The Standard | INCREASED sponsorship has helped a major country football league have every match in the competition recorded on camera.
Ballarat Football League clubs and fans have access to vision from the competition’s five weekly fixtures thanks to a proactive initiative from competition officials.
AFL Goldfields – which administers the BFL along with two neighbouring leagues – has partnered with Red Onion Creative to capture the action.
A brawl between South Warrnambool and Port Fairy on Saturday could come under the microscope of league officials. But their job could have been easier if the match was recorded. Picture: Rob Gunstone
Red Onion Creative, in turn, has become a naming-rights sponsor, with the footage made available via the aflgoldfields.tv website.
The issue of recording football matches has ignited in the south-west after footage captured on an iPad was used in a tribunal case involving Merrivale defender Matt Gleeson.
Gleeson received a six-match ban for striking Dennington’s Sam Curtis, with the Dogs adamant he would have received a lesser penalty without the evidence.
AFL Goldfields media, marketing and events manager Shaun Kelly said the arrangement with Red Onion Creative had been hugely beneficial to the BFL, its clubs and its fans.
Footage had been used at tribunal hearings while coaches had another match review tool at their disposal.
Kelly said AFL Goldfields had funded the initiative by raising extra sponsorship dollars. The subsequent highlights packages produced had then become another way to spread the message of the league’s corporate partners.
Crucially, there had been no increase to clubs’ affiliation costs.
“That would be my recommendation. You can sell the footage, create highlights packages and sell property around that footage,” Kelly said. “So the Warrnambool Toyota Hampden league highlights package or something like that, get Fresha on board for the Warrnambool and District league.”
You can sell the footage, create highlights packages and sell property around the footage.
Kelly said the footage had become “something we couldn’t do without”. He said AFL Goldfields had also set up a match review panel to look over incidents caught on tape, which had helped clean up the league.
“Having the footage for promotional purposes, the MRP stuff and the mark and goal of the year, we don’t take it for granted but it’s become part of the everyday operations of the league,” he said.
Warrnambool and District league president Ken McSween on Friday said he was open to the idea of having every match recorded.
But McSween said he would “have to have a look at what costs there are and what avenues there are to recoup those costs”.
Hampden league president Hugh Worrall on Monday said recording every match had not been discussed by his executive.
“It’s something we’d have to discuss with the clubs. We haven’t got a big bank balance and there could be other things that the clubs think are priorities for us to spend our money on,” he said.
