Clubs' Members, Attendance and Estimated Support

[Sydneyfan]

Earlier in the year I compiled a little table on AFL clubs' support in terms of 2000 Members, 1999 Attendance (Total and at Home), and Estimated support across of people aged 14 years and over. I made a ranking of each club for each category and then took a cumulative ranking of the whole total. There were a couple of surprises and clubs which are viewed as not having huge support fared pretty well(especially the Kangaroos).

Here's the table, in the future I might try to collect more data to include more variables in the table and to further demonstrate clubs' support.

Hope the table isn't too hard to follow!

The table follows the following order:

Team; 2000 Members; Rank; 1999 Attendance -Total; Rank; 1999 Attendance - Home; Rank; Est. support aged 14 & over; Rank; and Cumulative Ranking.

ESSENDON; 34,278; 4; 1,122,495; 1; 630,399; 1; 715,000; 5; Cum. Ranking: 1;

ADELAIDE; 42,896; 1; 733,060; 7; 433,324; 3; 726,000; 4; Cum. Ranking: 2;

COLLINGWOOD; 28,932; 6; 886,750; 2; 430,386; 4; 673,000; 6; Cum. Ranking: 3;

RICHMOND; 26,869; 9; 885,159; 3; 445,863; 2; 400,000; 8; Cum. Ranking: equal 4;

SYDNEY; 30,177; 5; 775,294; 5; 335,930; 11; 1,554,000; 1; Cum. Ranking: equal 4;

CARLTON; 27,571; 7; 830,328; 4; 385,403; 5; 622,000; 7; Cum. Ranking: 6;

WEST COAST; 38,868; 2; 645,503; 11; 339,549; 10; 835,000; 2; Cum. Ranking: 7;

HAWTHORN; 26,879; 8; 733,485; 6; 383,490; 6; 352,000; 10; Cum. Ranking: 8;

PORT ADELAIDE; 34,925; 3; 619,590; 12; 343,963; 9; 263,000; 14; Cum. Ranking: 9;

ST KILDA; 17,855; 16; 678,757; 10; 365,006; 7; 309,000; 11; Cum. Ranking: 10;

KANGAROOS; 22,156; 12; 683,614; 9; 284,786; 12; 307,000; 12; Cum. Ranking: 11;

GEELONG; 25,595; 10; 609,423; 14; 273,242; 13; 380,000; 9; Cum. Ranking: equal 12;

MELBOURNE; 18,227; 14; 689,416; 8; 351,504; 8; 206,000; 16; Cum. Ranking: equal 12;

BRISBANE LIONS; 20,295; 13; 529,119; 15; 240,791; 16; 822,000; 3; Cum. Ranking: 14;

FREMANTLE; 24,925; 11; 522,032; 16; 263,689; 15; 275,000; 13; Cum. Ranking: 15;

WESTERN BULLDOGS; 18,056; 15; 619,133; 13; 264,254; 14; 232,000; 15; Cum. Ranking: 16.

 

[hilly]

Originally posted by Sydneyfan:

KANGAROOS; 22,156; 12; 683,614; 9; 284,786; 12; 307,000; 12; Cum. Ranking: 11;

Actually North had 25,000 members in 2000. Certain publications do not acknowledge the "members first" category, that is, people that pay 35 dollars to the club for certain privileges, but are not admitted to games.

 

[Frodo]

Are the totals over the 22 rounds or do they include finals?

 

[FF]

North members not going to games! Now there is a surprise!!

 

[Sydneyfan]

I'll have to have another check at the 1999 Attendance figures (they were in the AFL 2000 book) but I think they were taken just over the 22 H & A rounds, not including the finals

 

[Sydneyfan]

sorry about that Hilly

 

[CrowsOK]

Sydneyfan, this is what your table reports:
2000 Members; Rank; 1999 Attendance -Total; Rank; 1999 Attendance - Home; Rank; Est. support aged 14 & over; Rank; and Cumulative Ranking

Members is influenced by ground capacity - eg Crows have a waiting list for members. I believe Sydney are sold out, too.

