Buddy hypothetical

[Big Red]

It is obviously impossible to know how we would have played over the last 8 years without Lance. But I think it can be confidently stated and he has been a very big part of our success over that time. There are countless games where his contributions has been decisive.

Buddy has certainly been a part of our success, but how much of that on field success was based on Buddy?
Even for a great forward like Buddy, a lot of their success is dependent upon the work of players further up field.

[Big Red]

In general, it is really, really hard to win the flag - do we judge the deal to bring Plugger to the swans a failure because we didn't win a flag? Of Course not.

It is hard to win a flag, 72 years without one is pretty clear evidence to that. One thing they do have in common is that Buddy and Plugger's time at the Swans didn't yield a single flag. That's 13 years of near misses, compared to 14 years with 2 flags. So maybe a marque key forward is good for attendance/memberships but less good for actually winning premierships. It could be that such a key forward makes a team too predictable, but I think it might have something to do with the big contracts that come with a marque key forward leaving less for other good players.

[Ruck'n'Roll]

Not going to try to draw any conclusions from crowd numbers - there are far too many factors in there to say anything with any genuine conviction that there is causality to accompany the obvious correlations.

Appreciate that mcs - but can we really gve any more credence to membership numbers? Are we comparing apples with oranges now? A membership used to involve purchasing a seat for 11 games a season, these days that's probably the minority of memberships.

[mcs]

I actually agree with all this and feel much the same way for most part.

My issue is that we sold the entire farm in order to get all of this along with no premiership.

We had our chances though - 2 grand finals and a prelim thrown in as well. Who knows what might have happened in the counter factual - we might have dropped away to nothing, we might have soared to greater heights?

In general, it is really, really hard to win the flag - do we judge the deal to bring Plugger to the swans a failure because we didn't win a flag? Of Course not.

We've been spoilt by historical standards in the 2000s - 5 grand finals within 11 years, 2 flags (by comparison the dogs yesterday played in only their 4th grand final of the VFL/AFL era).

It could have 3 or 4 flags (or even 5 given 2006) within a decade.

None of that is to say that we didn't bring Buddy to the club to help us win the cup - of course we did. But when one reflects on how tough they are actually to win, its a big call to use that as the primary measure of success or failure when Buddy is just 1 of 22 guys out there on any given day. Which is of course an argument that can be used on both sides - i.e. that you should not overspend on any one player, but alternatively that you can't expect one player (no matter how good they are) to be guaranteed to be the difference between not winning and a flag and winning a flag.

[Captain]

It is obviously impossible to know how we would have played over the last 8 years without Lance. But I think it can be confidently stated and he has been a very big part of our success over that time. There are countless games where his contributions has been decisive.

He has consistently performed over a long period. He rarely has more than two bad games in a row. We are 91-45 when he plays. (At 67%, that's a better win percentage than McVeigh, Goodes, Parker, Kennedy, Rampe, Heeney.) He's had 4 All-Australians and two Coleman Medals as a Swan. We have made the finals every year he has played more than 10 games. He's kicked the 6th most goals in Sth Melb/Syd history, and is on track to finish third.

But more than that, speaking personally, it's been bloody great to cheer for one of the all-time great players. I have enjoyed and savoured every goal. I have also enjoyed watching him mature and the clear pleasure he experiences in the the success of his team-mates.

I actually agree with all this and feel much the same way for most part.

My issue is that we sold the entire farm in order to get all of this along with no premiership.

[Faunac8]

It is obviously impossible to know how we would have played over the last 8 years without Lance. But I think it can be confidently stated and he has been a very big part of our success over that time. There are countless games where his contributions has been decisive.

He has consistently performed over a long period. He rarely has more than two bad games in a row. We are 91-45 when he plays. (At 67%, that's a better win percentage than McVeigh, Goodes, Parker, Kennedy, Rampe, Heeney.) He's had 4 All-Australians and two Coleman Medals as a Swan. We have made the finals every year he has played more than 10 games. He's kicked the 6th most goals in Sth Melb/Syd history, and is on track to finish third.

But more than that, speaking personally, it's been bloody great to cheer for one of the all-time great players. I have enjoyed and savoured every goal. I have also enjoyed watching him mature and the clear pleasure he experiences in the the success of his team-mates.

