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.
Matt Carcich
Roar Rookie
Great research and an even better article. I reckon it would be great to see the impact Pay-TV (Foxtel) has had on attendance or the imapct of games being played live on TV, you always hear the negatives of the two but it'd be interesting to see the results. In addition, the only shame is the AFL still forces Sydney to play 'home' games at ANZ stadium.
Reginald Bomber
Roar Guru
What about the AFL's 150 year anniversary a few years ago - are you saying that's a lie?
Reginald Bomber
Roar Guru
Geez Gene, when the 2 new teams were introduced into the AFL the number of regular season games went up from 176 to 198, everyone knows that. Over 18 teams, that's about an extra home game every 2 years.
Cat
Roar Guru
Too early in the season to do an analysis on home only games, not enough home games played per team yet. That will be done at the end of the year.
Cat
Roar Guru
See now you are truly showing you do not have a clue what you are talking about. Prior to GWS and GCFC joining the competition there were 8 games per round for 22 rounds for a total of 176 H&A games per year. Since the 2 expansion clubs joined there are 9 games per round for 22 rounds for a total of 198 H&A games per year. Each team does NOT play any more games now then they did before expansion.
king robbo
Guest
Epl do have derbies, but smaller capacity stadiums that are generally always at 100% capacity. So you may only get 5% away supporters to these games due to limited availability of seats. Liverpool v Everton or Manchester derby or north London derby or other London derbies, or even any man United or arsenal game for that matter etc would easily fill the mcg if they had the access to a similar size stadium. This severely handicaps the epl in terms of the potential crowds they could get. I guess what I am saying is the afl has a 100k seat stadium that allows walk up ticket sales for nearly all bar one or two games per year in melb. The epl doesn't.
Mister Football
Roar Guru
I just double-checked. 16,349 is definitely the home and away average for all 7 games the Giants have appeared in this season.
Rodney
Roar Pro
The last 3 years? I can accept the last 2, but 3 years ago I seem to remember an ailing Gold Coast side which was booted from the league. The Wanderers filled this void well and have masked one of the more turbulent periods for the A-league. But credit where credit's due, the A-league has enjoyed 2 straight seasons or growth without culling any teams. I think that deserves a round of applause.
Tad
Roar Rookie
You can play with stats any way you want, home, away, or home and away combined. * Average H&A attendance is actually higher ATM than last years end of season average * If we use rounds as a guide it is just below last years current round. All things considered, it is good, obviously Adelaide Oval is the big positve, the new stadium in Perth will prove the same bonus.
Mister Football
Roar Guru
70 years? Gee it up mate, back in 1921 the VFL was only 24 years old. The questions still remains: why are you bringing into the discussion some pissant 10 club comp? When your comp reaches the average crowds which the VFL was getting back in 1921, come back and crow about it at that point in time.
Tad
Roar Rookie
You are very confused, there was various competitions that played Australian Football just as the NSL was played before the A league. I would be interested in this decline in interest in the AFL, feel free to quote all the evidence you have, the crowds are steady, the TV ratings also, but a huge increase in viewig via social media. And of course, good luck to the soccer but even teams that have billionaire owners seem to have trouble getting fans and fall by the wayside, GC united had about 3 men and a dog to the majority of their games.
Reginald Bomber
Roar Guru
Average attendance for a club is home games only, not home and away - that's double counting. :)
Reginald Bomber
Roar Guru
Gene, most of those comments came after the opening round which was about 33% lower than last years opening round, which is a big drop and was of concern to the AFL at the time.
Reginald Bomber
Roar Guru
The Suns are in the Gold Coast and GWS are in Canberra and WS, so they are not taking the same people away from other AFL games in different states or cities. Despite the 2 new teams they introduced only one more round which is in reality only half a home game more every season.
Reginald Bomber
Roar Guru
By 1921 the Victorian Rules competition had been running for over 70 years already. The A-League has only been going for 8. In Its first 8 years the Victorian Rules competition would probably have only averaged about 50-100 spectators. :) There's no doubt the AFL competition is well attended and congratulation to those who have contributed to its success. The point I was making was that despite an injection of $1,250,000,000.00 dollars into the AFL bank balance since the last media deals, there has been a decline in interest in AFL. If the FFA had that much money at its disposal and the same media bias that AFL gets, then you would see interest in football explode in this country.
Tad
Roar Rookie
EPL is full of derbies as well, most grounds are just a train ride for opposition fans, no matter where they are in the UK. NFL play many less games than the AFL.
Tad
Roar Rookie
Learn to read ...HOME and AWAY !!. I think GWS got a very big crowd in Adelaide this year.
Mister Football
Roar Guru
I see now, that makes sense, thanks.
otto
Guest
16000 average crowd for the GWS Giants. They pulled 6500 in canberra and about 5000 in sydney. how does that work out they are getting averages over 12000 spectators!? You must be working for the AFL Media Department
Cat
Roar Guru
yes because at any one point in time every single ticketed patron is in their seat at the same time, of course there are no one in the loo or getting ahead of the queue for food at the breaks, or having drank all their beer went to get more, or standing in the back to avoid the weather, or gone out of the grounds altogether to have a smoke or gone to buy some AFL gear, or just walking back to their seats from any of the above.