2026 Attendances

[Rouel_14]

You’d think that, but boy you should have seen the Collingwood board when the Pies tried to move to reserved bays. The entitlement was off the charts.

Same happened at Richmond in 2018.

Benny had to come and address all the coteries one by one and try and calm them down for about 3-4 home games in a row. It was hostile as hell.

I guess the club moved when they had the most power. Don’t renew and loose your grand final seat in a year when we were sitting clear 1st. Pretty good reason to grin and bear it. Now it’s just normal.

 

[manicmagpie]

Unfortunately Collingwood caved in and allowed people to keep their reserved seats. However they made it opt in and presumably aren’t releasing new ones so hopefully it will eventually move to a better system.

 

[Hawkk]

Looking to Thursday, the AFL have kept General admission bays available in Q1-Q5 but are selling general admission reserve seating in Q27-28 and Q37-38.


Is this a Collingwood thing? If not, it looks like the AFL are now happy to take more bays away from the AFL members and the MCC reserve for higher drawing games.

 

[Hawkk]

On another note, it amazes me how leagues around the world can close off top decks to create a sell out atmosphere yet we can’t.

Probably my biggest bug bear especially in rough times. 30,000 on level one and 2 of the G could look, feel and sound great.

Why would you close grandstands and cap attendance when seats are available? The A’s did this in the baseball before they left Oakland and it looked terrible IMO.

 

[ep12]

Looking to Thursday, the AFL have kept General admission bays available in Q1-Q5 but are selling general admission reserve seating in Q27-28 and Q37-38.

View attachment 2596462
Is this a Collingwood thing? If not, it looks like the AFL are now happy to take more bays away from the AFL members and the MCC reserve for higher drawing games.

Collingwood have been selling tickets in the MCC in Q37-Q40 for at least 8 years now. Hence, there is a fence in the middle of Q40 to keep the rabble out of the reserve.

AFL regularly gets given to the public when the public demand is larger but the afl isn’t going to sell out and they can have GA in Other level 4 bays in the reserve

 

[kranger]

View attachment 2596009
View attachment 2596010
14 k at the Tassie vfl game on Saturday I think it’s safe to say there not going to struggle for crowds like gws and suns have

A fair comparison for crowds for an AFL team in Hobart (250,000 pop) is likely the NRL team in Townsville (200,000).

Both City’s are closer in population than to Canberra (500,000), Newcastle (500,000) and Gold Coast (750,000).

Neither city have a much larger city with over 5 million people and more games within 100km like Geelong and Wollongong.

North Queensland Stadium has a capacity of 25,500.

 

[mblack42]

A fair comparison for crowds for an AFL team in Hobart (250,000 pop) is likely the NRL team in Townsville (200,000).

Both City’s are closer in population than to Canberra (500,000), Newcastle (500,000) and Gold Coast (750,000).

Neither city have a much larger city with over 5 million people and more games within 100km like Geelong and Wollongong.

North Queensland Stadium has a capacity of 25,500.

View attachment 2597810

Interesting comparison. Would it be safe to say an average of at around 20,000 is doable considering AFL having a larger in game attendance than NRL in most markets? Guess it may be dependent on who they host.

 

[Sammoll]

Big Thursday night

 

[What else we can do]

Looked like 86,000 top of the Ponsford was packed all the way to the MCC.

 

[Fambam84]

Great crowd for a Thursday night. This easily gets 85k+ on a Friday night

 

[Hawkk]

Great crowd for a Thursday night. This easily gets 85k+ on a Friday night

AFL probably don’t care though. Like Carlton v Collingwood a 75,000 to 80,000 crowd on a Thursday Night is a massive win.

The draw probably gives them the excuse to draw the return game on the Thursday too.

 

[What else we can do]

AFL probably don’t care though. Like Carlton v Collingwood a 75,000 to 80,000 crowd on a Thursday Night is a massive win.

The draw probably gives them the excuse to draw the return game on the Thursday too.

