Play Nice 2024 AFL and State League Attendance

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Well one club legend, one solid defender and one 90 game journeyman. Dusty didn't play so the bounce would have been minimal (maybe mid to high 20k’s to 35k)

Membership is irrelevant, Saturday afternoon would have helped a bit but the Tigers are 2-21 and literally finishing off their worst season in history.

The ‘coming off a dynasty’ thing works against a decent crowd too - Richmond fans have been spoiled so the first season or two after a big run is probably the worst time to support. Given all of this, 35,000 is a very, very strong crowd IMO.

Agree.

This crowd would have been sub 20K without the dusty effect. I think we as a base knew what Dusty 300 was and that will be remembered as his day.

Worst season in history, dead rubber and local footy finals on a Saturday arvo in full swing.

2/10 of our surrounding seats could go due to local footy commitments.


Sent from my iPhone using BigFooty.com
 
I think Brisbane deserves a lot more credit for their crowds this season. I know they have been a very good team for a while now, but considering they are playing in the most outdated oval stadium in Australia and have an unfriendly media, they have had great consistencey with their attendances. For their lowest crowd this season to be 27,200 at the Gabba and averaging 30,864 for their 11 games is impressive. I think what's really impressive and shows the growth of football is that historically, them and Sydney would rely on the big Victorian clubs to boost their attendances, but now even when they play non-Victorian sides, their crowds are holding really strong.
 

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I think Brisbane deserves a lot more credit for their crowds this season. I know they have been a very good team for a while now, but considering they are playing in the most outdated oval stadium in Australia and have an unfriendly media, they have had great consistencey with their attendances. For their lowest crowd this season to be 27,200 at the Gabba and averaging 30,864 for their 11 games is impressive. I think what's really impressive and shows the growth of football is that historically, them and Sydney would rely on the big Victorian clubs to boost their attendances, but now even when they play non-Victorian sides, their crowds are holding really strong.
Not to mention all the removed conventional stadium seating to satisfy a corporate sponsor limiting the crowd capacity size.
 
Crowd in Ballarat looks great! As packed as it’s been. Just wish the capacity there was another 5-6k larger. Hopefully will be after they build that new stand in the next couple years.
 
Still a lot of tickets for sale for Freo v Port can’t see this crowd being anywhere near 50k like some of the other crowds have been this season.
 
43843 for Blues vs Saints

and 10,224 at Mars Stadium

And theres your record average attendance for the season (wether using official figures or excluding the gather round double headers). the freo game is just icing on the cake.
 
Complete history of VFL/AFL H&A season tallies and averages:

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Collingwood ended up on top for the entire season tally (includes Gather Round):

1724585670965.png


Just the last 60 seasons - when I started doing these charts I chose 60 years as the cut off so that it captured the year that Footscray came out on top, as well as the Melbourne dominated era, the Richmond era and so on. Now the Melbourne era has almost completely vanished, and Richmond's 60s pomp will be next to go:

1724585717460.png


Gap between 1st and 2nd - a reasonable amount this year but not the huge gap of the year before:

1724585849477.png
 
Collingwood ended up with the highest home attendance and set a new home record (no Gather Round matches included, not even Port or Crows):

1724585982870.png


One of the rarer sights in AFL crowd stats - someone other than Collingwood ended up top for Away crowds - Carlton pip them by just 4k, the first time Carlton have been top of this stat since 1987:

1724586072068.png


3 new entries into the Top 50 H&A club tallies:

1724586233762.png

  • Collingwood with the 2nd highest season ever, just missing last year's record by around 17k
  • Collingwood's season the highest by a team missing the finals, breaking that record by over 250k
  • Carlton's highest ever total and the highest by anyone other than Collingwood, beating Richmond in 2018 by over 80k.
  • Essendon also broke the previous record for a non-finals season
  • Richmond didn't make the top 50 but did record the highest total for a wooden spooner
 

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Slightly different to footy but Avida Stadium in Dublin, Ireland has just hosted an NCAA US college football game between Georgia tech and Florida State to 47k and has hosted a number of college football games over recent years.


Got me thinking back to the huge crowds in Ireland that the International Rules used to pull. As far as I know it is not on the AFL's radar to rekindle the IR series, but it is forgotten the crowd pulling power they had.
 
Hawthorn record a massive spike in their crowds compared to last year, while only Collingwood, North, Port, Richmond and St Kilda went down:

1724587041075.png


Hawthorn one of seven clubs to reach a new season record - Adelaide, Carlton, Freo, GWS, Melbourne and Sydney the others.

In fact, 14 of the 18 clubs had a total in their top 3 all time. Only Richmond, North, St Kilda and the Bulldogs did not.

