AFL says Thursday night footy crowd numbers are growing, Sunday night the next marquee slot to target

Despite an empty Marvel Stadium last week, the AFL says crowds are warming to Thursday night games – and another marquee timeslot is being eyed off. See what the league’s fixture boss thinks and have your say.

The chief architect of the AFL fixture says the future of Thursday night matches is assured, with the timeslot quickly approaching “equal” status to Friday night games.

Attendance figures since the 2022 home and away season reveal healthy growth for Thursday night crowds despite St Kilda coach Ross Lyon’s claim last week that the slot was proving “really difficult” for fans.

AFL strategy and scheduling boss Josh Bowler said the league also had a strong appetite for expanding more regularly into Sunday nights if crowds for those games followed suit.

Bowler poured cold water over the suggestion that two rare night games had been scheduled in Launceston in the first half of the season to prove a point about the Tasmania Devils needing a stadium with a roof.

Finals contenders Hawthorn and Adelaide fought out a tense clash in fierce wintry weather in Launceston last Friday night. There are no further night games scheduled in Tasmania this year. Picture: Steve Bell / Getty Images

He said the decision to stage the round 14 Hawthorn-Adelaide clash last Friday night had been made to help boost the Hawks’ prime time exposure after they played predominantly Saturday and Sunday afternoon games in 2024.

“The scheduling of Hawthorn-Adelaide was a bit of a match-quality one, but also, Hawthorn for a long time hadn’t played much night footy, so we had been looking at slots to get them onto nights,” Bowler said.

“Particularly during the bye rounds, with fewer games, you have to put some games you might not ordinarily put on a Friday night into that slot.

“The other night game down in Launceston was earlier in the year when there was less consideration about weather at that point of the season.”

With clubs limited to three five-day breaks over the home and away season, Bowler said the key challenge of maintaining weekly Thursday night fixtures was identifying rounds where new clubs could be exposed to the slot.

Rotating clubs away from Saturday games – which are exclusively broadcast on Foxtel and Kayo – was another important consideration when choosing the Thursday night match-ups.

Essendon hosted two Thursday night games at Marvel Stadium in the first half of the season, while Lyon’s Saints had their first run in the slot last week and yielded a crowd of just 20,508.

That figure, along with games in Darwin and at the Gabba, dragged down an average Thursday night attendance of 44,091 – an increase of more than five per cent on the previous year.

“We’re really happy with how they’re going so far. In a way, Thursday nights have sort of evolved like Friday night footy evolved,” Bowler said.

“I guess once upon a time, people would’ve been quite conservative about attendance on a Friday night, but as the proposition for fans becomes more attractive, the crowds come with that as well – I think we’ve definitely seen that with the demand for Thursday night footy.

St Kilda coach Ross Lyon doesn’t rate Thursday night games, but the AFL considers the timeslot to be nearing level pegging with Friday nights. Picture: Michael Klein

“I’d say Thursdays and Fridays are almost equal – given the challenges that come with short breaks between games, you don’t always have the flexibility to determine which game is played on which of those nights.

“Trying to get the most compelling games on the Thursday and Friday nights is our focus … they would probably be equal, and I think the viewership and attendance of those games holds that up as well.”

Only five games had been held on Sunday night (local time) between 2022-24, but that figure was matched in the first 14 rounds of this season as Bowler said it loomed as a potential next frontier for the league.

“We’ve expanded Sunday nights on the basis of either events like Gather Round or public holidays in local markets – that’s actually been really successful so far,” he said.

“That’s something we’ll consider in coming years if it gets momentum … but you also have to be careful with this stuff, because you don’t want to impact crowds significantly off the back of it.”

Originally published as AFL says Thursday night footy crowd numbers are growing, Sunday night the next marquee slot to target