The Phenomenon that is AFL in Melbourne

kranger · May 25, 2020

So a couple of weeks ago at the start of Covid-19 lock-downs, I thought I would try and show that Tasmania deserved an AFL team. Because they get good crowd turnouts based on their population size, and they currently don't have a sports team in all of the major competitions.

The thinking was, the AFL should get a team there, before a smaller sports competition gets a team established there which would suck out any latent demand for attending a sports event, that a future AFL team would never be able to establish itself in Tasmania.

However, after collating all of the data, it mostly leaves me in astonishment of the behemoth that is AFL in Melbourne, which can not really be compared to any other sport in any other City in Australia, in terms of how many people attend on a regular basis.

I put all of the data into graphs to make it easier to comprehend. There are some notes to the data, which I put with the graphs. And at the bottom are links to the data sources. It was a little bit disappointing how poor some of the sports crowd records are.

Anyway, the following two graphs should be self evident. The first shows the population of Australia's largest 21 Cities. Why 21, because that gets us down to Launceston. Also Central Coast (Gosford area) has been separated from Sydney. The second is the Average Attendance for the top 15 sports leagues. It is important to note that the State AFL tally comprises the SANFL, WAFL, VFL, TFL and NEAFL as one, whilst State NRL is the two comps in NSW and Queensland.

As you can see, Melbourne and Sydney stand out as the largest Cities, and after Adelaide, each of the other City sizes appear insignificant in comparison. In terms of the Sports League, no other sport really gets an average crowd near that of the AFL.

The next two graphs, show what the total attendance was to matches in each City, and breaks it down by colour to the individual sport. The cross also shows the total number of matches played there. The right hand graph, simply zooms in and cuts off the top of the table so you can get a better look at the smaller Cities and the smaller sports.

These next two graphs are similar to the previous two, but show what the total attendance was to matches for each Sport, and breaks it down by colour to the individual City. So just flips the previous graph. The cross also shows the total number of matches played there. The right hand graph, simply zooms in and cuts off the top of the table so you can get a better look at the smaller Cities and the smaller sports. Clearly AFL in Melbourne gets some massive total attendance over a season compared to anything else. The next closest are NRL in Sydney, AFL in Perth and AFL in Adelaide.

However, total attendance is not fair to compare Tasmania's ability to support an AFL team, as Melbourne has 88 AFL games in a season, where some supporters might attend up to 16 games in a season (both home and away). This exaggerates the sort of supporter levels there are, when in Launceston they only get 4 AFL games a season. So instead, if we look at how many people might attend a sports match per home team, some of those smaller Cities start to become a bit more comparable. So these graphs are derived by adding together the average attendance for each team that might play in that City. So for Melbourne it is the 9 AFL teams, plus the 2 BBL teams, plus the NRL team, plus the 2 NBL teams, plus 14 VFL teams etc, but only for the crowd attendance in that City. So Hawthorn games play in Launceston count towards Launceston and not Melbourne etc. In these examples the number of teams are shown by the red cross.

For the Cities above, and the Sports below, we still get very similar outcomes as the Total Attendance. However now a lot of the smaller Cities become a bit more evident when you look at their individual match attendances (since they often only get 1 to 4 season matches, so their total attendance is so much smaller compared to the Cities with 11 season matches). The number of teams in shown by the red crosses for each sport, will equal more than the number of teams per competition, due to some teams playing home games in multiple Cities.

So what has all this data been culminating towards. The Weekly Attendance Ratio. This is, how many people in the population attend the matches. The bars are for all 21 Cities combined, where as each of the shapes are the Cities and the Sports individually. Here you want a lower number, as it means you have a higher attendance rate. Such as Launceston has 1 in 2.8 in the population attend a sporting match per Home Team. Whereas in Melbourne on average 1 in 11,939 people attend an Australian Baseball League match. You will see Toowoomba and Albury did not have any matches of any sort from these 15 leagues... Perhaps there is some potential there for a smaller competition to jump in there with some games.