No they won't it has to be Friday

 

[manicmagpie]

The only Thursday night crowds (excl season openers and public holidays) over 65k:

View attachment 2584940

The 1992 game in top spot was a special occasion as well - Collingwood's centenary match.

Quoting myself from two weeks ago. Tonight’s crowd will slot into 4th on this list.

 

[What else we can do]

Quoting myself from two weeks ago. Tonight’s crowd will slot into 4th on this list.

That centenary game was only the second time a H/A game (Melbourne) was live against the gate. The first being Essendon v Collngwood in 1990 with 65,000 attending.

 

[Rabman]

Showdown attendance: 53,045

 

[manicmagpie]

Fox commentators mentioned 23k at Docklands.

 

[BallaratBulldog]

Three beltings in a row has to be taking a toll. Knowing you still have heaps out and some playing injured.

Actual game was more encouraging though this time

 

[manicmagpie]

23,071 at Docklands.

 

[Rouel_14]

53,000 in the house and Adelaide Oval is rocking while on Seven we have a 1/3 full Marvel stadium.

If only someone in Canada and AI didn’t destroy the fixture.

 

[Giant YoYo]

53,000 in the house and Adelaide Oval is rocking while on Seven we have a 1/3 full Marvel stadium.

If only someone in Canada and AI didn’t destroy the fixture.

We really need to slowly move away from scheduling Victorian teams on FTA just because they're Victorian /the biggest and the AFL needs to trial some non-Victorian teams and high quality games slowly over time to get the footy fanbase (mostly Victorian fanbase) used to it.

It's going to take quite the shift and we're not there yet but for the betterment of the comp it needs to happen.

Just having Victorian teams for the sake of it will eventually hit a wall (similar to how just scheduling Essendon and Carlton for their large fanbases did).

Other comps seem to hold up alright regardless of who is playing. This is what we need to move closer to over time (understand the biggest and oldest clubs will always be just that and draw the biggest ratings but you'd want to decrease the huge difference between the two best you can).

 

[ep12]

TV ratings for the showdown last year showed that nobody outside of SA watched and for that is why it doesn't have a stand alone spot yet. Now I get that those games were not on 7 but it has been made clear that when there are no Victorian teams, the ratings go down and the broadcasters lose money.

 

[Giant YoYo]

TV ratings for the showdown last year showed that nobody outside of SA watched and for that is why it doesn't have a stand alone spot yet. Now I get that those games were not on 7 but it has been made clear that when there are no Victorian teams, the ratings go down and the broadcasters lose money.

Terribly sorry, which of the Showdowns were standalone national FTA games?

 

[Teen Wolf]

The Bulldogs aren't going to draw a massive crowd against Fremantle, regardless of timeslot and regardless of fixturing of other matches. So in a thread about attendances, this seems a more relevant point than complaints about TV scheduling.

In any case, every team gets preferential FTA exposure in their local market except some Victorian teams. Also, not only does Fremantle (a non-Victorian team) benefit from Friday night coverage tonight, they consequently get Thursday primetime next week without copping another 5 day break (which they just had last week).

 

[parano1a]

Terribly sorry, which of the Showdowns were standalone national FTA games?

Round 8, 2024
Thursday, 2 May (7:00 pm)
Adelaide 12.6 (78) def. Port Adelaide 5.18 (48)

Unfortunately this was an uneventful lopsided game and rated poorly on Seven.

 

[Demon13304]

This is a very tiresome point about how Victorian fans always turn out but suddenly don't. Stop with the caveats.

Victorian fans carry the primetime slots but also won't depending on a criteria. Which is it ?

Victorian fans turn out in derbies against other Victorian teams which is just the same in just about the rest of the country with the rest of their derbies. Victorian fans don't turn out against non-Victorian teams. This is nothing new.

It's nothing new in the rest of the country.

Victorian clubs have been around way longer than the non-Victorian clubs but the non-Victorian clubs will get smashed over attendances but the Victorian clubs won't. Absolute joke.

If you think that Victorian clubs don't get smashed for attendance then I really don't know what to tell you lol

IM a Melbourne fan, believe me I know