As a follow-up to a series of articles I commenced earlier in 2014, this is the promised finale: my assessment of the most popular football club in Australia year for 2014.
As suggested by the title, I have used data for the calendar year of 2014.
The top-four spots are held by what many consider to be the biggest AFL clubs: Collingwood, Essendon, Hawthorn and Carlton. As a guide, the 14-point gap between Collingwood and Essendon is the equivalent of 14,000 in average attendance or 28,000 in average ratings.
The Brisbane Broncos fly the flag on behalf of the NRL, coming in at fifth, barely two points below Carlton. The Blues’ status has been slipping for a while now, and it would not surprise me to see the Broncos overtake the Blues in the next couple of years.
Another four AFL clubs follow: Adelaide Crows, Geelong, Port Adelaide and Richmond. Port experienced a meteoric rise this year, being the first full season of the revamped Adelaide Oval, averaging attendances of nearly 44,500.
South Sydney brings up the top 10, falling just a whisker short of Richmond. The Rabbitohs had attendances of almost 20,000, and the highest average ratings of any NRL club (its average of 245k was only 2k short of Collingwood’s).
Having consolidated is place, not only in the NRL, but as a premier football club in Australia, one can see Souths’ position only getting stronger.
Outside of the top 10, the Storm’s finish in 12th spot is of interest, below the Swans and above Manly.
All 34 AFL and NRL clubs take up the top 34 positions, with four AFL clubs taking up 31st to 34th: St Kilda, the Suns, the Lions and GWS, all four finishing below the Raiders.
The Suns have managed to finish above the Lions in only their fourth season, with the Lions experiencing the lowest average ratings of any AFL club (even lower than GWS).
Also of interest in the lower reaches of the top 34 is the New Zealand Warriors finishing above the Western Bulldogs, and within striking distance of the Demons, having experienced very healthy ratings of 175k.
After the top 34, there is a bit of a gap to the other clubs, all of them from Super Rugby and the A-League.
Of these, the Reds and Waratahs are the most popular, with the Waratahs having a 10 point gap on the most popular A-League team: Sydney FC (closely followed by the Victory).
Of interest is the very low rating of the Rebels, with Heart/City (treated as the one club for 2014), the Glory, the Jets, the Mariners and the Phoenix bringing up the rear with average ratings of 62k or less (the Rebels managed to reach 70k).
The full list for 2014:
1. Collingwood, 171.7
2. Essendon, 157.6
3. Hawthorn, 153.1
4. Carlton, 151.3
5. Brisbane Broncos, 149.2
6. Adelaide Crows, 145.6
7. Geelong, 143.9
8. Port Adelaide, 143.6
9. Richmond, 142.7
10. Souths, 142.5
11. Sydney Swans, 140.1
12. Melbourne Storm, 135.6
13. Manly, 131.8
14. Nth Queensland, 131.0
15. Wests, 129.3
16. Parramatta, 127.9
17. Fremantle, 127.8
18. Canterbury, 127.5
19. St George, 126.0
20. West Coast, 124.4
21. Sydney Roosters, 119.0
22. North Melbourne, 116.5
23. Gold Coast Titans, 115.2
24. Penrith, 115.0
25. Newcastle Knights, 113.0
26. Cronulla, 112.4
27. Melbourne Demons, 107.0
28. New Zealand, 105.1
29. Western Bulldogs, 104.0
30. Canberra Raiders, 102.0
31. St Kilda, 98.7
32. Gold Coast Suns, 98.5
33. Brisbane Lions, 96.3
34. GWS Giants, 88.9
35. Queensland Reds, 71.8
36. NSW Waratahs, 70.0
37. Sydney FC, 60.3
38. Melbourne Victory, 58.6
39. ACT Brumbies, 53.5
40. Western Force, 49.6
41. West Sydney Wanderers, 48.8
42. Adelaide United, 47.5
43. Brisbane Roar, 47.5
44. Melbourne Rebels, 46.4
45. Melbourne Heart/City, 41.8
46. Perth Glory, 38.1
47. Newcastle Jets, 38.1
48. Central Coast Mariners, 35.4
49. Wellington Phoenix, 31.2
Depending on the response and level of interest, I can offer to do something similar for 2015. Over time, one can imagine that the movements across the years will be of much interest to all sports fans.
Emric
Guest
You are right - I stand corrected
fiver
Guest
Nice, but that article is from March 2013, before the NRL's 1bil TV deal.
conchie
Roar Rookie
I couldn't give a stuff about twitter figures, just as you don't need to be brave to post something that in the scheme of things means nothing, fuss is very good at doing that, you as his disciple is getting good at that to.
Bondy
Guest
Conchie You dont mind those figures though until Fuss calls them out as extremely exaggerated and you have the audacity to call him out on them , very brave behaviour ....
