IT'S not too late for the AFL to do the smart thing and push back the start time of Saturday's Grand Final.
Of course, it won't, for the League is not in the habit of changing start times even for home-and-away matches so there is no way it will revisit, with four days' notice, the first bounce of the season's biggest game.
But two hours and 45 minutes should be added to the start time of the Sydney-Brisbane Grand Final. Move it from 2.30pm to 5.15pm, the slot which worked perfectly for last Saturday's Geelong-Brisbane preliminary final.
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In again scheduling its main match of the season at 2.30pm on a Saturday – the one timeslot that no club asks for when submitting annual fixture requests to headquarters, and the one timeslot the host TV broadcaster does not want – the AFL is choosing to ignore prized marketing opportunities.
Particularly when the Grand Final teams effectively represent the two markets most crucial to Australian football growth: NSW and Queensland.
Dozens of thousands of non-AFL diehards – the specific demographic the AFL would most like to target – residing in those states will still find a way to view Saturday's game. But hundreds of thousands more of the same people would have likely watched it had the game been scheduled for twilight or early evening.
The biggest broadcast numbers for AFL games were produced in the 2005 Grand Final (Sydney v West Coast) and 2023 (Collingwood v Brisbane), with nearly 3.5 million viewers, effective proof that when a team from Sydney or Brisbane reaches the main Australian football game, national interest is at a peak.
Just as Kiss was last year, Robbie Williams in 2022, The Killers in 2017 and Bryan Adams in 2015, Katy Perry will be forced on Saturday to perform in daylight. That will again be underwhelming before it even starts, simply because such acts are always better when the skies are dark.
The AFL's Grand Final broadcaster, Channel Seven, is currently entering an aggressive raid of opposition media talent, and there is zero doubt that it will aggressively demand of the AFL a far later start than 2.30pm for Grand Finals from 2025, when the first of its seven-year contract extension commences.
It will pitch for a night-time game in its first approach but will probably settle for twilight. Seven will be ropeable if the 2.30pm game is maintained.
It is staggering in my eyes that in a competition where every major match is sought to be scheduled in night or twilight slots – by the AFL itself, the TV networks and even more pertinently the clubs – that the biggest game is reserved for the marketing graveyard slot.
I realise the AFL Fans Association always works itself into outrage at the mere suggestion of a later Grand Final. But a similar group threatened boycotts when the nearly-broken VFL moved toward becoming the AFL in the 1980s, and 40 years later the game is in far better supporter health because of that evolution.
Despite the noise of the "fans" I have no doubt there would be not even one fewer viewer from that association should there be a twilight or night Grand Final. And also no doubt there would be hundreds of thousands more viewers across the country if the game was on in a prime time viewing slot.
Surely the Swans-Lions Grand Final on Saturday is the last to start and finish in daylight.
