Gather Round

Gather Round is an annual Australian Football League event in which all games in one home-and-away round are played in a single city and its surrounds. The event was first held in 2023 in Adelaide, South Australia, which will host the round each year until 2026.

History
In September 2022, the Australian Football League (AFL) announced it would host a version of Magic Round in 2023, a round in which all matches would be played in a single city outside of Victoria. The AFL's major competitor, the National Rugby League (NRL), had staged a Magic Round since 2019, in which all matches were played at Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane, while another competing competition, Super Rugby Pacific, has held a Super Round since 2022, in which all matches were played at AAMI Park. The two rugby competitions' rounds were in turn based on its European rugby league counterpart, the Super League, which had staged Magic Weekend in a variety of cities since 2007. In November 2022, the inaugural round was awarded to South Australia, which beat a bid from New South Wales. In December 2022, it was given the pun name 'Gather Round' with the tagline 'a festival of footy'.

Unlike its rugby equivalents, Gather Round matches are all scheduled for the same city, but not the same venue. In the inaugural edition, for example: six games were played at Adelaide Oval, Adelaide's only regular AFL venue; two games were played at the suburban Norwood Oval; and one game was played at Summit Sports Park in Mount Barker, about 30km outside Adelaide in the surrounding Adelaide Hills.

In the inaugural event, all nine Gather Round matches sold out, and more than 60,000 people purchased tickets from interstate. On the final day of the first Gather Round, South Australia was announced as the event's host for the next three seasons until 2026.

Arrangements
Gather Round was added to the AFL home-and-away season as an extra round, extending the length of the standard season from 22 matches to 23. It is run as an AFL event, meaning that there is no designated home team for gate purposes, that club memberships do not grant entry to the games, and that usual club member reserved seating does not apply – although club members are given priority access ahead of the general public to purchase tickets. Home team designations for match day purposes – which include choice of uniforms, change rooms and run-on order – are decided by a coin toss. When a venue hosts two matches on the same day, these are staged as a ticketed double-header, with a single ticket granting access to both matches.