceroo and football analyst Craig Foster of the Socceroosâ potential if soccer were Australiaâs dominant code. âIf we go back to the 2006 World Cup, I remember the coach of Italy that day said, âIf that country ever gets itself sorted out in football and really takes it seriously, theyâre going to be a forceâ. And thatâs very true, given we can already, at times, be so very competitive.â
But Foster admits that, today, the menâs national team is a long way off being a serious contender. Similarly, while the Matildas did make the semis of the WWC, they are now facing similar competition for talent from other sports. For a self-described partisan like Foster, this is vexing.
âIt can be quite frustrating for us that itâs such a concentrated market because we lose access to finance and we lose access to the talent pool,â he says. âAnd where our sport might be slightly different to the others is that talent pool is critically important for us to have an opportunity to achieve in the worldâs biggest sport. The greatest challenge in Australian sport is to win the FIFA World Cup. Thatâs why we call it the Holy Grail.â
Figures from the Australian Sports Commission show soccer is Australiaâs most widely played team sport, with 570,000 Australians aged 14+ competing regularly. But Foster acknowledges this may not be the hook to hang the sportâs future on. âPopularity is not commercial success,â he says. âWeâre the best example of that. That participation has not been driven into stadiums or into [massive] broadcast deals.â
The core challenge soccer has always faced, Foster says, is that local players need to play in the best foreign leagues for the national team to be successful. âThat is unique among all of our sports,â he says. âAustralian cricketers can stay in Australia. AFL players are Australian. So, the challenge for the sport is that you want to transfer your best players at a certain stage to different competitions, and yet you still need to convince Australians that your domestic competition is worthy of support. And that is the conundrum that the game has never solved.â
The local-versus-international dimensions of the four codes is an interesting element of the wider debate, with arguments to be made either way as to whether a global footprint is an advantage or not.
Harcourt sees huge benefits to having a strong domestic club competition, particularly for the AFL. In fact, the absence of international play may be a hidden strength, he argues. âIf you want to be a good basketballer or a good soccer player, youâve got to leave Australia and play in the big leagues,â he says. âTo some extent, that means the NBL canât be a superior league. It can be a feeder for up-and-comers. It can be a superannuation scheme, like the A-League is. But if you want to be the greatest AFL player, you can be, right here, and people will go and watch you. Ultimately, people want to watch the best, live if they can.â
Of course, league and Aussie Rules also benefit from having club competitions that date back more than a hundred years. The resulting tribalism is something that canât be manufactured on the fly by brand consultants in PowerPoint pressos that trumpet demographic penetration, says Karg. âThe fact that the AFL did so much work to build those generationally strong fan bases, theyâll be rewarded for that ongoing because people are born into them.â
THERE ARE SOME who see soccer rising to become the dominant code, possibly even the sole code globally, as inevitable. Last year, a former chair of the Australian Sports Commission, John Wylie, returned from the Rugby World Cup in France convinced that, in the long run, the round-ball gameâs dominance would one day be universal, even in markets where itâs currently a second-tier sport, like the US and Australia. âSoccer is the dominant code in most countries around the world,â Wylie told The Sydney Morning Herald. âTV dollars are flowing to the top sports globally and soccer . . . will only get stronger.â
Itâs a bold prognostication but there are a few factors in soccerâs favour, perhaps the most important being that it is not as exposed to the threat of concussion as are the collision-heavy codes of football, to which you could add gridiron.
Fujak sees significant challenges for the collision codes in dealing with concussion, comparing their collective handling of the issue thus far to tobacco companies and cigarettes. âBasically, it follows a cycle of deny, deny, deny, [then] acknowledge [the problem] and modify the product, but modify it in a way that doesnât really solve the problem,â he says. âYou canât play rugby without tackling. AFL has its own risks because itâs a 360° game, so you canât see whatâs about to hit you. But I think there are ways to mitigate it enough for them to be okay because impact collision isnât essential to that sport.â
Harcourt, too, believes the concussion issue weighs heavily in soccerâs favour, as does the continued influx of soccer-mad migrants and the growing popularity of the womenâs game. âImmigration has taken off under [Prime Minister] Albanese,â he says. âI wonât say all those people will be soccer players, but a high proportion of them will be. And I think more girls will play soccer than other codes. I can see it growing, but I donât think itâs going to take over those other sports. Itâs certainly not going to wipe them out.â
When I ask Masters about soccerâs ascendance in Australia and the US, he agrees in principle, citing the concussion threat and increasing globalisation. But when I ask how long a timeframe he expects this to play out over, his reply is instructive. âIt brings to mind that quote from Zhou Enlai when somebody asked him [in the early 1970s], âWhat do you think about the French Revolution?â He said, âItâs too early to sayâ. Well, youâre talking about something that happened in 1789, and itâs probably pretty much the same in the case of soccer.â
If soccer is to rise to become an equal code or something more, it faces some sizeable obstacles. Attitudes to the game within the broader community, for example, will need to change quite dramatically, says Bowell. âAustralia would need to reconcile its connection to multiculturalism,â he says. âItâs odd â soccer is viewed as a foreign sport in Australia. Itâs the one sport that we havenât accepted as a colonial sport.â
Australians also appear to be averse to the type of fandom soccer can attract, Bowell adds, citing the Western Sydney Wanderersâ black and red wall. âIn Australia, we see that as a threat,â he says. âWe see this as a foreign action. Itâs othered.â
Ultimately, as it is in other fields, predicting the future in sports is a foolâs errand; in the US, cricket once rivalled baseballâs popularity â and look how that turned out. For most of us who are casual fans of multiple codes, the status quo probably suits us just fine. Weâre happy to cheer for the Swans one week, Penrith the next and jump on board the Matildas or Socceroos bandwagons whenever they come around â even if we wouldnât entertain attending a club game in those sports.
Karg wrote an unpublished paper a decade ago that used the Groove Armada song âIf Everybody Looked the Sameâ to argue that the plurality of pigskin in Australia is something we should savour. âIf everybody looked the same/weâd get tired looking at each other,â Karg recites, quoting the song. âIf we only had one sport, yeah great, it would be a dominant beast in terms of its numbers and it would dominate broadcasts, be the only [choice] to sponsor, youâd have stadiums of a hundred thousand people in every city and all of that. But weâd get tired of looking at each other.â
So, perhaps itâs a good thing to have so many balls in the air. Australian sports fans just have to hope that there continues to be enough hands â and feet â to prevent them hitting the ground.
This story appears in the November/December 2024 issue of Esquire Australia, on sale now. Find out where to buy the issue here.
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