The big thing you will notice is that generally, the smaller the City, the better the attendance rate is at the sports match. There are some outliers here and there, but that is the general trend.

So just to try and make the above two sets of data a bit more easier to read, in the follow two graphs, I've removed all of the irrelevant Cities and the smaller sports. It really does show Melbourne as standing out. But also that the attendance rate in Launceston is really impressive, Hobart not so much. But imagine what they might do with their own team and not with the two fly-in fly-out teams that they have. But the AFL will have to get in quick before A-League or the NBL put a team down there, otherwise it is not likely another sport could survive there. Because for any City smaller than Canberra they don't seem to be able to host two teams. Just like AFL in Geelong, NRL in Townsville, NBL in Cairns, Wollongong sharing both an NRL and NBL team with Sydney.

wagz · May 25, 2020

NRL really doesnt compare to AFL

Gigantor · May 25, 2020

wagz said:
NRL really doesnt compare to AFL

Not even in the same ball park.

Kwality · May 25, 2020

Gigantor said:
Not even in the same ball park.

Yet gets 4 out of the top 5 TV ratings for sport across Aus. Who said 'lies, damned lies and statistics', lots of stats from the OP!

kranger · May 25, 2020

Kwality said:
Yet gets 4 out of the top TV ratings for sport across Aus. Who said 'lies, damned lies and statistics', lots of stats from the OP!

Whilst not trying to turn this into a bash thread.

I presume you are talking about the NRL Grand Final and the 3 State of Origin matches, which are matches I have excluded from the data set, as they are outside the regular home and away season that I was looking at, for a City to be able to sustain a team.

Kwality · May 25, 2020

kranger said:
Whilst not trying to turn this into a bash thread.

I presume you are talking about the NRL Grand Final and the 3 State of Origin matches, which are matches I have excluded from the data set, as they are outside the regular home and away season that I was looking at, for a City to be able to sustain a team.

I was adding a touch of reality to the phenomenon .... sport generally in Vic is more mainstream than elsewhere in my experience.

faible · May 25, 2020

Shows that Melbourne has a stronger culture of attending sport than Sydney does, which anecdotally makes sense, as it's always said that Melbourne has strong attendance for most sports held here.

I suppose the argument the AFL has made in the past was that TAS already supports AFL and already attends games, and in many cases, are already members or supporters of current AFL sides. What benefit is there for the AFL? Adding an extra side makes limited sense, but would relocating a boutique Melbourne club (Gold Coast is unlikely given the population size there and their crowds really aren't that bad given their performance) satisfy supporters as being a truly 'Tasmanian' side?

I'm not sure whether a team there would gain significant local traction over and above those who already support AFL. Plus, would there be a lag time in support - e.g. people supporting a traditional club might nominally support a local side, but not really be involved, whereas a generation later might see a lot more people that have a local side as their first choice.

Perth for example, has a lot of people who have a traditional VIC side as their preferred team, with nominal support for WCE or FRE - not that it's stopped WCE from being an absolute powerhouse off-field.

In terms of support for AFL, Tasmania certainly should have a side based there, but does commercial reality hold up? 19 teams makes limited sense, unless we do a rolling bye team every week in the fixture and restructure the season somewhat. Would a relocated team garner significant local support? Would a brand new team stand on it's own feet quickly enough?

I think the idea that people from Hobart or Launceston would refuse to support a team that's not 'theirs' is a bit of a misnomer, but you'd likely need to split your home games between the cities in order to capture both markets.

