AFL Round 1 crowds dropped by almost 50,000 people within 12 months with final attendance numbers falling well short of league forecasts.
The total attendance figure for Round 1 came in at 384,544 — down 46,961 on last year’s Round 1 record crowd total of 431,505.
Supporter groups voiced their angst at Thursday night’s Carlton v Richmond clash and Friday night’s match between Essendon and Hawthorn being made fully ticketed, meaning club members had to pay to upgrade to reserved seats.
North Melbourne’s barnstorming win over Port Adelaide saw league-owned Marvel Stadium filled to less than half of its capacity.
League boss Andrew Dillon had said on Saturday that there may have been some fatigue from clubs that had opened the season the week prior, but had said that “the forecast for (round one) is close to 400,000 which will still have it in the top ten rounds of all time”.
But he said the issue surrounding fully-ticketed games was “at the front of our mind”.
“It’s something that we’ll look at because the forecasts were slightly above the (actual crowd numbers),” Dillon said on SEN.
“We weren’t expecting the same numbers that we had the year before because … of a number of factors going into it.”
The AFL Fans’ Association told this masthead on Saturday that it would be querying the league regarding fully-ticketed games and how they were determined.