AFL crowds will be down 348K this season
Roar Guru By jimbo, 15 Jun 2009 The Crowd is a Roar Guru
- Tagged:
- AFL, AFL crowd attendance figures, Sydney Swans
There have been plenty of articles referring to A-League crowd slump, but let’s look at the decline in AFL crowds this season and make some prediction for how big the drop will be for AFL by the end of the season.
At exactly the half way stage, lets look at AFL attendance projections for the second half of the year and the season total. This is designed to illustrate just what the significance of the crowd decline so far might extrapolate to by the season’s end.
Most likely is that that will be a decline of about 348,000 AFL attendances by the end of the 2009 season, if the relative percentage decline trend continues.
And just what hope is there within the remaining rounds for a venue-by-venue rise in crowds over the run home to compensate for any of the losses?
So far this season, crowds are already down more than 165,000 on last season, and are a lot lower than the previous year as well.
We know that we saw an increase in overall attendances in the last two AFL seasons, but it looks like the AFL trend is downwards in 2009. This is particularly evident for teams outside Melbourne.
The falls aren’t just in attendances at games, but also in TV ratings, especially in Sydney where Swans games have the lowest TV audience of any program on a Saturday night in Sydney, including the lowly rating SBS program, The Iron Chef.
Sydney Swans home games attendances will be down about 110,000 this season or about thirty percent of the overall AFL decline. In terms of relative percentage to potential TV audience, the TV ratings for Swans games are some of the lowest since the Swans move to Sydney 25 years ago.
With the looming new television deal for AFL coming up for renewal in the next couple of years and the expansion of the AFL with two new teams in Sydney’s West and the Gold Coast, these are worrying figures for the AFL.
The fall in interest in AFL comes despite a widespread and very expensive national advertising campaign run by the AFL at the beginning of the season and also a very large increase in marketing and advertising budgets for this financial year.
The AFL had also set aside $150 million alone for the “Expansion of AFL into NSW and Queensland”.
Obviously it has not had the desired effect, especially in NSW, where football continues to have the highest number of registered players by a very large margin and still growing at about six percent annually.
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- AFL, AFL crowd attendance figures, Sydney Swans
June 15th 2009 @ 10:47am
Michael C said | June 15th 2009 @ 10:47am | Report comment
Redb -
Swannees at SCG are going okay, 26,491 avg.
Total year avg 2007 at SCG was 25,222 and last year was 25,401. (although, first half last year was 26,877 – - so, fractionally down year on year to 2008 but up on 25,069 – the first half figure for 2007).
Stadium Australia is down again – 69K from 2 matches compared to 79K from 2 same time last year. 2007 – - I basically refuse to compare to that year – as, no one in their right mind would suggest that crowds of 62K, 64K and 63K would be sustainable or should be considered the benchmark. (however, perhaps gives the AFL food for thought).
June 15th 2009 @ 10:49am
Billy McClure said | June 15th 2009 @ 10:49am | Report comment
The sporting landscape has been changing since Lowey has taken over the FFA. Football is emerging fast and the next decade it seems will see Football out grow the other codes. Will be intersting to see what media deals the different codes will get in the future. League would be struggling now I think if they did not have such a good media deal in place. AFL rely on their massive crowds in VIC so its important for them to keep them crowdsd up – expand nation wide may cause problems. But they too are lucky to have such a great broadcasting deal (I think brokered by Ben Buckley now at FFA).
June 15th 2009 @ 10:49am
Millster said | June 15th 2009 @ 10:49am | Report comment
Three reactions to this with all due respect jimbo
1. numbers schmumbers, there are more important things in the evolution of our codes than the next-to-meaningless figure of bums on seats.
2. giving credit where credit is due, I’d take the domestic position of AFL anyday irrespective of a modest decline and a couple of dodgy expansion decision.
3. I’m a Sydneysider who loves this city and its diversity (some would say “fickleness”) and I’m never going to fall into the trap of assessing something by attendance or TV ratings in this city. I’ve long learned that the viewing patterns of my brettheren in this city would make an excellent study into chaos theory
[that said, Iron Chef is one cool show!]