Aussie in exile · May 25, 2020

Sometimes reality is terrible thing for insular people

Figures show NRL as Australia's most watched sport of 2018 - Australasian Leisure Management

www.ausleisure.com.au

2019 NRL season by the TV ratings numbers - Sports Industry AU

Its been another big year for Rugby League in 2019 as 113.5 million people tuned in to see the preseason, home and away season, NRLW, Origin, Representative footy and finals. However, while this figure was enough to get it over the AFL again in 2019, it was down more than 6% on the...

www.footyindustry.com

Teen Wolf · May 25, 2020

kranger said:
Because for any City smaller than Canberra they don't seem to be able to host two teams. Just like AFL in Geelong, NRL in Townsville, NBL in Cairns, Wollongong sharing both an NRL and NBL team with Sydney.

Or like the BBL in Hobart?

kranger said:
But the AFL will have to get in quick before A-League or the NBL put a team down there, otherwise it is not likely another sport could survive there.

Even if it's true that there's a tiny pro sport limit for a smaller city, it would deter the A-League or NBL from putting a team in Hobart. Why would they want to get into a fight-to-the-death with the AFL?

I don't think it is true though, the other sports just have to remember what Steve Jobs used to say: "We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose."

kranger · May 25, 2020

Aussie in exile said:
Sometimes reality is terrible thing for insular people

Figures show NRL as Australia's most watched sport of 2018 - Australasian Leisure Management

www.ausleisure.com.au

2019 NRL season by the TV ratings numbers - Sports Industry AU

Its been another big year for Rugby League in 2019 as 113.5 million people tuned in to see the preseason, home and away season, NRLW, Origin, Representative footy and finals. However, while this figure was enough to get it over the AFL again in 2019, it was down more than 6% on the...

www.footyindustry.com

The NRL is definitely still a great thing in Australia and should not be belittled. And this is not a pissing contest I am trying to make. But from the links you provided, which the Wookie always does a great job at collating, in the season:

NRL - http://www.footyindustry.com/?p=4923
"Rugby League in 2019 as 113.5 million people tuned in to see the preseason, home and away season, NRLW, Origin, Representative footy and finals.

The 2019 NRL Season rated 88.201 million viewers at an average viewership of 459,000 per game."

AFL - http://www.footyindustry.com/?p=4889
"the Australian Football League held a steady ship, as 111.4 million people tuned in over the course of the year

The 2019 AFL premiership season rated 89.11 million viewers" (which I calculate over 198 games as being 445,459 per game).

Those are obviously fantastic numbers for both sports. But if you add in the difference between the number of people who attended the AFL game (6,954,187) vs those that attended the NRL games (2,885,683), it would seem to push the AFL ahead for total viewership, considering people who are at the game are not likely to watch the broadcast as well. Though this doesn't include Pre-season, Finals and Representative matches, but the difference would still come out similar.

Our Game · May 25, 2020

Aussie in exile said:
Sometimes reality is terrible thing for insular people

Figures show NRL as Australia's most watched sport of 2018 - Australasian Leisure Management

www.ausleisure.com.au

2019 NRL season by the TV ratings numbers - Sports Industry AU

Its been another big year for Rugby League in 2019 as 113.5 million people tuned in to see the preseason, home and away season, NRLW, Origin, Representative footy and finals. However, while this figure was enough to get it over the AFL again in 2019, it was down more than 6% on the...

www.footyindustry.com

There is not a great deal of difference

The AFL comes in at 106,149,706 H&A and finals for 2019 That figure dosen't include AFLW and preseason matches.

Its been another big year for Rugby League in 2019 as 113.5 million people tuned in to see the preseason, home and away season, NRLW, Origin, Representative footy and finals.

Its the other KPIs that the AFL is miles ahead on.Crowds,Merchandise.Memberships and Sponsorships.

Billy ray · May 25, 2020

if you could decide on the day, pay $25 and pretty much sit anywhere you want, with friends and families, OUTSIDE of melbourne, like can in melbourne, then attendances would be higher in other places too.....

kranger · May 25, 2020

Teen Wolf said:
Or like the BBL in Hobart?