Great overview totally agree with you

[MattW]

It is obviously impossible to know how we would have played over the last 8 years without Lance. But I think it can be confidently stated and he has been a very big part of our success over that time. There are countless games where his contributions has been decisive.

He has consistently performed over a long period. He rarely has more than two bad games in a row. We are 91-45 when he plays. (At 67%, that's a better win percentage than McVeigh, Goodes, Parker, Kennedy, Rampe, Heeney.) He's had 4 All-Australians and two Coleman Medals as a Swan. We have made the finals every year he has played more than 10 games. He's kicked the 6th most goals in Sth Melb/Syd history, and is on track to finish third.

But more than that, speaking personally, it's been bloody great to cheer for one of the all-time great players. I have enjoyed and savoured every goal. I have also enjoyed watching him mature and the clear pleasure he experiences in the the success of his team-mates.

[Captain]

Clearly Buddy would have contributed to an increase in our bottom line. As to the amount, that’s impossible to quantify, though it would be reasonably significant.

Personally I would have preferred another premiership..

[mcs]

I have no idea about the surplus' - do they include the AFL disbursement? I don't even understand how the Swans can have so many members when you there are so many empty seats at the SCG (this is before covid) - if I had access to a seasons worth of games I'd certainly attend. I like football, not so much the field stuff - isn't really my thing. I know it's isn't just Buddy's salary, Kurt Tippett must have had a similar effect. All I know is that see players at other clubs that I wish were still at ours, sad but true.

As always, the finance of footy is difficult to unpick - best useful piece of info I could find was some analysis from 2019 in this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...-GA/edit#gid=0 . Some useful info and links to reports here: http://www.footyindustry.com/?p=36848

At least gives some idea of how it all pulls together - but its tough to unpick. Really need a proper historical series to draw any meaningful conclusions, but I suggest there is more then just correlation between a sustained period of good results and Buddy being at the club - and missing finals in 2019 was probably the difference between a loss and a surplus in that year more than anything else. If nothing else, I think its safe to say having Buddy at the club has certainly helped improve overall financial results during that period.

As for the question between members and empty seats at the SCG. Plenty of factors to take into account:
- ~20% of our members are Victorian based. I'd suspect a very small proportion of those members go to any significant number of games in Sydney in any given year.
- A lot of memberships (not sure on the breakdown) are not full 11 game access to the SCG. Not sure on the breakdown between the categories.
- Sydney sporting fans are an interesting bunch when it comes to attendances at footy. Very similar trends are seen in NRL in terms of significant membership growth not necessarily resulting in huge increases in crowds at games. For whatever reasons, there isn't the same fervour to be at every game in Sydney like there is in the absolute footy mad towns of Adelaide and Perth, or even for the biggest clubs in Melbourne.

I suspect a reasonable target is probably averaging 40K a game at home by somewhere around 2025 - probably a push, but not entirely unachievable.

I'm sure there is some much better analysis out there around all this, but if I can't find some, might spend some of the long hot summer thinking more closely about it all.

[mcs]

Those that talk up his marketing/promotional side seem to forget that the SCG was rocking a long time before Buddy came along.

Sure one can make that argumet.

But likewise the numbers do tell a fairly interesting story.

I haven't had a chance to dig out the whole lot of the figures (Neilfws may do it if he has a chance and offer some far more sophisticated analysis), but after out 2 flags (05 and 12), we saw somewhere around a 20% increase in membership numbers. This seems to linger as an addition to the 'baseline' membership levels, not just as a temporary increase (i.e there is variation mixed in there from year to year, but a premiership does seem to create a permanent boost).

http://footyindustry.com/files/afl/members/2016/AFlmembers1984-2016_aug13.png

2005 membership - 24,955
2006 Membership - 30,382
2012 membership - 29,783
2013 membership - 36,358

Since 2013 - despite no flags (noting a very good few years in general however), membership grew every year up to a peak of 61,912 in 2019. That is a massive increase no matter what way you look at it. A not insignificant factor in that growth has been the AFL more generally has done a lot to promote 'membership' as a key part of being a footy fan, so there has been serious growth across most clubs. But even taking that into account, it is still highly like that the Buddy factor has had a significant impact on that side - especially given for the good period of 2014-16 in there, 2017-19 wasn't quite at that level.

