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Opinion

What is Australia's most popular sport?

Roar Guru
5th December, 2022
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Roar Guru
5th December, 2022
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Australia has a rich sporting history spanning multiple disciplines and events. We’ve punched above our weight on the world stage, winning world championships in all forms of cricket, rugby league, rugby union, hockey, water polo, and basketball. We’ve also won majors In golf and tennis, and we’re in the top 20 of medals won at the Olympics both in total and per capita.

It’s no question that sport is important to our culture but which sport is the most popular?

Let’s delve into various sports to see which one has the strongest claim to being our national sport.

Attendance

The AFL is the king of live sport in Australia, with an average of 32,620 per match over the home-and-away and finals periods. That dwarfs the NRL’s 17,121.

The next-best competition is the Big Bash League which last year brought just 7371 people through the gates per match on average, though in 2019-20, the last season before COVID, that number was a healthier 18,520, albeit in an obvious decline.

The same goes for the A-League, which in 2021-22 attracted an average of just 5258 people but brought in 10,876 on average pre-COVID.

The AFL’s domination comes down to being a great sport to watch live and an AFL culture ingrained into the fans that they have to be there to support their teams. It’s almost unique, and it’s the envy of all sports in the nation.

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(Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

The AFL has a combined 1.19 million members, which is massive compared to the NRL’s 320,000, notwithstanding the AFL has two extra teams. There are lots of theories as to why this is the case, one of which is sure to be that Victorian clubs are not as reliant on revenue generated by pokie machines compared to those in New South Wales, where most clubs are primarily financed by them. Signing up fans and getting them through the gates is therefore a higher priority.

Participation

In terms of involvement and player numbers, football is the most popular team sport with kids under the age of 13, with 43.8 per cent of team sport-playing juniors taking up the round-ball game. Basketball is second with a 30.5 per cent share, while cricket comes third at 25.7 per cent.

In absolute terms, however, they’re all a long way behind swimming (33 per cent), with football second (13.8 per cent) followed by gymnastics (10.5 per cent), dancing (8.9 per cent) basketball (7.3 per cent), AFL (6.5 per cent) tennis (6.1 per cent), netball (5.7%), cricket (3.9%) and athletics (3.8 per cent).

Rugby league is 11th with a 3.5 per cent share, while rugby Union is 15th at 2.1 per cent.

This is remarkable considering the two most viewed sports, Aussie rules and rugby league are not in the top three. The generally accepted reason for this is that parents are worried about the safety of their kids and would rather them play non-collision sports like football and basketball, where concussion injuries are not as prevalent.

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Among adults the most popular sport is walking (46.5 per cent), though that specifically relates to recreational walking. The same can probably be said for most top sports among adults, with walking followed by going to the gym, running, swimming and cycling, most of which aren’t undertaken competitively. How many Australians would know the last walker to win Olympic gold?

(Photo by Shaun Botterill – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)

Attention

No sport can unite a nation like football, especially when we make the World Cup. Sure. it’s pretty much non-existent when the World Cup isn’t on, but the scenes around the country and in Melbourne in particular cheering on the Socceroos in the last week prove the support is there – only football is getting thousands to watch at 4am.

Further, the Matildas are a top-five team and have one of the best players in the world in Sam Kerr. Australia is hosting the next women’s World Cup with New Zealand.

The Olympics always captures the nation’s attention, with the biggest draw being swimming. Sure, there are no crowds gathering at Federation Square to watch, but some of our greatest athletes are those who won gold in the pool or on the track. Dawn Fraser, Steve Hooker, Cathy Freeman, Ian Thorpe and Jessica Fox have become household names since winning gold.

Basketball is growing rapidly, and while the NBL isn’t huge yet, we are producing much more talent than ever before, with ten players in the NBA and no signs of slowing down. The Boomers finally won an Olympic medal, and in recent years Australia has also beaten the all-conquering USA twice, so the future is bright for Australia.

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The Wallabies during the World Cup also do a great job of catching the eyes of the nation, especially when they go far, but rugby is dying in Australia, with the Super Rugby competition declining in viewership and our best rugby talent at risk of being poached by the NRL.

Rugby, like many of the above sports, doesn’t move the needle when the big event or tournament is on, and coverage is restricted to small columns in newspapers at other times.

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - OCTOBER 02: Dylan Edwards of the Panthers makes a break during the 2022 NRL Grand Final match between the Penrith Panthers and the Parramatta Eels at Accor Stadium on October 02, 2022, in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

Golf and tennis can be extremely popular and rate highly on TV and in general media coverage if a local athlete is doing well. When the likes of Ash Barty, Cameron Smith, Nick Kyrgios or Minjee Lee are going deep into majors, there is a buzz, but this is not constant, and the Davis Cup is not that highly followed.

In terms of media attention, the AFL and NRL are dominant in their respective states and present on every back page and in every radio and TV news bulletin. They’re even highly present during their off-seasons.

National recognition

Cricket is probably the most far-reaching. It’s played in all states, and the national team is watched in every major city even though NRL and AFL may get more eyeballs. If you had images of five top NRL, AFL and cricket players and asked people from around the country to identify them, most people in Sydney and Brisbane wouldn’t know who Patrick Cripps is, while most people in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth wouldn’t know who Tom Trbojevic is, but cricketers like Steve Smith and Mitchell Starc would be recognised nationwide.

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In fact the greats of cricket, like Sir Don Bradman, Adam Gilchrist and Shane Warne are Australian folklore figures and held in much higher regard than the likes of Andrew Johns, Wally Lewis, Leigh Matthews and Wayne Carey.

The Australian cricket team is the most consistently followed national team that doesn’t rely on a World Cup every four years to be relevant.

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - NOVEMBER 19: Steve Smith of Australia bats during Game 2 of the One Day International series between Australia and England at Sydney Cricket Ground on November 19, 2022 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Matt King - CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)

(Photo by Matt King – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)

TV viewership

This is by far most important metric to determine popularity as TV viewership indicates how many people actually watch the sport. Based on data for the 2022 season, rugby league is Australia’s most popular TV sport, and it’s not even close.

Over their respective 2022 home-and-away seasons the NRL drew in 118.96 million viewers compared to the AFL’s 106.27 million. That’s also bearing in mind there were six more AFL games than there were NRL games during that time. With the finals included those numbers improve to 137.34 million for the NRL and 126.52 million for the AFL.

If you were to add crowd sizes and TV viewership for the entire season, the NRL would total 140.78 million people, while the AFL would reach 133.28 million people.

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It gets better for rugby league, as those figures don’t include State of Origin, which attracted an additional 9.39 million viewers, while 2.61 million watched the international representative matches, boosting rugby league’s combined TV viewership and live attendance to 153.05 million. That’s 23 million more TV viewers or an extra 20 million people in the crowd that rugby league had over Aussie rules with only one extra game overall.

The NRLW also outrates the AFLW, though they’re played at different times of the year and the AFLW is mostly on pay TV, whereas NRLW is all on free-to-air.

All that considered, it’s quite impressive the AFL manages to consistently land more lucrative TV deals than the NRL.

In conclusion, football is the buzz only every four years if the Socceroos are going well, but most people probably couldn’t name five A-League players.

The AFL does an impressive job of garnering crowds and members NRL can only dream of, so for a matchday experience, Aussie rules is superior.

Cricket is Australia’s national sport due to its overall reach and relevance as a national team.

Rugby league is Australia’s most popular TV sport, drawing in more people than any other. Rugby league’s State of Origin is also one of the country’s biggest spectacles.

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