Thats true, though the BBL is played in both Launceston and Hobart. So perhaps BBL combined with AFL both sharing the two Cities would be equivilent to both Cities having one whole team.

Teen Wolf said:
Even if it's true that there's a tiny pro sport limit for a smaller city, it would deter the A-League or NBL from putting a team in Hobart. Why would they want to get into a fight-to-the-death with the AFL?

I don't think it is true though, the other sports just have to remember what Steve Jobs used to say: "We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose."

I think it has more to do with those smaller sports are trying to expand. And they would be looking for anywhere they think they can corner enough support and a market. If they do establish in Tasmania, it may prevent the AFL from expanding there too.

Though on the flip side, Tasmania already has 8 AFL games a season. If the NBL or A-League can see they can fit a team in there already, then converting those 8 AFL fifo games into 11 Tasmanian team games, probably should still be feasible for everyone.

NoobPie · May 25, 2020

Our Game said:
There is not a great deal of difference

The AFL comes in at 106,149,706 H&A and finals for 2019 That figure dosen't include AFLW and preseason matches.

Its been another big year for Rugby League in 2019 as 113.5 million people tuned in to see the preseason, home and away season, NRLW, Origin, Representative footy and finals.

Its the other KPIs that the AFL is miles ahead on.Crowds,Merchandise.Memberships and Sponsorships.

There is a massive difference - The AFL gets comfortably more volume of viewers over a year than the NRL.

Anyone with basic knowledge of statistics will tell you that aggregating and comparing averages that are based on different denominators (eg 2 hours versus 3 hours) is a nonsense. This is very basic

The AFL has a comfortable advantage in terms of TV ratings. No where near as much as every other metric but still comfortable....which is why it gets comfortably more money every time

Gigantor · May 25, 2020

NoobPie said:
There is a massive difference - The AFL gets comfortably more volume of viewers over a year than the NRL.

This.
Once again, NRL is not even in the ball park.
The AFL and clubs would generate about double the sponsorship revenue NRL and clubs generate.
There's as reason for that.

chiwigi · May 26, 2020

kranger said:
So a couple of weeks ago at the start of Covid-19 lock-downs, I thought I would try and show that Tasmania deserved an AFL team. Because they get good crowd turnouts based on their population size, and they currently don't have a sports team in all of the major competitions.

The thinking was, the AFL should get a team there, before a smaller sports competition gets a team established there which would suck out any latent demand for attending a sports event, that a future AFL team would never be able to establish itself in Tasmania.

However, after collating all of the data, it mostly leaves me in astonishment of the behemoth that is AFL in Melbourne, which can not really be compared to any other sport in any other City in Australia, in terms of how many people attend on a regular basis.

I put all of the data into graphs to make it easier to comprehend. There are some notes to the data, which I put with the graphs. And at the bottom are links to the data sources. It was a little bit disappointing how poor some of the sports crowd records are.

Anyway, the following two graphs should be self evident. The first shows the population of Australia's largest 21 Cities. Why 21, because that gets us down to Launceston. Also Central Coast (Gosford area) has been separated from Sydney. The second is the Average Attendance for the top 15 sports leagues. It is important to note that the State AFL tally comprises the SANFL, WAFL, VFL, TFL and NEAFL as one, whilst State NRL is the two comps in NSW and Queensland.

As you can see, Melbourne and Sydney stand out as the largest Cities, and after Adelaide, each of the other City sizes appear insignificant in comparison. In terms of the Sports League, no other sport really gets an average crowd near that of the AFL.

View attachment 880850

The next two graphs, show what the total attendance was to matches in each City, and breaks it down by colour to the individual sport. The cross also shows the total number of matches played there. The right hand graph, simply zooms in and cuts off the top of the table so you can get a better look at the smaller Cities and the smaller sports.

