Quote:
Originally Posted by Paper Boy
They Don’t have NHL above them (AFL) as the most followed league
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Australia benefitted for having (kind of) non-competing sports, as well as isolation, for the key development phase of entrenching professional sport.
Everywhere had cricket in the summer, football in the winter, and that was it*. Sydney played rugby while Melbourne developed AFL, but relative isolation from other major centres meant a multifaceted city-based league worked in both places.
There was no critical mass like North America's east-coast cities. Imagine we only had Chicago, Toronto, and Quebec city, all far less developed than they were, and not much else. That's the approximate distance of Brisbane to Sydney to Melbourne.
If Chicago and QC were the only "other places", suddenly it would make sense to have Mississauga vs North York vs Scarbra vs Oshawa vs Hamilton.
*of course it's a little murkier with the rugby code split and soccer, but the point is they didn't have hockey AND football AND later basketball all competing for attention in the fall/winter.