Friday, February 28, 2014

How the Popularity of the AFL is Booming to Record Levels

The Australian Football League is one of the world’s most popular national sports with booming numbers of both participants and spectators alike. With each coming season, scores of fans tune in to matches on sports networks, attend the blockbuster games and even watch online.

The 2014 season is set to be the biggest season for AFL yet with huge ticket and merchandise sales leading the way. Let’s take a deeper look into the statistics.

afl teams
The average attendance for AFL games continues to grow year on year making the sport one of the most popular spectator sports in the country. In 2012, the total number of spectators for the entire season amounted to a staggering 6,778,559 spectators through the 207 games played leading to a season average of 32,747 per game across the board. The Collingwood Magpies achieves the highest gross attendance figures with a total of 1,145,476 for their 23-game season which averaged out as 45,819 per game.

afl spectators

The 2013 AFL premiership season gained extra fans with its 207-game season long attendance figure of 6,931,085. This averaged out at 33,484 per game. 2013 saw Richmond increase their fan base attendance with a figure of 1,137,980 tickets sold for the season giving them an average of 49,477 per game.

With these increasing attendance figures, the sport has grown in many different ways. Merchandising has become a huge growing sector for the AFL with jersey sales increasing year on year. With all popular sports comes sporting icons, and the AFL is no different. There are a few AFL players who sell more merchandise than others thanks to both their commercial appeal as well as their performances on the field.

Lance Franklin
Lance Franklin is one of those players who has achieved the status of most popular merchandising icon, with the 2012 and 2013 seasons behind him he managed to sell more jerseys, badges, t-shirts and caps by more than double the sales of any other player. The percentage of jersey sales have also increased year on year to end a booming year of 2013.

The highest number of jersey sales went to Essendon, Hawthorn and West Coast, with Franklin’s team mate Cyrol Rioli coming in a close second. Other notable shirt sellers include Carlton skipper Chris Judd, with Brownlow medallist Chris Judd making the top four.

afl team jersey

With spectacular sport on display at many of the AFLs more popular events, you can see why this sport has captivated the imagination of a nation. With a growing popularity year on year, many new household names are being etched into the history books to make the Australian Football league one of the biggest sports nationwide.


Image source: spectatorsportsonline, alivemobile, markdadswell

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