Bottom club Carlton sits behind only Richmond and Collingwood in home attendance figures

Carlton’s disastrous season hasn’t stopped fans from cheering their team but Gold Coast’s official crowd figure last weekend raised a few eyebrows. See where your club is ranked.

Carlton’s fans have helped the club to a remarkable set of mid-season attendance figures, with the Blues behind only Richmond and Collingwood on home crowds averages to Round 12.

But expansion sides GWS and Gold Coast continue to battle to secure strong home crowds, both averaging less than 12,000 fans per home game.

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The league said its figures were never inflated, after commentators were surprised by the official crowd of 9305 at the Gold Coast-North Melbourne game.

It is the league’s policy to include in its official attendances only attendees to the game rather than tickets sold.

AFL executive Travis Auld said the league was still on track for a new attendance record but will have to come home strong after last year’s bumper second half of the season set a new high mark.

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Richmond is again streeting its competition with its 100,000 members helping them average 65,630 fans at its six home games so far at the MCG.

Collingwood is in second place on the attendee ladder, averaging 58,889 fans after huge home games including reclaiming the Queen’s Birthday fixture from Melbourne.

Carlton has won only two games this year but the supporters have backed in the club with their feet.

As well as the Round 1 clash against Richmond (85,016), they drew a crowd of 69,289 against Collingwood and excellent Marvel Stadium crowds against Sydney and North Melbourne.

Charlie Curnow takes a mark against Brisbane last week as Carlton fans watch on. Picture: AAP

Gold Coast will need to wait until it can regularly start winning games until it can draw fans from South East Queensland to Metricon Stadium.

But while there seemed to be only a few thousand fans in the venue on Saturday night, Auld said every AFL figure was accurate.

“That is the number of attendees. We don’t report sales, we report attendances. If you get 9000 people in a 25,000 seat stadium it’s going to look a bit sparse,’’ he said.

“And some of those people are in corporate boxes and the chairman’s function and the lounge and deck, so there aren’t always 9000 people in their seats.

“One thing we are very careful of is we do report the actual attendance. It is a slippery slope when you are playing around with numbers.”

North Melbourne and Gold Coast played in front of empty stands at Metricon Stadium. Picture: AAP

The league is blessed that strong Victorian clubs Richmond, Collingwood, Hawthorn and Essendon are all finals contenders which helps boost attendances.

“We are on world record pace. It was a massive end to last year so that will be our challenge but our aim is to hit a similar mark to last years,” Auld said.

AVERAGE HOME CROWDS IN 2019

RANK	AVERAGE CROWD	CLUB
1	65,630	Richmond
2	58,889	Collingwood
3	53,647	Carlton
4	52,876	Essendon
5	52,391	West Coast
6	43,730	Adelaide
7	40,203	Fremantle
8	34,725	Geelong
9	38,464	Port Adelaide
10	33,070	Melbourne
11	31,136	Sydney
12	30,675	Hawthorn
13	26,870	Western Bulldogs
14	25,549	St Kilda
15	25,311	North Melbourne
16	23,256	Brisbane
17	11,701	Gold Coast
18	11,535	GWS

Originally published as Bottom club Carlton sits behind only Richmond and Collingwood in home attendance figures