ADELAIDE Grand Final organisers claim to have the premier ‘grand final’ of all of Australia’s sporting codes off its best-attended Supercars round in a decade.

A total of 285,700 fans came through the gates across the event’s four days, the biggest crowd since the 2015 event and third overall behind 2008 and 2013.

It’s a sharp uptick from last year’s crowd of 259,400 in the final year of the traditional Adelaide 500 format.

This year’s event was the first under Supercars’ new Finals format, which virtually guaranteed that the 2025 champion would be crowned on the Sunday of the event.

It was a day that featured the announcement and signing on the grid of a new deal between Supercars and the South Australian state government to hold the Adelaide Grand Final until 2034.

Sunday drew a crowd of 102,000 on its own to see Chaz Mostert crowned as champion, and concluding in the Adelaide stop of legendary rock band AC/DC’s world concert tour.

“That is the largest attendance for any sporting event in Australia this year,” Mark Warren, chief executive of the South Australian Motorsport Board, said.

“It’s bigger than the AFL Grand Final, it’s bigger than the NRL Grand Final.”

For context, this year’s AFL Grand Final sported an attendance of 100,022 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and the NRL Grand Final 80,223 at Stadium Australia.

“When we set out to set the benchmark for Grand Finals in a sporting context, we could never have imagined that we were going to achieve such high benchmarks,” Warren added.

“Now we’ve set the standard, not just nationally but globally for world motorsport, and we’re looking forward to continuing that to 2034.”

The free-to-air television numbers on the Seven Network backed up the rise in crowd figures, posting the highest final-round ratings since 2021 when the season closed with a COVID-rescheduled Bathurst 1000.

Seven reported that its Adelaide weekend coverage reached a total of 2.37 million viewers, up 31 percent on last year’s finale.

That included a national reach of 1.28 million and a national audience of 498,000, up 17 percent on 2024.

It capped a year where Seven’s FTA viewership was up at all its major events, headlined by 5.78 million viewers across the Bathurst 1000 weekend.

“This year’s Bathurst 1000 was the biggest viewing audience on Seven since 2016 and the momentum has continued through the exciting new Finals format, with huge numbers watching the Gold Coast 500 and the season’s Grand Final in Adelaide,” Angela Rampal, Seven’s head of motorsport, said.

“It is exciting to see Supercars get recognition as the premier motorsport category in the country and there was no better way to have the Championship decided than in the very last race of the year, this weekend past.”

Speedway action at the 2024 Adelaide 500. Pic: Ross Gibb

The Adelaide event had regularly opened the Supercars season in its original run from 1999 to 2020.

The latter year featured an attendance of just 206,350, a figure that prompted the state government of the era to cancel the event.

Resurrected in 2022 off the back of an election promise by now-South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas, the event shifted to the final round of the Supercars calendar.

Along with the Supercars and support-category race action on track, the event has featured a carnival-like array of sideshows and entertainment.

Last year featured a temporary Speedway oval and sprintcar racing during the evenings, a popular innovation that returned this year.

This year’s grand final also featured demonstrations by the Red Bull Formula 1 team, and not just on-track – during Friday’s rained-out session, they used one of the cars to play a rendition of The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army with its engine.

But the big music acts were saved for the two concert stages, with Saturday’s show headlined by Lenny Kravitz and Sunday’s by AC/DC.

It’s a format that began during Adelaide’s F1 grand prix era and will continue in the event’s new grand final phase.

“Having rock acts like AC/DC, that’s all part of having a having a grand final and the grand final experience,” Warren added.

“We’ll certainly look to continue with having epic rock acts and other bands here to really cap off what is a fantastic event experience.

“We’ll be out there looking for something that achieves that same benchmark. A challenge, no doubt.

“We’ve got to make sure it all lines up with world tours but keep an eye on what’s coming and they might be right here in Adelaide.”