Sydney - Westfield Group founder Frank Lowy, whose two great loves are making money from building shopping malls and running the game of football in Australia, reckons the global recession will hit professional sport hard.

Attendances will be down, the dollar-value of television broadcast contracts will fall and clubs will struggle to survive as the turnstiles spin more slowly.

"There's only so much money to go around," the country's richest man and the chairman of its Football Federation said. "I think the world will have to contract, so will sport have to contract, it's as simple as that."

But, as other recessions have shown, it's not as simple at that at all.

Football grounds in Britain were packed to capacity in the bleak post-war years. In 1947, when there were no fewer than 77 greyhound tracks in Britain, 50 million people paid to file through the turnstiles and watch the dogs run.

Sport has already proved to be amazingly resilient in Australia. On the weekend following the worst day for the stock market since the 1987 crash, the biggest crowd since 1983 turned out to watch the horses run round Melbourne 's Flemington track.

"It's true to say that betting goes up in prosperous times, but when tough times come along it doesn't take a big hit like everything else," said Andrew Lemon, a writer on thoroughbred racing.

The truth is that each recession expresses itself differently in different markets. Rather than stay at home and mope, lots of people cheer themselves up with lifestyle changes.

They might buy a season ticket to the football with the proceeds from selling off the speedboat. Or join a football team themselves.

With jobs scarce and the pressure of work slackening because of a flagging economy, leisure hours will grow for some. Some families will spend more time together. There will be a reversion to pleasures that are simpler and cheaper.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd spent the second October weekend with his kitchen cabinet trying to find a way through the banking crisis.

But where on that crucial morning was Paul Fegan, the chief executive of St George Bank, Australia's fifth largest? Fegan and his son were running in a 10-kilometre race on a Sydney seafront promenade. (dpa)