View attachment 880852

These next two graphs are similar to the previous two, but show what the total attendance was to matches for each Sport, and breaks it down by colour to the individual City. So just flips the previous graph. The cross also shows the total number of matches played there. The right hand graph, simply zooms in and cuts off the top of the table so you can get a better look at the smaller Cities and the smaller sports. Clearly AFL in Melbourne gets some massive total attendance over a season compared to anything else. The next closest are NRL in Sydney, AFL in Perth and AFL in Adelaide.

View attachment 880853

However, total attendance is not fair to compare Tasmania's ability to support an AFL team, as Melbourne has 88 AFL games in a season, where some supporters might attend up to 16 games in a season (both home and away). This exaggerates the sort of supporter levels there are, when in Launceston they only get 4 AFL games a season. So instead, if we look at how many people might attend a sports match per home team, some of those smaller Cities start to become a bit more comparable. So these graphs are derived by adding together the average attendance for each team that might play in that City. So for Melbourne it is the 9 AFL teams, plus the 2 BBL teams, plus the NRL team, plus the 2 NBL teams, plus 14 VFL teams etc, but only for the crowd attendance in that City. So Hawthorn games play in Launceston count towards Launceston and not Melbourne etc. In these examples the number of teams are shown by the red cross.

View attachment 880854

For the Cities above, and the Sports below, we still get very similar outcomes as the Total Attendance. However now a lot of the smaller Cities become a bit more evident when you look at their individual match attendances (since they often only get 1 to 4 season matches, so their total attendance is so much smaller compared to the Cities with 11 season matches). The number of teams in shown by the red crosses for each sport, will equal more than the number of teams per competition, due to some teams playing home games in multiple Cities.

View attachment 880855

So what has all this data been culminating towards. The Weekly Attendance Ratio. This is, how many people in the population attend the matches. The bars are for all 21 Cities combined, where as each of the shapes are the Cities and the Sports individually. Here you want a lower number, as it means you have a higher attendance rate. Such as Launceston has 1 in 2.8 in the population attend a sporting match per Home Team. Whereas in Melbourne on average 1 in 11,939 people attend an Australian Baseball League match. You will see Toowoomba and Albury did not have any matches of any sort from these 15 leagues... Perhaps there is some potential there for a smaller competition to jump in there with some games.

View attachment 880856

The big thing you will notice is that generally, the smaller the City, the better the attendance rate is at the sports match. There are some outliers here and there, but that is the general trend.

View attachment 880857

So just to try and make the above two sets of data a bit more easier to read, in the follow two graphs, I've removed all of the irrelevant Cities and the smaller sports. It really does show Melbourne as standing out. But also that the attendance rate in Launceston is really impressive, Hobart not so much. But imagine what they might do with their own team and not with the two fly-in fly-out teams that they have. But the AFL will have to get in quick before A-League or the NBL put a team down there, otherwise it is not likely another sport could survive there. Because for any City smaller than Canberra they don't seem to be able to host two teams. Just like AFL in Geelong, NRL in Townsville, NBL in Cairns, Wollongong sharing both an NRL and NBL team with Sydney.

View attachment 881142

Edit: I made an edit to remove Netball from the last graph, as I remembered the data source was flawed, and the last graph only included sports with accurate data.

