Roar Guru
I’ve observed and participated in many discussions about how bad AFL attendances have supposedly been this year.
Critics will usually cite a specific game or round as the exemplar, saying, “Look, attendance at this one is lower than it was last year, so attendances must have dropped across the board.”
I often reply that isolating individual games or rounds are poor ways of making this point as they depend on variables that are volatile.
There are many factors that can impact on the crowd figure of any sporting code: weather, opponent, form, time of day, economy, location, venue, and competition from other sporting events held in the area at the same time are just some of them.
Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to analyse in-depth how AFL attendances are tracking this year, compared with last year.
Home and away attendance:
TEAM | 2013 | 2014 |
Adelaide | 31,494 | 35,823 |
Brisbane | 22,909 | 19,747 |
Fremantle | 29,225 | 36,705 |
Carlton | 44,594 | 44,853 |
Essendon | 47,093 | 49,573 |
Collingwood | 53,846 | 58,895 |
GWS Giants | 15,715 | 16,349 |
Geelong | 36,769 | 42,083 |
Gold Coast | 17,726 | 19,699 |
Hawthorn | 40,865 | 40,577 |
Melbourne | 24,929 | 26,363 |
North Melbourne | 28,820 | 32,860 |
Port Adelaide | 24,745 | 31,329 |
Richmond | 47,286 | 40,476 |
St Kilda | 28,841 | 27,577 |
Sydney | 29,896 | 27,224 |
West Coast | 30,838 | 32,507 |
Western Bulldogs | 23,351 | 26,219 |
TOTAL | 32,163 | 33,825 |
Which looks something like:
I first compiled data that compares each team’s attendances from last year to the 2014 season to date. This first graph below compares home-and-away averages for the first seven rounds of the 2013 and 2014 seasons.
First, let’s analyse Adelaide and Port Adelaide. The average attendances for both teams have increased dramatically from last year to this year, which can be attributed to their new Adelaide Oval home. Thus the important variables here are location and venue.
Looking next at Brisbane, Richmond, St Kilda and Sydney, each team has had decreases in average attendance from last year to this year.
Why? All four teams have struggled with performance. If we continue to track Sydney throughout the remainder of the season, their average attendances will increase if their improved performance continues. The important variable for these teams, then, are form and opponent.
The average attendances of the remaining 12 teams either were static or increased significantly.
Next, I compared total attendance by round through the first seven rounds of both the 2013 and 2014 seasons. The results are graphed below.
Total attendance by round:
Round | 2013 | 2014 |
Round 1 | 365,867 | 245,531 |
Round 2 | 350,736 | 315,842 |
Round 3 | 292,057 | 327,783 |
Round 4 | 290,078 | 271,667 |
Round 5 | 317,233 | 344,796 |
Round 6 | 278,744 | 327,529 |
Round 7 | 264,817 | 297,858 |
Total | 2,159,532 | 2,131,006 |
Note how variable total attendance is, round-to-round, in both years.
This supports my assertion that is it folly to compare corresponding rounds across seasons – three 2014 rounds were lower than their 2013 counterpart, but the other four were higher than 2013.
The graph also bears out the popular opinion that the split round opening to the season does not work. Attendances take a massive hit, with 120,000 fewer people watching a live game in Round 1 this year.
Finally, let’s look at the cumulative attendance from Round 1 through Round 7 of both years.
Cumulative attendance
2013 | 2014 | |
Round 1 | 365,867 | 245,531 |
Round 2 | 716,603 | 561,373 |
Round 3 | 1,008,660 | 889,156 |
Round 4 | 1,298,738 | 1,160,823 |
Round 5 | 1,615,971 | 1,505,619 |
Round 6 | 1,894,715 | 1,833,148 |
Round 7 | 2,158,532 | 2,131,006 |
Average attendance by round:
Round | 2013 | 2014 |
Round 1 | 40,652 | 27,281 |
Round 2 | 38,971 | 35,094 |
Round 3 | 32,451 | 36,420 |
Round 4 | 32,231 | 30,185 |
Round 5 | 35,248 | 38,311 |
Round 6 | 30,972 | 36,392 |
Round 7 | 29,424 | 33,095 |
Upon examining this last graph, it became clear that the AFL dug itself a hole with the Round 1 split round, but since then, 2014 has been gaining slowly and catching up to the attendance of 2013.
After seven rounds of the 2014 AFL season, total attendance is down by a mere 27,526, despite the season opening with the aforementioned Round 1 hole of 120,336.
While some individual games have seen lower-than-expected attendances, overall attendance is tracking quite well. Despite the doom and gloom being spouted by various mouthpieces, the actual numbers do not support the notion of awful 2014 attendances.
In fact, the numbers say the opposite – total attendances in the 2014 AFL premiership season are well on track to end up higher than last year.