Sorry I missed this.
Its not just competing for bums on seats, its also competing for mainstream media coverage. Outside of the Matildas or Socceroos at a major tournament, the main stream media hate football in this country. Its nuts that even during the NRL and AFL off season, they’re still getting far more coverage than the domestic football competition, mens and womens, I mean I havent even mentioned the Womens A-League yet, the same competition thats produced almost every single one of the Matildas that the media seem to love now. Including Sam Kerr, Mary Fowler and Caitlin Foord. The media in this country are more interested in whether or not Nathan Cleary scratched his arse during his time off then who won the Australia Day Big Blue.
Keep in mind too, football is a WINTER sport, we have to play it in the summer heat here or it’ll be absolutely buried and they’d have no venues available, even if they did, they’d be in no state to host football games with the Rugby League and AFL tearing up the fields beforehand. Playing it in summer affects the quality, the quality of foreigner that clubs can recruit and in some ways the crowd numbers.
As for summer competition, you’ve of course got the cricket, but outside of the Big Bash, I dont think that affects the A-League too much given how little of it is played compared to a full A-League season.
Also don’t sleep on the NBL. The Kings are selling out their home games pretty much every week, that league is back in force and that is competing with the A-League.