Population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Australia_by_population
Australian Football League: https://afltables.com/afl/crowds/2019.html
AFLW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_AFL_Women's_season
Rugby League: https://afltables.com/rl/crowds/2019.html
Big Bash League: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_Big_Bash_League_season
Womens Big Bash League: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018–19_Women's_Big_Bash_League_season
Super Rugby: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Super_Rugby_season#Attendances & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_2019_Super_Rugby_matches & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Global_Rapid_Rugby_season
National Rugby Championship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_National_Rugby_Championship
A-League: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_A-League#Results
W-League: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_W-League
National Basketball League: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_NBL_regular_season
Womens National Basketball League: https://www.smh.com.au/sport/basket...-remains-on-shaky-ground-20190216-p50y8q.html & https://www.smh.com.au/sport/basketball/canberra-capitals-shatter-crowd-records-20190121-p50sn3.html & https://thewest.com.au/sport/basketball/basketball-fans-rally-behind-perth-lynx-ng-b881352079z & https://www.dropbox.com/s/l3bl5iz9ejmpvrr/Annual Report 2019.pdf?dl=0
Super Netball: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Suncorp_Super_Netball_season
Australian Baseball League: http://www.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?y=2018&sid=milb&t=l_att&lid=595
State NRL: https://www.nswrl.com.au/draw/?competition=113&season=2019&round=1 & https://www.qrl.com.au/draw/?competition=114&season=2019&round=1
State AFL: https://australianfootball.com/leag...all&club1=All&club2=All&ground=All&limit=1000 & http://www.waflfootyfacts.net/season/attendances.php?Season=2019 & https://australianfootball.com/seasons/season/vfl/126/premiership+season/9/9/2019/basic & https://australianfootball.com/seasons/season/tsl/122/premiership+season/6/6/2019/basic & https://australianfootball.com/seasons/season/neafl/140/premiership+season/2/2/2019

Good stuff, but when looking at footy in Melbourne, apart from the ground size, what also needs to be taken into account is that every year there will be at least 3, often more, Melbourne teams in contention. This will ensure that the averages stay up every year.
I'm not sure how that can be accounted for.

Aussie in exile · May 26, 2020

Gigantor said:
This.
Once again, NRL is not even in the ball park.
The AFL and clubs would generate about double the sponsorship revenue NRL and clubs generate.
There's as reason for that.

Link please to your claim

manicmagpie · May 26, 2020

chiwigi said:
Good stuff, but when looking at footy in Melbourne, apart from the ground size, what also needs to be taken into account is that every year there will be at least 3, often more, Melbourne teams in contention. This will ensure that the averages stay up every year.
I'm not sure how that can be accounted for.

Surely it's accounted for by the fact that every year there are as many if not more teams who are 'contending' for the bottom 4 that have lower than usual crowds, which in turn will drag the average back down.

chiwigi · May 26, 2020

manicmagpie said:
Surely it's accounted for by the fact that every year there are as many if not more teams who are 'contending' for the bottom 4 that have lower than usual crowds, which in turn will drag the average back down.

I think most clubs have a floor crowd, but the ceiling crowds are far higher.
But maybe.

kranger · May 26, 2020

kranger said:
Population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Australia_by_population
Australian Football League: https://afltables.com/afl/crowds/2019.html
AFLW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_AFL_Women's_season
Rugby League: https://afltables.com/rl/crowds/2019.html
Big Bash League: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_Big_Bash_League_season
Womens Big Bash League: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018–19_Women's_Big_Bash_League_season
Super Rugby: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Super_Rugby_season#Attendances & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_2019_Super_Rugby_matches & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Global_Rapid_Rugby_season
National Rugby Championship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_National_Rugby_Championship
A-League: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_A-League#Results
W-League: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_W-League
National Basketball League: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_NBL_regular_season
Womens National Basketball League: https://www.smh.com.au/sport/basket...-remains-on-shaky-ground-20190216-p50y8q.html & https://www.smh.com.au/sport/basketball/canberra-capitals-shatter-crowd-records-20190121-p50sn3.html & https://thewest.com.au/sport/basketball/basketball-fans-rally-behind-perth-lynx-ng-b881352079z & https://www.dropbox.com/s/l3bl5iz9ejmpvrr/Annual Report 2019.pdf?dl=0
Super Netball: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Suncorp_Super_Netball_season
Australian Baseball League: http://www.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?y=2018&sid=milb&t=l_att&lid=595
State NRL: https://www.nswrl.com.au/draw/?competition=113&season=2019&round=1 & https://www.qrl.com.au/draw/?competition=114&season=2019&round=1
State AFL: https://australianfootball.com/leag...all&club1=All&club2=All&ground=All&limit=1000 & http://www.waflfootyfacts.net/season/attendances.php?Season=2019 & https://australianfootball.com/seasons/season/vfl/126/premiership+season/9/9/2019/basic & https://australianfootball.com/seasons/season/tsl/122/premiership+season/6/6/2019/basic & https://australianfootball.com/seasons/season/neafl/140/premiership+season/2/2/2019

I figured some people might want to look at the numbers, instead of the graph, so here you go.

