2012 Australian football code crowds


Australia is home to four professional football codes. This is a comprehensive list of crowd figures for Australian football codes in 2012. It includes several different competitions and matches from Australian rules football, Association football, rugby league and rugby union and International rules football which is hybrid game played between Australian & Ireland which takes aspect from Australian rules football & Gaelic football. Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane have teams represented in all four codes. Hobart and Darwin are Australia's only capital cities without a professional football team though they are home to professional games of Australian Football.
There are two changes to the professional clubs across the four competitions, with the addition of Greater Western Sydney Giants to the AFL, bringing that competition to a total of 18 Australian clubs, and the addition of the Western Sydney Wanderers in the A-League replacing the now defunct Gold Coast United.

Included competitions

National competitions

Several football codes have national competitions in Australia, the following are taken into consideration:
Two of these leagues, specifically the NRL and A-League, have one club each in New Zealand, while only five of the fifteen Super Rugby franchises are located in Australia, with the other ten are split evenly between New Zealand and South Africa. Attendance figures for non-Australian clubs are not taken into account in the figures on this page.

Other competitions

Other competitions, such as international and representative competitions, included are:
Note: For these competitions, only figures for games that take place in Australia are taken into account.
No Rugby League Four Nations competition is scheduled for 2012 to provide players with a break in the lead up to the 2013 Rugby League World Cup.

Non-competition games

Some non-competition matches are also included:
Note: this list will be updated as more games are scheduled. The 2012 ANZAC Test was held in Auckland, New Zealand with a crowd of 35,329.

Competitions not included

There are several notable semi-professional regional and state based competitions which draw notable attendances and charge an entry fee that are not listed here. These are worth mentioning as some of their attendances rival those of national competitions and compete for spectator interest.
These include :
CompetitionSportState or TerritoryTeamsGames PlayedSeason attendance*Average CrowdLargest H&A crowdLargest finals crowd
South Australian National Football LeagueAustralian rules footballSouth Australia
West Australian Football LeagueAustralian rules footballWestern Australia992206,6832,2717,53115,349
Victorian Premier LeagueFootball Victoria13162----
Victorian Football LeagueAustralian rules footballVictoria
Queensland CupRugby leagueQueensland
New South Wales CupRugby leagueNew South Wales
Tasmanian State LeagueAustralian rules footballTasmania10108,480 10,000+ overall
Ovens & Murray Football LeagueAustralian rules footballVictoria & New South Wales
Northern Territory Football LeagueAustralian rules footballNorthern Territory
Southern Football LeagueAustralian rules footballTasmania
New South Wales Premier LeagueFootball New South Wales
Shute ShieldRugby unionNew South Wales125,000
Harvey Norman PremiershipRugby leagueWestern Australia2,700

*includes finals
As the attendance figures for some of these competitions can be difficult to obtain, they have not been included in the official lists.

Attendances by Code

In order to directly compare sports, the total attendances for each major code are listed here. The colour-coding of the different codes is used throughout the article.
CodeGames playedTotal crowdAverage crowd
Association football 1421,834,98212,922
Australian rules football2076,778,82432,748
Rugby league2043,678,06218,030
Rugby union41810,51119,769

Note that only the competitions that appear on this page excluding those specifically not included are considered, there are many other competitions, leagues and matches that take place for all of the football codes, but these are not included. The following are included:
Some codes have multiple competitions, several competitions are compared here.
Total home attendances for domestic league competitions are listed here.
TeamCompetitionPlayedHome crowdsAverage

Attendances by Match

Attendances for single matches are listed here. Note that not all matches are necessarily included.

Representative Competitions

These are matches that are part of a regular representative competition.
CrowdHome teamScoreAway teamScoreGroundMatch Type
83,110 New South Wales16Queensland12ANZ StadiumState of Origin II
56,021Queensland18New South Wales10Etihad StadiumState of Origin I
52,437Queensland21New South Wales20Suncorp StadiumState of Origin III

Single matches

These are once-off matches, that aren't part of any regular league competition.
CrowdHome teamScoreAway teamScoreGroundMatch Type
26,039Indigenous All Stars28NRL All Stars36Skilled Park2012 All Stars match
16,879Melbourne Victory1Olympiacos4Etihad StadiumInternational friendly
12,037Brisbane Roar0FC Tokyo2Suncorp StadiumAFC Champions League
7,794Adelaide United0Bunyodkor0Hindmarsh StadiumAFC Champions League
7,659Adelaide United1Pohang Steelers0Hindmarsh StadiumAFC Champions League
7,200Brisbane Roar1Ulsan Hyundai2Suncorp StadiumAFC Champions League
5,615Brisbane Roar1Beijing Guoan1Suncorp StadiumAFC Champions League
5,112Adelaide United2Gamba Osaka0Hindmarsh StadiumAFC Champions League
5,013Adelaide United0Persipura Jayapura0Hindmarsh StadiumAFC Champions League

Pre Season

CrowdHome teamScoreAway teamScoreGroundCompetitionRound

Finals

Regular Season