Most Popular Australian Sport - The Statistics

What is the most popular sport in Australia?

It turns out Aussies have a few ways of expressing what their favourite sport is. By looking at statistics for event attendance, tv views and actual participation, we are able to see that a variety of sports take the podium for most popular.

Spectatorship



This table shows how event attendance for various Australian sport has changed over almost 20 years time. Its clear that AFL takes the winner for Aussie spectators, gaining about 1 million more match attenders over 17 years. Interestingly, Rugby League barely changes and soccer almost doubles its spectators. Another notable change is the huge drop in spectators for cricket, almost halving attendance. What could this mean?


AFL vs NRL

This is another interesting depiction of spectatorship between AFL and NRL for every state in Australia. It makes a lot of sense with AFL being a Victorian creation, mostly consisting of teams based around these areas. Also note that for Rugby League, the State of Origin is played between QLD and NSW. 








Television Viewers



This bar chart shows the amount of Australians above the age of 14 that watch Aussie sports on television in 2010 - 2011. Interestingly, Cricket just takes the podium above AFL. Even though physical attendance of cricket matches has halved, it remains the dominant sport to be viewed on television. Why could this be? Tennis is also stands as a popular sport to be watched from home closely followed by NRL and the Melbourne Cup. Soccer does not even make the cut for TV viewers!

Participation

This bar chart shows us physical participation levels of Australians 14 and above across various sports that offer clubs in 2003-2005. Here we can see that soccer outplays every other sport with participants closely followed by cricket. Its particularly interesting to notice this when soccer does not come close to AFL in match attendance or Cricket in TV views. Basketball also shows high participation levels when it did not make a mark in game attendance or tv views. 




Now this table specifies participation levels of Aussie kids in 2015. Half of Aussie kids played soccer closely followed my swimming. About only a quarter played cricket and 20% played AFL. 






So, what sport do you think takes the overall popularity award? Will current participation levels of kids today reflect spectatorship and tv views for Australian sport in the future?

By Myles Waller

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