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The_Wookie

The_Wookie

Kananook Oval
Gumbies FFC - Sweet F.A. Veteran 10k Posts 30k Posts Shiny Penny Podcaster
Jul 2, 2010
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Adelaide
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11.12.2024

Gather Round tickets snapped up in record time


The AFL is pleased to announce that more than 195,000 Gather Round…Festival of Footy tickets have sold… with five of the nine games sold out, 20,000 more than this time last year.

Member on sale on Tuesday saw a significant uplift in demand for tickets this year, selling more than 100,000 tickets in the first four hours, in comparison to the same amount in 24 hours last year.

This year there are an extra 47,000 tickets on offer for fans with the two Saturday matches being ticketed separately.

Tickets still remain for Collingwood vs Sydney Swans on Friday night, Carlton vs West Coast on Saturday afternoon, Melbourne vs Essendon on Saturday night and a very limited number of restricted view tickets and tickets for the Pepsi Collective for Port Adelaide vs Hawthorn on Sunday evening.

AFL CEO Andrew Dillon said it was clear Gather Round momentum was not slowly down.

“The demand for tickets this year was significantly higher than the first two Gather Rounds, with more than 195,000 tickets being purchased in the first two days,” said Mr Dillon.

“A ticket to the matches at the Barossa Park was always going to be one of the hottest tickets in town and the fans have certainly illustrated that by selling out both matches so quickly.”

South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas said: “Gather Round continues to exceed all expectations.

“We are honoured that so many footy fans from around the country are making the commitment to travel to our beautiful state to experience this event like no other.

“They’ll be truly welcome.

“If you haven’t got a ticket already – get in quick!”

Tickets for the remaining matches can be found here.
 
Update

VIC vs NON-VIC (MCG Non-GF crowds) - TOP 10
  • PF 2023 = Collingwood vs GWS (97,665)
  • PF 2025 = Collingwood vs Brisbane Lions (96,023)
  • PF 2017 = Richmond vs GWS (94,258)
  • PF 2024 = Geelong vs Brisbane Lions (93,066)
  • EF 2023 = Carlton vs Sydney (92,026)
  • SF 2022 = Collingwood vs Fremantle (90,612)
  • PF 2002 = Collingwood vs Adelaide (88,960)
  • QF 2025 = Geelong vs Brisbane Lions (86,364)
  • SF 1996 = Essendon vs West Coast (85,656)
  • SF 1987 = Melbourne vs Sydney (80,292)
 

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Biggest 21st century non-Grand Final crowds:
  1. PF 2025 (Geel vs Haw) = 99,597
  2. PF 2007 (Geel vs Coll) = 98,002
  3. EF 2024 (WB vs Haw) = 97,828
  4. PF 2023 (Coll vs GWS) = 97,665
  5. SF 2023 (Melb vs Carl) = 96,412
  6. PF 2025 (Coll vs Bris) = 96,023
  7. PF 2010 (Coll vs Geel) = 95,241
  8. R6 2023 (Coll vs Ess) = 95,179
  9. QF 2017 (Geel vs Rich) = 95,028
  10. PF 2018 (Rich vs Coll) = 94,959
 
That's also within a thousand of the lowest Showground men's crowd this season (Freo v GWS was about 8100) and higher than at least a dozen non Covid crowds in that ground's history.

The Swans also used to pull some lower crowds at the SCG before 1995.
 
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Cmarsh said:
Good result but pretty embarrasing for the Southern heartland footy states they can't regulalry get crowds like this for AFLW.
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What actually is stopping them from attracting people at some of the more central venues? Clubs not putting on a good amount of hospitality and promotion?

It's nothing secret, it's just a nice afternoon in a big space with a lot of good local brewery tents and food trucks. They use the same hospitality company as does the Newtown Jets gameday, a festival sort of setup. Seems like something the same sector in the city of Melbourne could replicate with no problem.
 
Arwib said:
What actually is stopping them from attracting people at some of the more central venues? Clubs not putting on a good amount of hospitality and promotion?

It's nothing secret, it's just a nice afternoon in a big space with a lot of good local brewery tents and food trucks. They use the same hospitality company as does the Newtown Jets gameday, a festival sort of setup. Seems like something the same sector in the city of Melbourne could replicate with no problem.
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Thing is though the Swans also get bigger crowds than anyone else in the AFLW when they play at North Sydney Oval. Good hospitality or not, Southern heartland clubs just haven't replicated the same attendance culture for their AFLW matches.
 
Unfortunately the last two AFLW Western Derby’s that were played at Fremantle Oval have been rain affected. It would be nice to see what crowd they could get for a sunny one down in Fremantle.

Eagles got 6,000 last year at Leederville Oval.

IMG_4246.jpeg
 

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Top Preliminary Final totals:

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*1962 had a draw and replay Preliminary Final
 
Sammoll said:
State league GFs today:

34,426 for Sturt vs Glenelg SANFL GF at AO

23,752 for South Fremantle vs East Perth WAFL GF at Optus

Haven't seen a figure for Footscray vs Southport VFL GF at Ikon, but looked like a decent showing from Dogs fans
Click to expand...

