Roy Morgan: Swans most supported club for another year

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'Despite having the most total supporters, Swans fans have proven to be the least loyal, converting only 4.9% of its 1,031,000 million fan base into members.

League wide, despite major interruptions over the past two seasons due to COVID-19, 8.86 million Australians now “express support” for an AFL club, more than ever before. This is an increase of 1.3 million on last year, a rise of 17.7%., while 7.58 million Australians also watched an AFL match on TV in the past year, down 1.1% on last year.'

' The Collingwood Magpies, West Coast Eagles and Brisbane Lions round out the top four most supported teams, with Sydney being the only club to have over one million fans nationally.

Despite having the second lowest supporter base, the North Melbourne Kangaroos are reported to have the league’s most loyal fans, with 21.7% of the Roy Morgan supporter numbers converting their fandom into a membership, with 214,000 total supporters. Despite almost five times the supporters, the Swans only maintain four thousand more paying members.'
 

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Hard to have much confidence in this when they have now reported different figures for 2020 compared to what they did last year and there is no explanation as to why.

For example, they had said my club had 254k supporters last year and are now saying it was 200k.


It appears the panel they are using is three times what they used last year (i.e. n = ~15k increasing to n=~50k)

I think these big Roy Morgan surveys are bit dicey but It is pretty remarkable an increase overall. 8.8M over 14 years old is about 42% of the population. Although it is funny that there are more fans than there are people who watched a match on TV over the whole year!
 
I think we can all agree that the logical response to this is to have NSW host the Grand Final next year. :)
NSW should get the Grand Final at some point.
That stupid MCG contract be damned. Play it away from Victoria every second year on a rotating basis.
 
NSW should get the Grand Final at some point.
That stupid MCG contract be damned. Play it away from Victoria every second year on a rotating basis.
Yeah, I really like the idea of rotating it every second year that has been mentioned on here before. I've seen firsthand how much the game can be grown in eastern states. Would have never thought AFL would be selling more memberships in Queensland than the NRL ever a decade ago, let alone this soon.
 
Crazy to ever swallow one report as gospel.

Sure but it's been unreliable for years. It never correlates with other known measure of "support".

If they want to add some reliability and validity to it - ask each respondent to name five current players, have they attended a game, etc. Then slice the data by those that are nominally a supporter (like I would be for say Parramatta in the NRL) versus those that actually support the club.

Of course, that's not what they want to do with it - this is just a hook in order to get sell sponsorships.
 
Sure but it's been unreliable for years. It never correlates with other known measure of "support".

If they want to add some reliability and validity to it - ask each respondent to name five current players, have they attended a game, etc. Then slice the data by those that are nominally a supporter (like I would be for say Parramatta in the NRL) versus those that actually support the club.

Of course, that's not what they want to do with it - this is just a hook in order to get sell sponsorships.

Sponsorship dollars arent earned that easily.
 
Crazy to ever swallow one report as gospel.

Surveys are akin to ratings which are indeed just surveys which need to analysed for their application.
This survey is taken every year and the results are consistent is just what people read into the results.
To me, people like the Sydney Swans, just like most people liked the fact that Melbourne broke their premiership drought.
It's a feel-good thing IMO and cannot be used for serious support which is indeed going and watching AFL games.
 

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Crazy to ever swallow one report as gospel.
To put it bluntly the survey is incorrect and has very low credibility in the real world of AFL support. There is no way that the Swans have more supporters than the AFL Clubs that we know. They use the word "Support" but they dont define it accurately enough for my liking.
That support is not reflected in the well accepted measures that we use in OUR game.
The pollster involved had his credibilty badly damaged along with other pollsters at the last Federal Election.
 
They use the word "Support" but they dont define it accurately enough for my liking.

That is the crux of the issue. "Support" is defined as assistance of some kind.
That would be a fan who pays money to attend games, buys merchandise or buys a subscription etc.
The minimum for a supporter is a fan who watches the team on FTA and helps ratings indirectly "helping" the team.
Then there are "followers" who follow the fortunes of various teams but don't actually contribute anything.
Then there are "interested parties" that are interested in various teams but don't regularly follow the ups and downs.
A survey like this seems to count "well wishers" who don't do anything but when asked, do have a positive reaction to that team.
 
That is the crux of the issue. "Support" is defined as assistance of some kind.
That would be a fan who pays money to attend games, buys merchandise or buys a subscription etc.
The minimum for a supporter is a fan who watches the team on FTA and helps ratings indirectly "helping" the team.
Then there are "followers" who follow the fortunes of various teams but don't actually contribute anything.
Then there are "interested parties" that are interested in various teams but don't regularly follow the ups and downs.
A survey like this seems to count "well wishers" who don't do anything but when asked, do have a positive reaction to that team.
It's a survey of 65,000 people and not very reliable. There are many ways to measure the true size of a supporter base, eg if you look at the "minimum" as you stated, over a long period of time its Collingwood, Carlton then Essendon.

These 3 clubs have the potential to to be 1, 2 and 3 as you stated in "support assist in any kind" if they have the success of the likes Richmond and West Coast of the past 5 years.
 
That is the crux of the issue. "Support" is defined as assistance of some kind.
That would be a fan who pays money to attend games, buys merchandise or buys a subscription etc.
The minimum for a supporter is a fan who watches the team on FTA and helps ratings indirectly "helping" the team.
Then there are "followers" who follow the fortunes of various teams but don't actually contribute anything.
Then there are "interested parties" that are interested in various teams but don't regularly follow the ups and downs.
A survey like this seems to count "well wishers" who don't do anything but when asked, do have a positive reaction to that team.
Well argued. Great post. This is certainly an example of a survey of well wishes. Anyone asked in Sydney who they barrack for likely say the Swans. Even though they’ve probably never been to a game or intend to go or watch them in TV. It’s simply the team they identify with.
 

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