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Are AFL attendances really falling?

Roar Guru
6th May, 2014
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Roar Guru
6th May, 2014
110
2314 Reads

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:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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