Last night:  4,010

That’s not bad plenty of mariner fans. I think Aami park is probably to big for us would be happy for a 10k stadium somewhere 

You may have already heard this news, just read a tweet from the Age about AFL capacity in Melbourne now lifted to 75%.  You'd think this would apply to the A-League as well.

The AFL and health officials have this morning reached an agreement. Victorian stadiums will now be able to increase capacities to 75% of maximum for round 2 onwards. That means 75k at the MCG for Carlton v Collingwood.

5,338 at the a league w league got 1.4K which was just below the aflw

WU are giving away free tickets to their match against MC, let's see if there is a bounce in their crowd numbers

Anyone interested pm me and I will give you the details of how to get them

That match is a lost cause. 5:30 on a Thursday night is really hard to get to 

Adelaide vs Sydney 8,451 not bad for a Sunday night 

W league Brisbane vs Newcastle 1,895

Wellington vs Mac  2,516

Agree. Very strange decision.

Team XI's site next to Dandenong is still available. CFG just needs to pony up the cash.

Afl attendances have even gone down this year 

Melbourne City v Western United got a higher attendance than Manly v Penrith in the NRL and the Mariners were only 1000 less.

WU vs MC:  6,104
CCM vs AU:  5,053

As it happens, current season average is sitting around 5,550.

Gees the average a couple of years ago was over 10,000 and COVID hit down to around 5k, hopefully they all come back but very doubtful.

Macarthur v Glory:  3,724

There was a poster who used to bang on about the A League being in a "death spiral". Have you to say, seeing the attendances this season, that he/she may have been right. It was really does look like the competition has based a point of modern return.
Covid doesn't explain this. They other codes area doing fine. These figures are about supporters disengaging en masse from the clubs. And I am very skeptical about ever bringing them back

I think COVID has a little bit to do with it.
For sure, the league was already spiralling downwards for some 5 years or so, but COVID has definitely delivered a bit of a king hit, and that's because our position is so precarious to begin with.
Other codes bouncing back, not fully, but they have the generations of support to fall back on - we don't have that, so that adds to the vulnerability.

5,347 last night for the big blue.
That's more than I thought it was.
Now, fair enough, Victory are playing terribly, perhaps the worst we have seen of any club since the NZ Knights.
Still, if there was one club you thought was always going to attract 15k to a game come what may, it was the Victory, especially playing against their biggest rivals.
How about this, that non-entity, the GWS midgets got a home attendance of 9,500 playing against another non-entity of a team.
A few years ago, you would have thought that something like that was never, ever going to happen (that one could be almost double the other).

A few years ago this would have been unthinkable, agreed.

I have a background in PR and marketing, with direct experience in major brand launch campaigns.  I am at a complete loss as to any strategy out of this situation, which does indeed seem to have become a self perpetuating downward spiral.  Let's be blunt:  another two years of the this trend and the A League won't exist.  It's questionable whether it can continue to exist, in commercial terms, at this level.

The idea of the Giants overtaking the Wanderers is a massive alarm bell.  Massive.

The A League now seems to lack relevance and credibility with what used to be its core support.  How do you change that?  Well, in any other commercial sphere, a company would consider rebranding, accompanied by a massive marketing spend.  My professional view is that is what the clubs need to do.  Rebrand and relaunch.  And spend.  Will they do it?  Can't see it.

Honestly, FFA - Gallop and Lowy - have had a lot to do with this situation, but the clubs have sat on their hands for two crucial seasons when they needed to spend.  It's been a shameful failure of governance all round.

The games are really entertaining it’s a shame nobody cares to watch it 

that's the dilemma are the funds there to do this its a catch 22

The MV brand has just taken a massive pounding in general, honestly can’t remember the last time I saw someone wearing an MV shirt in a shopping centre, you couldn’t drive anywhere without seeing an MV bumper sticker somewhere, now you don’t see them. It’s not just an on field decline it’s a massive image decline as well. City and WU don’t really have any mainstream cut through to make up for it.