Doc Disnick
Roar Guru
Twitter follows, attendances etc... Who cares, what matters is money. It's a capitalistic world that we live in and money is power. The AFL has loads of it so it really doesn't matter what the little people think. They use their vast amount of wealth to boss the other codes around to some extent. http://www.smh.com.au/data-point/afl-leaves-other-codes-in-the-dust-20130326-2grkp.html Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
conchie
Roar Rookie
@ casper, i would say he actually needs to get a life.
Knoxy
Guest
Who the hell cares about twitter followers? As far as I'm concerned the only thing that matters is how many people rock up to games and Collingwood averages crowds that most other clubs in the country would kill for.
Casper
Guest
Conchie - The poor guy really needs to find himself a girlfriend.
conchie
Roar Rookie
@ fussball , OMG what a life you lead LOL. I have fed all the relevant numbers , methodologies and analysis into the computer and it has returned a finding that you are 100% certifiable.
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
@clipper Some people & organisations seem to have a higher percentage of FAKE followers. E.g. MVFC's audit reveals 59% of followers are real https://www.twitteraudit.com/gomvfc For the AFL the FAKE numbers are startling - the audit suggests 63% of AFL Twitter followers are fake, whereas only 36% of the FFA's are fake.
conchie
Roar Rookie
Fuss, are you still talking about Collingwood, some of the biggest soccer matches are happening and all these soccer fans are salivating about them and here you are talking about Collingwood. I thought you were a soccer fan, Is there something you should tell us ?.
Mister Football
Roar Guru
Thanks to everyone for the comments and some interesting discussion. As has been my wont over the course of 2014 in this series of articles, I have taken some suggestions on board. I have just submitted a Part II where I make a slight change to the methodology, resulting in a fair bit of movement in the middle band of clubs.
Mister Football
Roar Guru
Thanks for the comment Steve.
Mister Football
Roar Guru
Reasonable points Tom, although to date, have we seen a lot of evidence of big sponsorship dollars flowing through to A-League clubs because of overseas exposure? In recent times I have been taking a close look at the financial well-being of the Brumbies (being a bit of a fan). I would view the Brumbies as one of the most successful Australian Super Rugby teams (in terms of trophies), but I am not sure that fame outside of Australia has ever translated to additional sponsorship dollars. For the moment at least, sponsorship revenue of Australian football clubs appears to align very closely with the fans they have within Australia.
Mister Football
Roar Guru
Good points Perry, in particular, the value of year on year trending of indicative data.
Tom
Guest
If the purpose of the tally is to measure the popularity of Australian clubs to get an insight into potential sponsorship dollars and potential TV dollars, then not including overseas statistics for soccer and rugby clubs will not present the full picture for these codes. Its OK for AFL where the only source of popularity is in Australia. In soccer's case, WSW recent triumph is Asia shows how the potential for Australian clubs to extract a larger proportion of sponsorship revenue from Asia than in Australia. WSW Asian campaign last year comprised of a total of 14 games + 2 in the World Club Championship. This is not a one-off event like the SOO. I recall the MVFC vs Guangzhou Evergrande TV audience in China reaching 38M viewers switching onto the telecast at some point in time.
clipper
Guest
Fuss - is this just a Collingwood phenomenon, or would it be pretty much true for each sporting club - if so it would appear a bit unfair just to single them out.
Perry Bridge
Guest
There's shortcomings that can't possibly be avoided in this 'science' : Since none of the HAL, AFL or NRL at least runs a perfectly balanced H&A season - then, there's an inbuilt flaw in any form of determination - as, for example in the AFL not every team gets to host every other team at home. Therefore not every Melbourne based club gets to host the Suns and/or the Giants in Melbourne town or further away in Perth. Nor then does every team get to host Collingwood or Carlton or Hawthorn. Clubs at certain venues suffer more from limitation of access than others - as pointed out re the Perth sides in particular and Adelaide now too - bulging at the seams. Membership waiting lists. So - some clubs numbers start looking better or worse because of an incomplete comparative set of data. Not much can be done about that. Then there's the fixturing element that gifts Collingwood and Essendon alternately (swap as home team each year) with a massive Anzac Day crowd. So - some apples are bigger than others no matter what. But, for Coll and Ess as in the above scenario - effectively need a two yearly average to balance it out!! TV wise - foxtel only - is it advantageous for the AFL to have every game on - half broadcast against FTA coverage - compared to the HAL with only one FTA game in competition to fox each week and the NRL somewhere in between. So - what to make of it all? There's no absolute and definitive interpretations but it is somewhat indicative and the year on year trending of indicative data provides more valuable information. That is similar to the interpretation for example of Bureau of Stats participation numbers based on limited surveys etc. In this case - the survey data isn't nearly so limited but the basis of comparison is somewhat fluid and the outcomes somewhat limited. The one truism though is to continue hating Collingwood.
Mister Football
Roar Guru
The AFL annual report is pretty clear in what it includes as members. If people want to speculate outside of that....
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
So, maybe, the next step is to eliminate all the creative accounting & simply call everyone who buys a match day ticket, a scarf, a cap, etc. "a member"?