Even if you say that a quarter of that growth is due to the Buddy factor, that is still somewhere ~ 8,000 memberships. No idea what the average revenue per membership is, but it only has to be somewhere around $150 to 'offset' the wage of Buddy. And that is before any other off field impacts more broadly.

The intriguing period will be the 'post Buddy' period, to see what may happen to numbers. But I suspect we may see some fairly robust numbers should our upwards trajectory in performance is to continue.

Crowd numbers are much tougher to decipher - partially due to our split membership basis (Sydney and Melbourne) that means a growth in membership necessarily is directly reflected in home crowd figures (I suspect a similar trend would be seen at any sporting club in Sydney - it does seem to be an odd market in terms of crowds), partially because of the impact of the years playing out of Barry's palace in the west, partially by more routine factors such as wet weather, who we play at home any given year, times when games are scheduled, how we are performing as a team, redevelopment at the SCG etc.

They do tell some interesting stories however: https://afltables.com/afl/crowds/swans.html#1a

Highest 3 average attendance years were 1997 (35.8K) , 2006 (35.6K) and 2007 (34,2K).
- Reason for 1997 is obvious
- 2006 and 2007 averages supported by also being the high points of attendance at Homebush (45K on average in 2006, >60K at each game in 2007 as were very well targeted blockbusters). SCG averages for those seasons were 30.4K in 2006 and 25.2K in 2007.

- Next three on the list are 2016 (33.9K) ,2017 (33.4K) and 2018 (33.3K).
- Every year of the Buddy period comfortably is well in front of 2013 (28.2K) and 2012 (24.9K)

Not going to try to draw any conclusions from crowd numbers - there are far too many factors in there to say anything with any genuine conviction that there is causality to accompany the obvious correlations.

[Big Red]

I have no idea about the surplus' - do they include the AFL disbursement? I don't even understand how the Swans can have so many members when you there are so many empty seats at the SCG (this is before covid) - if I had access to a seasons worth of games I'd certainly attend. I like football, not so much the field stuff - isn't really my thing. I know it's isn't just Buddy's salary, Kurt Tippett must have had a similar effect. All I know is that see players at other clubs that I wish were still at ours, sad but true.

[mcs]

be in a worse financial position
We simply overpaid, and its cost us.

What we pay Buddy on the field, for all intensive purposes, has zero to do with our overall financial position. Because there is a minimum we have to pay under the cap anyway. So if we didn't have Buddy, we would have been paying others instead that salary, so the net effect of 'overpaying for him' is effectively zero in terms of salary.

And while one may postulate any sort of counterfactual about what a 'better team' may have achieved on the field (if you want to argue we would have done better paying other players more with the Buddy money), I do not think it is credible to suggest he has not had a significant impact for the club off the park. Not an easily quantifiable impact because one can not create a viable counterfactual to compare it with.

But I find it very hard too believe anyone could mount a strong case that would suggest in any shape or form we are as a club financially 'worse off' because we recruited Buddy - once you take COVID out of the equation. That is the only reason we are in a 'worse' financial position at the moment - it is simply ridiculous to omit that critical context.

As I said before, we had eight years of straight surpluses up until 2018, and 2019 was not a massive loss. So the key indicators suggest the recruitment of Buddy certainly wasn't harmful to the overall financial perfromance of the club as a whole.

[barry]

I suspect by the end of the buddy era we will have a less talented list compared to the year before he came to us, be in a worse financial position, and have no premiership silverware to show for it.

We simply overpaid, and its cost us.

[Captain]

I was excited at the time to get Buddy but looking back I wish we had never got him.

Has taken way too much salary cap and caused us to lose too many good players.

In order to justify such a huge % of our cap over such a large amount of time he needed to deliver more on the biggest stages but has either been injured (2015 finals, 2016 GF,) or gone missing (goalless in 2017 SF, destroyed by Davis in 2018 EF). This year, we didn't need him to kick 6 in a dead rubber against the Suns, we needed him to nail that crucial set shot against the Giants to win.

Those that talk up his marketing/promotional side seem to forget that the SCG was rocking a long time before Buddy came along.

[Ruck'n'Roll]

Actually I don't think the question is whether the AFL were in for $3 mill - I think it's pretty cetain - the only question in my mind is, did the Swans know that some of the money was from the AFL?