Participant Observations 25/6/18 - AFLFA Fan Forum Responses

Here are the questions for discussion that were sent out prior to the AFLFA Fan Forum, and my responses that have been sent back:

Inaugural Fans Forum: 24 June 2018

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1.What do you most love about footy?

The game itself is great to watch – fast, high scoring, physical, skilled, and exciting. There are other things I like as well, such as the crowds, the atmosphere, the history, the media coverage, the ability to bond with others around it, but mostly I love watching the game because of its entertainment value as a spectacle.

2. How important is footy in your life?

Other than family and friends, footy is the most important thing in my life. It pretty much dictates my entire life. I play it, I love watching it, and it defines my identity as a person. For this reason, I actually like the AFLX and AFLW because it gives more content over the off-season.

3. What is your ideal match day experience - before, during and after the game?

Getting to the game is something special, and usually involves travelling on public transport with other fans, even in New South Wales. There should be more public transport initiatives around getting to AFL games, such as free travel on public transport with a valid AFL ticket or membership on game days. Getting to the ground is awesome. I think the pre-game activities held around the ground prior to entry is good if done well – it shouldn’t be over commercial or over crowded. The focus should be on kids and home team promotion, such as merchandise. Inside the ground, pre-game I think there should be more curtain-raisers, such as NEAFL games, colts games, women’s games. At times I think pre-game, quarter-time, and half-time entertainment is boring. After the game, everyone loves kick-to-kick. Perhaps more should be done about promoting venues for people to kick on to after the game, not just one or two venues.

4. What are the sorts of things that might stop you going to the game?

Increased ticket prices. Poor crowd behaviour. Poor public transport access. Poor venues. Poor game presentation by the home team. If the visual experience or entertainment quality of the game as a decreases.

5. What do you think needs to be improved about the game?

Broadcast coverage of the teams needs to be more equal. Some teams are only on free-to-air television a small number of times each year. Also, less Melbourne-centric bias in commentary and promotion of the game.

6.The AFL Fans Association which organised this forum are keen to make sure they are representing fans. What are the three (3) issues you would like the Fans Association to be working on for you?

1) Making the game affordable to access, either live or on television (I.e., lobbying for low ticket prices, affordable stadium concessions, low subscription TV prices, more free-to-air TV coverage)

2) Making the game enjoyable to watch (i.e., lobbying for anti-density rules, improved scoring, etc.)

3) Pressuring the AFL to act as a social institution. The AFL can and should be seen as a progressive leader in society around issues such as gender equality, equal rights, anti-discrimination, anti-racism, anti-sexism and so on. The AFLFA should lobby the AFL to be strong and progressive on these issues.

Participant Observations 19/6/18 - The AFL Fans Association

I've joined an AFL fan group as a free member. The group, called the AFL Fan Association, report to be a fans interest group, with the aim of better representing fans in the decisions of the AFL:

https://www.aflfans.org.au/

They are holding an AFL Fans forum this coming weekend, so I've emailed them to see if the forum will be live streamed, and/or posted online.

The reason I guess for following this group is that I'm ultimately hopeful it might put me in touch with a group of AFL superfans who are as engaged with watching the AFL as I am, and are as keenly aware of the dynamics of watching the AFL on television as I am. Hopefully, if I could find such a person, it would align with or contradict my own observations, to better the research.

It may also put me in closer proximity with a lobby group who argue for better coverage of games on the AFL. Their motto is 'Reclaim the Game'. I also saw this article, where one of their stated aims is to: Fixture more Saturday matches and put popular games on free-to-air-TV

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/afl-fans-to-draw-up-plan-on-how-to-make-game-better-call-on-league-to-listen/news-story/6120d450f73338c452ad22e8dd113b68

It would be interesting to see what they consider to be 'popular' games are, and how this might affect the less 'popular' teams.

Anyways, we'll wait and see what comes out of the forum, if they reply to my posts, and if I think they would add anything to the research project.

Participant Observations 18/6/18 - Watch AFL & VPN Use

Just a short post today to say that I checked this week to see if I could still use a VPN to access AFL games via the Watch AFL site. Please to report that yes, the games were able to be streamed live, although there were some lag and fidelity issues.

At one point however, the quality was very good - almost as good as what I would expect from any other streaming content, but unlike other streams, it tended to vary significantly in a short amount of time, and was more prone to buffering, although this probably has as much to do with the VPN than the internet speed or website itself, as I'm confident my internet can deliver speed that can handle HD images.

Good to see this is still an option to get games of AFL, and feeds into the informal media narrative and points of acquiescence between formal and informal media.

