Dole capital of Australia.

I went looking for last years equivalent thread on this topic interested to see what the comments were like then, alas searching for anything on this site is like searching for logic in nomates posts and I couldn’t find it. 

The first reaction seems to be a knee-jerk one ... a Sydney/Melbourne side isn’t top forcing our southern cousins insecurities to bubble to the top. This is not an article about Brisbane but football fellas, you need to focus! 

The second one seems to be dismiss the findings based on various notions that make no sense - publish OzTAM data and no one questions its validity, a player selection people will comment without knowing the facts behind the decision, Stajcic is sacked and people are happily experts and accepting of opinion as fact ... no one in this site recuses themselves from debate because they don’t have all the facts or know how the data was assembled. Until this thread lol 😂 

Apparently the base question was “which a league team do you support” (I called and asked) with one of 12 possible options including “none”. The question being asked over the last year to (several) tens of thousands of people nationally (but they wouldn’t say exactly how many). 

Unsurprisingly Fowlers arrival has reignited former roar supporters affection as well as probably picking up a few rouge scoucers which saw Roars support level return to championship winning levels. 

More surprisingly is that Roar find themselves in first place, not because they have particularly high support levels (Roars level today is about 100,000 lower than when victory and SFC occupied top spot), they’re top because Sydney FC and victory seem to be experiencing a fall off in support. The question is, why? Especially Sydney as they’re in the middle of a purple patch so why would their support be weakening?? 

Then there is the observation that 2 million people regularly watch the A-League. If that’s true, where the bloody hell are they? Because they are not showing up on OzTAM figures And this is not the only research to indicate such a high-level. I’d want to know who are they, where are they, how do they watch and when they say “regularly” what do they mean - once a week, month, year??? 

It states in a 1.2 million people are watching the A-league “regularly” and a further 750,000 are watching the W league. Why aren’t people watching both? And why is W league figure so high in comparison to the HAL numbers? 

There’s plenty to discuss but yeah, Brisbane Roar are top… So let’s stop there!

As a general rule, these surveys use proper statistical methodologies, with a 5% margin of error.
So there's little doubt in my mind that they represent a valid indicator.
Most importantly, if the same thing is done year on year, then the comparisons over time show valid trends one way or the other.

 Not if you’re doing the same thing incorrectly year on year.

But they are doing it correctly lol 

Meh
Waz, when have most general public taken any polls seriously, your fact finding mission here supports this, couldn't find anything go figure.
Insecurities please, flip it your State has the biggest chip on southerners followed by mexicans regards Sydney.
How can anyone take this seriously but with a grain of salt, its like trusting pollies or the used car salesmen.
For sure there would be a general pattern from so many polled.
Wonder what the breakdown is State by State polled is ? maybe that may explain people who have contributed - more from Qld who knows, for years we just hang up on poll home calls.
SFC/MV support base hasn't dumped - SFC's main prob now is no home ground as wanderers suffered prior but memberships are not bad And we had 16k at Kogarah last week and prior Leichardt was over 10k so thats not going backwards on recent years.
I believe the rougue scoucer interest and not surprising, even I'm keeping a closer tab on GOD and maybe that might be a % contributing factor more than we think ?

Your last 2 paragraphs are interesting
2M watching AL, yes I wonder, maybe Fox has more armchair viewers than we know ? what is the breakdown and from what medium ?, NRL sure does have more watching from home.
750k watching WL, I'm sure you know how popular WFootball is growing, my 14yr old plays as well.
I can't believe how fast its growing here in Sydney the last 10yrs.
Obviously the females are jumping on the band wagon far more than AL, I struggle watching it TBH but the top level and like last week game before the Big Blue watched the 2nd half - glad its growing despite my thoughts.

That's how the Sydney Swans wind up getting ranked as the #1 followed sports club in Australia.
Random person in Sydney who couldn't name a single Swans player answers the phone.
Q- "What AFL team do you support?"
A- "Uh... Sydney have a team, don't they? Sydney then."

Multiply this a few hundred times, and voila - they're the most followed team in Australia.

Very hard to place any value in this. 
How do they measure these 'supporters'? It's so generic it has no value. The Roar are a small club. There's no way on earth they have more supporters than half the teams in the league. Unless you include twitter mentions or something stupid like that.
I'm sure there would be a bunch of Liverpool fans who tweeted something like "I can't believe Robbie Fowler signed on to coach the Roar". This is highly plausible. But supporters they are not necessarily.  

Yes the last election surveys showed just how pointless surveys can be...and surveys are like statistics ....you can get whatever result you want from them depending upon how you frame your question...who you exclude etc

I disagree,these surveys provide a good indicator.
The big three clubs, in terms of total support, are Roar, SFC and Victory.  I think that's spot on the money.
Changing tack a bit, I saw one of these surveys for the AFL a few months back, and the Suns were rock bottom with less than 50k in supporters.  You'd have to say that looks pretty accurate.  GWS was second bottom, once again, that's pretty accurate, well below the support levels of every A-League club.

Got to say I am surprised by Roar being top. I am not surprised by women comp being far less than men's. It is being pushed hard by FFA etc but that does not mean it is being followed hard . The Matildas are reasonably successful and Aussies love a winner . Just watch their support evaporate if they start losing a few .I think this team may be their "golden generation". Take Sam Kerr out and we come back to the field somewhat.
Having said that...I watch the Matildas too but would not travel to a Womens A-league game  ...not biased ...just no interest.

It's more a survey of brand awareness, it's NOT a survey of actual consumption, but it does give us an indication that there is plenty of headroom for increasing consumption.

If they did a survey on the new baseball league, my guess is that brand awareness of that league would be lower than what we've just achieved in the current survey,  and the brand awareness for the NRL and AFL would be higher.

That's the way to look at it.

Yeah I mean, if I was asked which NBL team I support, I would say the 36ers without flinching.

Now, I haven't watched a game since about 1996(?) when it was on Chanel 10.
I assume they are in the latest incarnation of the NBL.
I have never attended a game despite having said at least 35 times in my life "I'd like to go to a basketball game one day".

Agreed, I'm not looking into these figures with a serious indication of support at all. 

Victory still top the most supported in the country, and that's coming from a Brisbane fan myself. 

Of course it is. 

Marketing people often talk about the first two stages of the sales process being “awareness” and ”preference” ... people wont buy your product if they’re not aware of it, nor if they don’t have a preference for it .... 

I’d suggest this survey measures the first (awareness)  and the second (preference). As anyone involved in sales knows it is a process and needs working at and just having people know about you and prefer you doesn’t lead to a sale 

The abdolute numbers here don’t really matter, other than the bigger the better (although the fact SFC and Victory have declined is a worry - Roar have done a Bradbury to get in first place - we’ll, from third anyway) but knowing these numbers is indicative of potential - it’s what the clubs do from here each year that matters. 

Not too surprised, they might not have the most regular attendees but the Roar does have a lot of casual fans.  If anyone has been to a finals or Roar GF at Suncorp they would see the amount of people who were wearing shirts/merchandise from the 2005-2008 seasons. A lot more than I would see at Victory games in the past. I try to attend every grand final as a little treat and seeing the amount of older Brisbane/QLD Roar merch at Finals in suncorp stood out

I still think people are missing the point - on this annual survey Roar are normally third and their support level bounces around the 500k mark +/- 30k or so

their support level is not really that high, Fowler has clearly tipped it up after two miserable years, but normally this number would have them only in third place. 

The teak story is Victory and SFC’s number has fallen below Roar, not that Roar have caught up. Why?