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For years we have all heard about how great the attendances are for the AFL in Australia. It has one of the largest crowd attendance rates in the world, and in 2011 an average of 34,937 patrons came to 187 matches during the regular season.
By comparison, A-League crowds averaged 10,487 in 135 regular season matches, or pretty much exactly 30 percent of the comparable AFL figure.
But is the disparity in popularity of the two codes as vast as these crowd figures might suggest?
First up, it should be remembered that the AFL had its beginnings as a competition in 1897, and eight of the 17 teams have been running for over 100 years.
In contrast, the A-League has been going for only seven seasons, and Perth Glory is the only club to have existed for more than 10.
Perhaps more importantly though, the AFL is still a predominantly Melbourne based competition, with nine teams coming from that city (ten if you include Geelong)
To date, the A-League has only one city where two sides have competed, co-incidentally Melbourne.
A closer look at the AFL figures then shows some interesting statistics.
The average crowd for AFL teams competing against a local rival was a massive 48,468, but a much more modest 27,024 when playing teams from interstate.
In Victoria, clubs averaged 49,840 spectators when playing against local teams, and 26,612 against teams from interstate.
Interesting that Melbourne, the self proclaimed sporting capital of Australia, had a lower attendance against out of state teams then the rest of the country, in Melbourne’s most favourite sport.
At a truly national level then, for a competition that receives no free-to-air coverage, and almost no support from mainstream media, A-League attendance levels might not be as bad as many would suggest for what is still a competition in it’s infancy.
This year, A-League crowds increased by 25 percent from the previous season. If you take away the home games for the basket case that was Gold Coast United, the average attendance was 11,290. The figure is even higher if you also exclude United’s away games, which were again one of the most poorly attended.
Next year there is a new Sydney derby looming, and Gold Coast United will no longer be dragging the season averages down.
Make no mistake, the A-League is growing, and already commands a respectable share of the sports going consumer market. With a new television deal to be negotiated within the next 12 months, the FFA needs to be pushing these sorts of statistics as hard as possible.
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