Participant Observations 15/6/18 - The World Cup

I stayed up last night to watch the start of the 2018 World Cup from Russia, to see on what devices I could watch it, what the quality was like, fidelity, lagging, and so on. Here are the observations:

- The best quality of image I found was streaming the game through the SBS website on my gaming PC. There was a little lag, but only a few seconds compared to the FTA broadcast. This is also the most robust signal.

- The FTA coverage was ok, but because of where I live, the signal is not strong, so if I turned on another device, such as the gaming PC or the space heater, the signal could drop out.

- The game could be streamed via the SBS On Demand app or the SBS World Cup app, and then cast to the television. However, this offered the worst image with frequent degradation and pixelation, and the worst lag, often about 20 seconds compared to FTA. There was no difference between the two apps in terms of lag or quality.

- The Freeview app does not allow you to stream the World Cup at all.

- The only option where you don't have to create an account and sign in was the FTA option. This was a little bit unfortunate, because I didn't really feel like I should have to create an account to watch the World Cup, but on the positive side, the login details could be used on both apps and the wensite, and it also demonstrates the SBS On Demand app, which I previously didn't think would carry live streams, was in fact able to do this.

- The fact that there was very little lag watching online or through the app showed that the Foxtel Now app still suffers from considerable lag issues, but that it can be solved. Online, as mentioned, the lag was really only about 4-5 seconds behind the FTA, which really is very small and tolerable, while the lag casting through the app was still only 20 seconds, which is waaaaaay less than casting the Foxtel Now app. Clearly this is a technological issues that isn't being addressed by Foxtel.

Basically, it looks like I'll be watching most of the world cup when I'm at home through the gaming PC - I was kind of hoping this might be the case anyway, as I actually prefer to get most of my content this way now anyway, instead of terrestrial broadcast or satellite. It's really the way we will be watching most of the content in the future, and the system needs to be stress tested to account for this type of increasing behavior.

It also showed that the system could deliver a high quality image - better than the HD signal on FTA, although I would imagine I'm still in the minority of people to get their content this way, so who knows what the signal would be like if everyone did this. I did find that the OTT delivery platforms took a while to load, and it felt like this was because of the demand on the entire SBS/Optus system as people tuned into watch it from a server. But generally, one online, there was little to no buffering, and actually the user experience if much enhanced because of the annotating of the signal. You can call up highlights, see substitutions, free-kicks etc., quite easily.

Participant Observations 9/6/18 - Almost a year on, do I miss the Fox Box?

I was watching Fox Sports the other day (of course) and they played a promo about the iQ3 box. It made me think about whether or not I really miss it anymore.

Definitely there are functions that I miss having, especially the ability to series link content. I've been forced to watch a lot more content as it goes to air (linear), or play content through my gamin PC, where I can rewind the content up to 30 minutes.

There were less hassles with the iQ box compared to using Foxtel Now, like the one I outlined in my last post, with the app stalling, etc. There is also a bad time delay compared to the satellite service that I'll talk about more in a minute.

And the user-interface and functionality of the Foxtel Now app is still very substandard compared to other similar apps like the FTA apps and the Netflix app. The app crashes, is slow to launch, plays sound even when off, is slow when switching between live and on-demand content, doesn't have some of the same basic functions as the Netflix app, and is definitely 'clunky'.

Foxtel now also probably doesn't have quite the same level of fidelity as the satellite service, although I have worked hard to get this to a level where the difference is negligible, especially if I watch without my glasses on!

But overall, I don't miss the Foxtel iQ box.

Using the iPad as the remote is relatively easy. I don't miss the extra channels I had with the satellite service. I'm still watching predominantly sport, and I should get the new all-cricket channel Foxtel will launch. I'm paying enough for other apps, such as Amazon Prime, and for faster internet, to justify the savings I made changing over to the OTT service. In fact, if anything, because I'm using the Foxtel OTT service, I basically watch all my content that way now as well because I have all the FTA and other OTT apps on my iPad, which is great.

The one big downside that I alluded to earlier is lagging, and this is a real problem when watching sport. For example, if I'm watching the Swans play, and my mate Benny Douglas is also watching at the same time at his place but on free-to-air, he will text me about a highlight that has happened in the game before I've had a chance to watch it. So the lag by watching the game on the OTT app and then chromecasting it to the TV I estimate is nearly 60 seconds. This clearly devalues the experience of watching live sport - I can tell when my phone alerts me to a message, that there is a highlight (or a lowlight) about to happen.

But overall, I still love this service. Obviously I think some parts of the app can be improved, but switching to OTT has not significantly changed my ability to fulfill my experience as an AFL fan.