1724587549041.png
 
After Round 24 (excluding Gather Round)

HOME CROWDS
Club = Total (Average)
  • Collingwood = 735,667 (66,879)
  • Carlton = 641,417 (58,311)
  • Essendon = 555,263 (50,478)
  • Richmond = 523,405 (47,582)
  • Fremantle = 515,805 (46,891)
  • West Coast = 508,569 (46,234)
  • Adelaide = 449,035 (40,821)
  • Geelong = 427,212 (38,837)
  • Sydney = 420,226 (38,202)
  • Port Adelaide = 406,535 (36,958)
  • Hawthorn = 396,402 (36,037)
  • Melbourne = 384,215 (34,929)
  • Brisbane Lions = 339,499 (30,864)
  • St Kilda = 321,831 (29,257)
  • Western Bulldogs = 314,688 (28,608)
  • North Melbourne = 241,494 (21,954)
  • Gold Coast = 171,423 (15,584)
  • GWS = 135,021 (12,275)

HOME AND AWAY CROWDS
Club = Total (Average)
  • Collingwood = 1,323,804 (60,173)
  • Carlton = 1,233,962 (56,089)
  • Essendon = 1,100,629 (50,029)
  • Richmond = 995,461 (45,248)
  • Geelong = 919,283 (41,786)
  • Hawthorn = 895,317 (40,696)
  • Melbourne = 883,529 (40,160)
  • Sydney = 852,256 (38,739)
  • Adelaide = 847,289 (38,513)
  • West Coast = 842,267 (38,285)
  • Fremantle = 794,752 (36,125)
  • Port Adelaide = 734,557 (33,389)
  • Brisbane Lions = 717,168 (32,599)
  • St Kilda = 685,602 (31,164)
  • Western Bulldogs = 682,257 (31,012)
  • North Melbourne = 549,193 (24,963)
  • Gold Coast = 473,758 (21,534)
  • GWS = 444,593 (20,209)
 
At the end of the home and away season, so after Port hosts some finals this stat is completely ruined, but how close was Adelaide Oval’s home total crowd from being such a round number.

IMG_5045.jpeg
 
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Collingwood ended up with the highest home attendance and set a new home record (no Gather Round matches included, not even Port or Crows):

View attachment 2091661


One of the rarer sights in AFL crowd stats - someone other than Collingwood ended up top for Away crowds - Carlton pip them by just 4k, the first time Carlton have been top of this stat since 1987:

View attachment 2091669


3 new entries into the Top 50 H&A club tallies:

View attachment 2091677

  • Collingwood with the 2nd highest season ever, just missing last year's record by around 17k
  • Collingwood's season the highest by a team missing the finals, breaking that record by over 250k
  • Carlton's highest ever total and the highest by anyone other than Collingwood, beating Richmond in 2018 by over 80k.
  • Essendon also broke the previous record for a non-finals season
  • Richmond didn't make the top 50 but did record the highest total for a wooden spooner
This is amazing research, well done. And thanks for all your work and interesting insights during the year. Much food for thought.

A few broad thoughts:

- No doubt we are in a crowd driving era. We have footy trending, neutrals are going to more games, club favs are going to more games and inducements are driving attendances higher in all market. Almost all teams crowds are floating higher as a result when compared to more virus decades, even 5 years ago.

Essendon Crowds.

I can really only speak for my club with any real credibility. Essendon’s crowds were really strong until really the Suns game. Dockers MCG game just held up from the falling knife. Until the Dockers it was a really strong year.

1.1M excl Gather Round is strong for a team entering season with low expectations. It was never regarded as a genuine threat in the footy world but it nonetheless was more than competitive on field for much of season in top 4-6 which was the driver of strong crowds. When reality set in, its crowds plummeted as expected.
Played Blues / Tigers, Hawks / Cats / Demons only once.

It would’ve been a record year approaching 1.2M had form held longer but in the end their games against the Cats / Demons were heavily impacted by rain on Saturday nights (55/53k) which really hit those crowds and ultimately the record chase, as well as the slightly crowd unfriendly spread of the fixture..

Its home crowds of 555K was commendable, two poor home crowds late (Suns / Swans). Its relative best crowds were the 88.5k (record home Vs Blues), Eagles (41k Vs 17th).

It played homers against Suns, Giants, Dockers (MCG), Eagles and Swans which in truth isn’t really going to be a great spread of teams to achiever huge home crowd aggregates. That’s the middle 6 ladder double up ball drop I suppose. It basically maxed out homers against all its Vic opponents at the point when they played (Pies 93k, Blues 88.5k, Hawks 74k, Saints 44.5k). So all in all, it’s nearly as good as it could’ve been relative to on field result.

I like many red & black finish frustrated and disillusioned as usual, but the Bomber fans turned up once again, as they always do.
 
I just did a bit of a fact check, and this seems to be true. Collingwood seem to keep getting unstuck by a game at Docklands vs a non-Victorian each year.
View attachment 2091879
Carlton were extremely close to this - just 403 people shy. Lowest crowd this year was 39,597 vs Gold Coast.
 
Some more stats from the H&A season:

Nearly 30% of all games were a record for the combination of Home Team / Away Team / Venue
  • 61 of the 207 games were records for that combo
  • 54 were records for the competing clubs at that venue, regardless of who was Home or Away
  • 38 were records for the particular Home team vs Away team at any venue
  • 21 were records for the competing clubs at any venue, regardless of who was Home or Away
  • 24 times a club recorded a crowd in their top ten of all time (incl Sydney and Port getting their all time best)
List of those top ten crowds achieved this year:

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2024 either equalled or broke the record for most games over 50k, 70k, 80k & 90k:

1724632868089.png

Collingwood set a new record for 50k+ games (15)
Carlton equalled the record for 80K+ games (6)


Collingwood set a new record average vs teams from a different state:

1724630996731.png
 

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Play Nice 2024 AFL and State League Attendance

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