AFL is flying here and the Melbourne Storm have now positioned themselves as the clear most popular alternative to aussie rules with another 14,000+ strong home crowd a few nights ago.

yup soccer participation to be the savior of the game not in Australia

The A League has been signficantly undercapitalised from the outset.  Frank Lowy had a vision for the A League that far exceeded the investment capital and revenue streams.  In a very real sense, the A League has been slowly collapsing under the weight of those unrealistic expectations ever since.  The A League has been a disappointment, I think, in many ways for even the most rusted on supporters.  We expected more talented young Australians and higher profile visa players.  We expected higher quality football than the utter dross served up for the most part pre Ange and post Ange Brisbane Roar, for which a lineup of safety first coaches were to blame (there was a reason noone admired Arnold's SFC beyond their core supporters).  The three seasons leading up to this one were particularly dire, which unfortunately coincided with the endless infighting between S Lowy's FFA and the clubs - which STILL isn't over.  Incompetence of a breathtaking scale.

Now the football is there, but the attendances and ratings tell us that the fans have turned away in huge numbers (don't even try to tell me that they are all hiding on Kayo). Faith in the competition has been lost, and I can't see it coming back.  The list of failures, disappointment and managerial incompetence is too long.  My professional view is that only a rebrand and reboot offers hope of anything other than a marginal competition trickling on at the edge of insolvency.   Which is what we have now.

no money no survival 

But we had the rebrand and reboot 16 years ago, that gave us the A-League, and in some ways, it worked for a short period.
Then we had the governance struggle which has resulted in a new admin structure for the league.
Now another rebrand and reboot?
How many of these do we get in one lifetime.
We are a sport, a sport which has been in Australia for over 120 years.
This constant re-starting means it never gets any momentum at the elite levels.
These re-starts, which have occurred over a long period explain a lot about why we are miles behind the major football codes in this country (at the professional level).

These are all valid points.  My view is that the situation is so desperate that a circuit breaker is the only option. 

Call it the Australian Premier League, pitch it as doing what the EPL did in the UK to streamline and rachet up the competition (so position it as a logical evolutionary upgrade rather than crisis management), and launch with a serious advertising and PR campaign.  

I believe this could work.  But will the clubs spend the money?  Very hard to see.

Or, start a second division and bring in promotion and relegation. Get rid of the impediment of the salary cap. Melbourne Victory were always kidding themselves if they thought they were a big club if financially they are the same size as Central Coast. At least other clubs had the fore thought to develop players and bring in the best coaches.

I don't care if teams have crowds of 5k or 3k, I don't care if only die hards are watching, just bring in a football system and let clubs find their level. There will be big clubs and small clubs, development clubs and community clubs. Some clubs will succeed in Asia other will never get there.

If people don't like it they can watch AFL or League.

Don't waste more money on marketing, put it into scouting, coaching, development, infrastructure, sustainability...anything but stop wasting money until you have the product.

The a-league is best off having a cult following and marketing to it before going mainstream and trying to compete with the AFL. The Big Blue was trending second on twitter behind the AFL game and ahead of the NRL game, so what you say, well it means it has a strong avid/cult following, why do people beat themselves up and worry that the sky is falling? Football will always exist here, it's just about what is the best model.

Is anyone talking about the NBL collapsing? Or AFLW? Even the NRL has had some pretty small crowds. 

You may be right.  My experience with branding suggests otherwise, but that's only my personal view.

I have no idea what BBL is doing, but what the other comps you reference have that the A League doesn't have is television ratings that translate directly into income.

You know that old chestnut, Eldar - you have to spend money to make money.  Well, it's as true in sport as any other business.  No business in history expanded without funding that expansion.  But my concern now with the A League isn't expansion - it's survival.  I don't think there's any argument about the fact that we are below where we thought rock bottom could even be, whatever the reasons, and if the spiral continues, the A League will not exist as a professional competition in two years time.  

Right now I can't see why a broadcaster or streamer would pay anything to show the A League on its present stats.  I'm as rusted on as an A League supporter can be and I've loved the football this season, but the figures on attendance and ratings are simply awful.

the  Aleague  was  getting  Crowds  of   30,000+  and  40,000+  just  2  seasons  ago,  thats  right  just  TWO  seasons   ago.  WHAT  on  earth  have  theSuits  in  charge  been  doing  the  last  2  years ?!  Thats  what  I  want  to  know !!