2008 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 2008. It includes several different competitions and matches from Australian rules football, rugby league, football (soccer) and rugby union (international rules football is a code of football played by Australian rules footballers). Sydney and Brisbane have teams represented in all four codes. Hobart and Darwin are Australia's only capital cities without a professional football team.

National competitions
Several football codes have national (domestic) competitions in Australia, the following are taken into consideration:


 * The 2008 Australian Football League season (AFL), which includes a finals series and a pre-season cup (the 2008 NAB Cup)
 * The 2008 National Rugby League season (NRL)
 * The 2008–09 A-League season (A-L)

Two of these leagues, specifically the NRL and A-League, have one team in New Zealand. Attendance figures for the New Zealand teams are not taken into account in the figures on this page.

Note that the Australian Rugby Championship folded at the end of 2007.

Other competitions
Other competitions, such as international and representative competitions, included are:


 * The 2008 Rugby League World Cup, which will be held in Australia in 2008 (RL WC)
 * The 2008 Tri Nations Series (Tri Nat)
 * The 2008 Rugby League State of Origin series (SoO)
 * The 2008 Super 14 season
 * The 2008 Asian Champions League (ACL)
 * The 3rd Round of Asian qualification for the 2010 FIFA World Cup (WCQ)

Note: For these competitions, only figures for games that take place in Australia are taken into account

Non-Competition Games
Some Non-competition matches (such as friendly and exhibition matches) are also included:


 * AFL Hall of Fame Tribute Match
 * E. J. Whitten Legends Game
 * Home test matches played by the Australian National Rugby Union Team, the Wallabies, in 2008.
 * Home test matches played by the Australian National Rugby League Team, the Kangaroos, in 2008.

Note: this list will be updated as more games are scheduled.

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 (ranked by approximate season attendances):


 * includes finals

As the attendance figures for some of these competitions can be difficult to obtain (many don't publish season figures and some play matches as curtain raisers to other events), 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.

Note that only the competitions that appear on this page excluding those specifically not included are considered, there are many other (generally smaller) competitions, leagues and matches that take place for all of the football codes, but these are not included. The following are included:


 * Crowds for Australian rules football include games from the pre-season NAB Cup.
 * The rugby league figures include representative matches (State of Origin and International Tests Matches).
 * Football attendances include the World Cup qualifiers played by the Socceroos.
 * Rugby union attendances include some games from the Super 14.

Attendances by League
Some codes have multiple competitions, several competitions are compared here.


 * The "Regular Season" is also known as the "Home and Away Season", "Premiership season" or the "Group Stage", generally consisting of some form of league or round-robin format.
 * AFL regular season and final crowds totalled 7,083,018. This is an increase of 32,073 (or 0.45%)
 * A pre-season game played in UAE not included in the AFL's pre – season tally.
 * Warrior's home games are not included in the NRL's numbers
 * Wellington's home games are not included in the A-League's numbers

Attendances by Team
Attendances that specific teams pull for their home games are listed here.


 * Teams are listed by competition – generally the figures only take regular season games into account, however international teams may include all games played (competition games and non-competition games)
 * The Socceroos are Australia's national association football (soccer) team, The Wallabies are Australia's national rugby union team – their nicknames are used to avoid confusion

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

Single Matches
These are once-off matches, that aren't part of any regular league competition.