Big AFL crowds in 2022, but England love their sport more than us

In 2022, the Australian Football League (AFL) hosted 13 matches that attracted 60,000, even before the finals commenced, thus cementing itself as one of the most popular football leagues in the world.

For many fans, even the few English people I know, they marvel at the big crowds that regularly attend the AFL at the MCG alone.

But Australia’s football crowds do not compare with England.

At face value, if we look at all of the football codes, Australia and England appear to have similar popular club support when one takes account of Australia’s population of 25 million being much smaller than England with 56 million.

Based on 2022 crowd data, and taking account of all of the football codes played in Australia and England, Australia has eight club teams with a 30,000+ average, 17 20,000+ and 33 10,000+, whereas England has 15 teams 30,000+, 29 20,000+ and 65 10,000+.

However, Australia only has two popular leagues.

While AFL crowds are still down 20 percent from 2019 before covid affected attendances, the 2022 average of 31,000 includes four clubs above 40,000 for their 11 home games and the eight Australian teams above 30,000.

The National Rugby League (NRL), whose 2022 crowd average is back to pre-covid levels at just under 16,000, has just two teams averaging above 20,000 with Brisbane around 30,000.

Australia’s A-League (soccer), however, achieved a paltry average of 5,681 (including finals) in 2021-22 for its 11 teams after being 10,864 with nine local teams in 2018-19, yet England’s top five divisions have 70 teams with a crowd average above 6,000.

The idea that Australia can manufacture popular clubs by simply creating franchises in the bigger cities is clearly not working, and the A-League is about as far away from rivalling the AFL and NRL as it has ever been.

Who cares that soccer is the only true international game? Quite simply, Australians would rather pay to watch foreign football overseas.

When including England’s top four soccer divisions, 27 teams averaged crowds above 20,000 in 2021-22, 40 over 15,000 and 51 over 10,000.

Similar club averages are evident with regard to England’s various cup competitions, including the Football Association (FA) Cup and the Champions League which features the top Premier League clubs.

(Photo by Ashley Feder/Getty Images)

It is the same with rugby union, while Australia’s five Super Rugby teams (union) rarely attracted crowds above 10,000 in the 2022 season after the three existing teams in 2003 averaged over 20,000, with Super Rugby not even publishing data for most of the games (as of today), England’s Premiership Rugby averaged 12,375 per match in the 2021-22 season with 72,735 fans attending the final at Twickenham.

For the home matches, nine of England’s rugby union clubs averaged over 10,000 (with two above 20,000.
Australia’s brief love affair with Super Rugby in the early years of the 21st century, not long after the sport went professional in 1995, appears virtually over.

It is hard to see rugby union, primarily a game of the private schools in New South Wales and Queensland, challenging the AFL or NRL in the near future.

Only England’s Super League’s (rugby league) has an average below 10,000 (about 8200) in 2022, with only four clubs averaging home crowds above 10,000, yet its final at Old Trafford regularly attracts over 60,000.

While some may argue that England has the advantage by being a small geographical area where away fans are not far away in terms of travel time, whereas Australia’s AFL and NRL are dominated by the cities of Melbourne and Sydney which have around 40 per cent of Australia’s population, it should also be noted that English fans also face much colder winter weather for the fans in contrast to more mild conditions for the most in Australia.

In addition, as again indicated by major government funding of the new Sydney Football Stadium, Australian fans are also advantaged by such heavily subsidised stadiums with capacities far in excess of expected club average crowds.

The new Sydney stadium will host the clubs playing the three rectangle football codes, but they will be rarely full.

In contrast, the big soccer clubs in London, Manchester and Liverpool with regular capacity crowds, would achieve much higher crowd averages if they had greater capacity stadiums, even allowing for the higher seat prices of the Premier League.

For example, Tottenham regularly attracted home crowds above 80,000 in 2017 and 2018 when playing at Wembley while waiting for its new 60,000 seat stadium to be built.

As it stands, the Premier League (20 clubs) averaged 39,472 in 2020-21 with seven clubs above 50,000 (Manchester United 72,992) and 14 clubs above 30,000.

While many Australian football clubs have a large fan base, at least in two codes, their support does not compare with England.

The English are indeed the greatest fans of the various football codes, and Australia is second.