Just to being, a reminder of the notes to the data. And the highlighted in red numbers are where there were flawed data sources which lead to guestimations.

Kwality · May 26, 2020

manicmagpie said:
Surely it's accounted for by the fact that every year there are as many if not more teams who are 'contending' for the bottom 4 that have lower than usual crowds, which in turn will drag the average back down.

Isnt it the relevance of the average is nil.

telsor · May 27, 2020

I think more generally Melbourne (Vic?) has a culture of 'going out' a lot more than other states seem to, be it sporting events, restaurants, or whatever.

The reason for it though is, I think, somewhat recursive...we go out a lot because there are good places/things to go out to, and they're there because we go out a lot.

We go to restaurants a lot because there are lots of good restaurants in Melbourne, and there are so many because going out so much creates both the demand and the competition that forces restaurants to be good.

With sports, I think we can all agree that crowds add to the occasion, and so the same 'it is because it is' reasoning applies...we go because the crowd will make the occasion good, and the crowd is there because we go.

How we got there probably needs a much bigger examination, but the end result is pretty apparent, and crosses over into 'new' areas when they arise (e.g. NRL & Soccer crowds in Melbourne are generally pretty good compared to other states).

Bomberboyokay · May 27, 2020

Kwality said:
Yet gets 4 out of the top TV ratings for sport across Aus.

"4 out of the top TV ratings" could be many things.

Kwality · May 27, 2020

Bomberboyokay said:
"4 out of the top TV ratings" could be many things.

Roger that, make 4 out of 5, I will correct my error.

Our Game · May 27, 2020

telsor said:
I think more generally Melbourne (Vic?) has a culture of 'going out' a lot more than other states seem to, be it sporting events, restaurants, or whatever.

The reason for it though is, I think, somewhat recursive...we go out a lot because there are good places/things to go out to, and they're there because we go out a lot.

We go to restaurants a lot because there are lots of good restaurants in Melbourne, and there are so many because going out so much creates both the demand and the competition that forces restaurants to be good.

With sports, I think we can all agree that crowds add to the occasion, and so the same 'it is because it is' reasoning applies...we go because the crowd will make the occasion good, and the crowd is there because we go.

How we got there probably needs a much bigger examination, but the end result is pretty apparent, and crosses over into 'new' areas when they arise (e.g. NRL & Soccer crowds in Melbourne are generally pretty good compared to other states).

I think you are right that on any measure Melbourne comes out ahead on crowd participation compared to other cities around Australia weather it be Theatre,Museums,Eating out, Pubs and Clubbing and all the main sports Cricket,Basketball,Soccer,FI GP, Moto GP and Horse Racing this hasen't happened over night but has built up over many decades.
Even the American Hot Gospeler Billy Graham got 140,000 to the MCG!

Maybe having a successful Olympic Games so early on helped the process as well plus having the venues to hold big crowds.?

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Hall of Famer

Club Legend

Hall of Famer

Premium Gold

Norm Smith Medallist

Norm Smith Medallist

Club Legend

Club Legend

Brownlow Medallist

Club Legend

Cancelled

Brownlow Medallist

I’ll make tears from your Wines.

Norm Smith Medallist

A slice of fried gold

I’ll make tears from your Wines.

Club Legend

Hall of Famer

Hall of Famer

Cancelled

Hall of Famer

Club Legend

The Phenomenon that is AFL in Melbourne

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