They are in decline badly because the people have seen through them.

The tide is turning. It's been slow but it's an inevitable outcome, and also very necessary.

Surprisingly or unsurprisingly there are people that still believe the way things are going is fine and think the expansion teams will be our saviour 

Melbourne City 4-3 Western Sydney - crowd 5,149 

Can anyone keep a straight face and say they believe that figure? neither wing or behind goals had more than 1,000 ppl across those 4 open sections, how can it be 5K? They’ve added at least an extra thousand here.

How would you know how many were on the off camera side?

They showed it numerous times..it was as sparse as the on camera  side. The only out i'd give them is if they had a large corporate turnout..which i highly doubt.

Lol!

I have been suspicious for a very long time that the HAL inflate the figures.

What they can’t hide is the massive drop in interest over the last 4 years. TV ratings down and crowds down.

It’s good...

I got one have zero sympathy, because the FFA regime has destroyed the sport and divided the community.

All leagues seem to inflate figures, the Big Bash figures at the Gabba have been in the low teens but reported in the high twenties. It seems we Aussie’s can’t handle the truth.

There’s one way for teams to “legitimately” inflate crowd figures and that’s to not report the actual attendance but instead to report ticket sales, which includes memberships as well.

This is not unusual, the EPL has a controversy a couple of years back when it was clear the reported attendance didn’t match reality - the explanation was half the clubs reported attendance as ticket sales not walk ups, and always had and always will.

I prefer actual attendance as the measure of health, manipulated figures only paper over the cracks when you’re in strife but it’s a practice not confined to the HAL, I’d be pretty confident all codes do it

Crowds and membership are up. 5k seems about right for City on a Tuesday night, on the same night only 10k turned up to the BBL match between a Sydney team and a Melbourne team in Sydney.  

Waz, this is bad.

We've gone from our numbers are correct to "yeah, we all fluff our figures"? Sheesh...

So the bbl had double the attendance and probably a million tv viewers and you just shrug this off? Lol.

Attendances are on track to dip below last season..ffa went all out with the early derbies this yr.

I dont think the afl inflates its figures.

If you consider the size of the audiences the a-league attendance is very respectable and it was a very entertaining contest at that.

I am just providing an alternative to the doom and gloom on here, South Melbourne would have been stoked with 5k at any time in their history. If you guys don't want to watch the a-league then fucking don't.

On a podcast a while ago (possibly daily football show, can't remember) GOR did an interview. He was in typical GOR mode - affable aussie punter on charm offensive and slipping in his excuses under the radar. He basically argued that a portion of the decline in attendances was actually a decline in reported attendances only. That being, that from one season to the next, the manner of reporting changed. Previously, the attendance figure was inflated by including non attending members in the totals. He "changed" the process so that only people through the gate were counted - therefore it showed an overnight decline in reported numbers. All together it sounded like a total load of crap - I never remember the Wanderers posting 18k+ averages for instance. But what I took from it was a part admission that FFA has at certain points inflated the figures.

Irrespective of what figures are published, the actual numbers exist somewhere, and for a pretty important reason. If you're selling sponsorship, you need to be truthful with what you're selling to the sponsors.

When I was studying statistics eons ago I had a really good lecturer who gave me some sage advice. He had experience working in India on demographic statistics. He told me the simple thing is learning the mathematics behind it. The hard thing in practise is figuring out how much of the stats are bs.

GWS does

Back in the early 90s the SANFL (as owner and manager of Football Park) deflated the Adelaide Crows attendances. We had a family friend working there. They once shaved a massive 6k off an attendance against Collingwood in 1992 (the first time they played there in the AFL). Had to get the number below the ground's capacity.

Things have probably changed now. Those GWS figures seem  rubbery.

so wellington vs sydney 8k would be amazing 

derby nsw 7k would be a good result 

perth vs adelaide 8k is the pass mark for me 

wanna bet?

So the question I must ask is if crowd figures are inflated then why are you using said figures as an indication of a downward trend? 

Shouldn't we just end the thread here?

It seems to be a common thing across all codes to inflate attendance figures. I'm guessing it's to keep sponsors onside. It's not uncommon for clubs to justify inflated attendance numbers by including staff, media and other officials (eg: police, medics, etc) as part of the count. Then there are also un-ticketed people in the corporate boxes and other corporate areas. Technically all of these people are 'in attendance', so that validates the count. The figures seem to be rarely just the tickets scanned at the gate.

I dont see how inflated figures can be proven, or even speculated about, unless somebody has the remarkable ability to count thousands of individuals scattered across the stadium from a single seat, or various camera shots on a TV set

Lot's of people on here seem to be able to do just that from sitting at home watching, this forum is full of flat-earthers and conspiracy nuts

Very difficult to prove down to a precise number, but larger discrepancies can be uncovered fairly easily. A couple of years ago one of the papers (not sure which one) sent a bunch of people to an NRL game and had them count people coming in and going out. Wouldn't take a lot of people to undertake the task, just a few people at each gate with a counter, clicking when people enter and leave. The MC/WSW game last night only had 5K reported in attendance. Wouldn't take many people to count 5k people coming and going. It's not an exact science, however the numbers should be fairly close to what is announced by the club. If the official count is vastly different (20%-30%) from the independent count, then a conclusion could be made that some form of inflation is occurring.

No, because if they are inflated than it's just hilarious.

I remember watching something somewhere a few years back at uni, AFL has people trying to physically count people at their seats

And multis

??? The paper could have just taken a sample rather than count them all. LOL

Possible, also possible attendance figures are inflated regularly. It's one of those things, that it's too much of a pain to disprove accurately. 

Its not up to me to be watching the A league. My season starts in a few weeks. Though i watch a few games on tv.

As for clearing 5k. We consistently did that well before Melbourne became a mega city of almost 5 million.