June 15th 2009 @ 10:51am
Slippery Jim said | June 15th 2009 @ 10:51am | Report comment
Wow Jimbo – you should clock up the triple ton for this one lol! Well played in sending up Michael C’s similar effort about the A-League heh heh…
June 15th 2009 @ 10:54am
Justin said | June 15th 2009 @ 10:54am | Report comment
The comment – “the AFL fixture is so unbalanced” by MC hits the nail on the head. The AFL has a different strategy to the other codes in the way it runs it comp. They are after money, first and foremost. A fair draw and thus a comp with integrity is secondary. But it allows them to have huge revenues from TV which has seen the game grow to be the biggest sport in AUS.
June 15th 2009 @ 10:55am
Redb said | June 15th 2009 @ 10:55am | Report comment
Millster,
I’ve watched a couple of episodes of the American Iron Chef’s on Foxtel and I’m just waiting for the compere to chop his own head off
Redb
June 15th 2009 @ 11:10am
Pippinu said | June 15th 2009 @ 11:10am | Report comment
Caro is 100% correct – Collingwood should take the blame for everything, from a dip in crowds, to the importation of Swine flu and the global financial crisis.
I’m with Millster – nothing wrong with Iron Chef at all.
Also, to take up a point made by redb a few times – that last quarter on Friday night was one of the best of seen in a long, long time (and I generally hate watching teams other than my own, why? coz I can’t stand any of ‘em)
June 15th 2009 @ 11:25am
Redb said | June 15th 2009 @ 11:25am | Report comment
Pip,
yeah it’s a funny thing with AFL fans we generally don’t like to watch other teams – as much as I hate Carlton, I couldnt help but admire their tenacity on Friday night along with Judd’s heroics – shite I actually wanted them to win – I need help.
TV ratings over 900,000 against the NRLs’ Friday Night which got 700,000 (still good) and anyone wonders why the AFL TV rights are so attractive. This was essentially a Melb v Melb team game. The crowd noise was unbeleivable, no need for chants and singalongs, just watch the great game and roar till your hoarse.
Redb
June 15th 2009 @ 11:34am
Michael C said | June 15th 2009 @ 11:34am | Report comment
Justin – The AFL has a different strategy to the other codes???
a bit harsh. The AFL is hamstrung by a 22 round season – - any less will devalue the broadcast rights (fair enough – you can’t run the league without money).
Any more – remember, the NRL runs 26 rounds and 16 more H&A matches – - but more is resisted by AFL clubs as the wear and tear on players is at it’s maximum. 16 into 22 doesn’t work, but, also, 16 into 24 doesn’t work either as the NRL spread 24 H&A games over 26 rounds. 16 requires 30 full rounds for a perfect draw.
Many of us promote ideas of some form of 2 ‘conference’ draw – - and a half way ‘fair’ draw might be able to be arrived at.
To suggest the AFL has a different strategy is odd – as the NRL is primarly a TV sport, having now put in 2 Friday night matches, a Monday night TV match and have no Saturday arvo games. (as well as having had night and now a ‘retreat’ to a twilight Grand Final). The NRL has the ‘fluid’ fixture not set in stone until 6 weeks prior. The AFL strategy has not included any of these – yet – as an ongoing thing. Although we do have the Sunday ‘late’ game, but, quite often, it is ‘late’ in Melbourne because it’s 2pm in Perth!!
BUt – - you obvioiusly have to provide something to access the funds – and if you don’t. You struggle. The A-League by contrast is not an FTA product presently, but, they still fixture their games out for zero overlap to allow Foxtel to broadcast each game live.
If TV and maximising such revenue were not first and foremost in mind – then, we’d still have 4 or 6 or 8 games on a Saturday arvo starting at 2pm.
June 15th 2009 @ 11:55am
Michael C said | June 15th 2009 @ 11:55am | Report comment
Billy -
I think you’ll find that the Subiaco and AAMI stadium crowds (since hosting 22 H&A games) have been at 37.5K and 35.4K respectively.
The Gabba over the last decade is around 29K and the SCG around 27K.
Stadium Australia sits at 46K for 24 matches from 2002 onwards.
All pretty healthy wouldn’t you agree??
The HAL wouldn’t mind those figures.
If you’re going to come on ‘cheer leading’, provide something of substance. The unsubstantiated ‘pub talk’ is cheap and too easy – - – and on the back of such a bad all round year for HAL attendances, you’d be well advised to pull your head in.