Great crowds for local footy.
 
Putting the Bulldogs aflw game against the VFL grand final with Footscray playing was very bad scheduling.

PonsfordMagpie said:
Update

VIC vs NON-VIC (MCG Non-GF crowds) - TOP 10
  • PF 2023 = Collingwood vs GWS (97,665)
  • PF 2025 = Collingwood vs Brisbane Lions (96,023)
  • PF 2017 = Richmond vs GWS (94,258)
  • PF 2024 = Geelong vs Brisbane Lions (93,066)
  • EF 2023 = Carlton vs Sydney (92,026)
  • SF 2022 = Collingwood vs Fremantle (90,612)
  • PF 2002 = Collingwood vs Adelaide (88,960)
  • QF 2025 = Geelong vs Brisbane Lions (86,364)
  • SF 1996 = Essendon vs West Coast (85,656)
  • SF 1987 = Melbourne vs Sydney (80,292)
Click to expand...
Bit disappointed that our prelim last night didn't beat the GWS one from two years ago. Thought we would have gotten at least 98k last night.
 
The NRL final only got 56k it seems, they were talking this up that it was going to get 70k? It's actually a poor crowd for a local final, but I suppose ok for them.

I kinda expected the Collingwood v Brisbane final to match the Hawks v Geelong crowd due to being in a better timeslot. That twilight Saturday feels more special to me than the grand final time, it's also heaps better viewing with the yellow ball and lack of sun glare than g.f day.
 

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Cmarsh said:
Good result but pretty embarrasing for the Southern heartland footy states they can't regulalry get crowds like this for AFLW.
Click to expand...

Do the northern markets use women’s football as a driver for fan growth?Would make sense that AFLW (like auskick) is a pathway to convert fans from rusted on rugby codes.

____ said:
Putting the Bulldogs aflw game against the VFL grand final with Footscray playing was very bad scheduling.


Bit disappointed that our prelim last night didn't beat the GWS one from two years ago. Thought we would have gotten at least 98k last night.
Click to expand...

It no doubt suffered massively from the Friday Night final. The Collingwood v GWS game was a standalone MCG final with no other games in Melbourne for the round like Rich v GWS (2017), Coll v Frem (2022), Melb v Carl (2023), Haw v WB (2024) and Geel v BL (2024).

Without Geel v Haw I’m convinced it would have drawn 98,000 plus. In fact, if capacity was no hindrance I wonder how many fans would have gone to both Prelims. Maybe 300,000? VFL Park’s original planned capacity might have come in handy after all…
 
Hawkk said:
Without Geel v Haw I’m convinced it would have drawn 98,000 plus. In fact, if capacity was no hindrance I wonder how many fans would have gone to both Prelims. Maybe 300,000? VFL Park’s original planned capacity might have come in handy after all…
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Do you mean like if anyone could get a ticket??

pfft 150k easily

Imagine the Grand Final.. 300k?
 
Angus Young said:
Do you mean like if anyone could get a ticket??

pfft 150k easily

Imagine the Grand Final.. 300k?
Click to expand...

The 1970 finals series is still the high water mark for attendance. Not only 121,696 for the Grand Final but an average of 446,988 to the four finals (111,747 for each game). For context the population of Melbourne at the time was 2,499,000 so the average game drew 4.44% of the city’s population.

We’d need to draw about 235,500 a finals match to draw a comparative crowd to a Melbourne based finals match. 1969 it was about 109,042 (about 4.5% of total population), 1968 was 106,472 (4.65%) and 1971 was only 105,470 (about 4% of total population). Honourable mention also to 1961 which featured Haw, Melb, StK and Foots. That year drew 92,052 a week (about 4.9% of the total population).

By the time the final 5 came into being, finals attendances started tapering off a lot. What’s impressive about those games is that so many didn’t involve the so called ‘big 4’ VFL clubs - St Kilda made it in 1961, 1968, 1970 and 1971, Geelong in 1968 and 1969 and Hawthorn in 1961 and 1971, Melb in 1961, Foots in 1961 and South Melbourne in 1970.

The biggest non-GF finals crowd on a per captia basis was probably the 1956 Coll v Foots PF. That game drew 94,401 (5.80% of Melbourne’s population) and 115,904 for the Melb v Coll final too (7.20% of the population). For Geel v Haw to match that, they’d need to draw almost 310,000 to a PF and 385,000 to the Geel v BL GF.
 
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kranger said:
Unfortunately the last two AFLW Western Derby’s that were played at Fremantle Oval have been rain affected. It would be nice to see what crowd they could get for a sunny one down in Fremantle.

Eagles got 6,000 last year at Leederville Oval.
Click to expand...

Yeah but Freo oval is such a shithole. They at least put a little grass hill behind the goals now and they're clearly trying to make it a bit more spectator friendly, but its just not a place you want to be taking kids.
 

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