Total attendance includes a fair number of opposition supporters if there are a number of "local derby" games in a teams season. Sydney don't have any local derbys. Crows have just two per year. Most Melbourne sides have 17 or so.

Home attendence figures are similarly skewed to make teams with lots of local derbies seem better supported than they really are.

I'd love to know who did the estimating and ranking for support levels, and if they took factors such as this into account.

 

[CJH]

crowsOK, the research was done by the Roy Morgan Research Centre.

The document can be found at Essendon Bombers blitz off-field in Victoria But Sydney Swans Australia’s Favourite Team.

SydneyFan, I realise that there are some inconsistencies brought about by the factors that crowsOK mentions. Nonetheless, I think this is quite a decent piece of analysis and gives a more balanced way of determining the level of support for each club.

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This is a hallucination and these faces are in a dream. A computer generated environment; a fantasy island you can do anything and not have to face the consequences.

 

[Frodo]

After a lot of polling and scrutinising of dimple chad ballots the Eagles claim China as a nation of people who all would watch the Eagles if the stadium was big enough. This research proves who has the most supporters

 

[Sydneyfan]

I agree completely that the data shown is a fairly basic measure of teams' support, there are many other factors that could be included, eg. total television attendance of each team, or to judge a teams' off-field strength, profits. But, the table's just a collection of data I found to give a rough guide of teams' support.

The statistics used are official AFL released material (and also the Morgan Gallop Poll) but, the rankings were all compiled by me and hold no real statistical significance

In each field I gave the team with the highest figure a rank of 1 and so on down the 16 teams, and for the cumulative ranking, I added the total of the teams' ranking in each field. So it was a very rough table with not much statistical analysis used.

I compiled the table one day when I had nothing much to do just to get a rough guide of each team's varying support. It is pretty interesting and it would be interesting to keep collecting data after each season to see whether team's support significantly changes.

 

[Sydneyfan]

Sorry, I just realised in the last post that I didn't really explain the Cumulative Ranking too well. The Cumulative Ranking was determined by adding the ranking of each variable for every team. The team with the lowest total once you added all the variables was the team ranked number one. For example, Essendon's total after adding each ranking was 11 so it was ranked #1 while the Western Bulldogs' total after adding each ranking was 57 and it was ranked #16.

Out of interest, here's the result of adding each ranking for every team:
Essendon - 11
Adelaide - 15
Collingwood - 18
Richmond and Sydney - 22
Carlton - 23
West Coast - 25
Hawthorn - 30
Port Adelaide - 38
St Kilda - 44
Kangaroos - 45
Geelong and Melbourne - 46
Brisbane Lions - 47
Fremantle - 55
Western Bulldogs - 57

I did these rankings purely out of interest and was interested in seeing how well supported team's really are. I wasn't too interested in seeing who are the 'powerful' teams and who aren't because everyone has a fair idea of that anyway, and I'd like to see the AFL stay in the same format with the same 16 teams as it has now.

Nevertheless, there were a few surprises there (Sydney's high position, the Kangaroo's relatively high position considering many people think they are threatened), but a big factor in this was the statistics used. If you used different statistics, then the results could be completely different.

It was interesting to see how dominate West Coast and the Crows are in their respective cities compared to their cross-town rivals Fremantle and Port Adelaide. Fremantle especially seem outshadowed by the Eagles so hopefully they can build on their relatively good 2000 season and try to gain more support in Perth.

Another thing I found inetersting was Melbourne's realatively low membership - 18,227 (ranked 14th) and their better attendance - 689,416 in total (ranked 8th) and 351,504 at home (ranked 8th). I guess a reason for that is that a lot of Melbourne supporters are MCC members so many don't buy a Melbourne Football Club membership but still attend the matches, especially at the MCG, though I'm only guessing with that one!