AFLW 2024: Some games will be excluded from crowd benchmark for season expansion

The AFL wants average crowds of 6000 at AFLW matches to expand the season, but an email reveals the league has agreed to leave some matches out of this year’s tally.

Caitlin Greiser of the Tigers celebrates a goal.

A raft of midweek and early-timeslot AFL Women’s matches will be excluded from attendance and broadcast metrics that will define further season growth.

In an email sent to players on Monday morning – seen by this masthead – “inopportune timeslot” games, including 5pm weekday fixtures and morning weekend clashes, have been confirmed as excluded from league metrics.

As part of the most recent collective bargaining agreement that was struck last year, the 2025 AFLW season will increase from 11 to 12 home and away matches, with further growth in matches if specific metrics of an average of 6000 attendance at games and 100,000 broadcast viewers is met.

The league has not exceeded an average crowd of 6000 since its third season in 2019, with attendance at games down by more than 60 per cent in the last five years.

Sunday’s clash between competition powerhouses Brisbane and Adelaide at the Lions’ Springfield base is the only game this season to have drawn more than 6000 fans.

The email details that in negotiations with the AFL, the AFL Players’ Association has sought to have particular matches this season excluded, including the recent clash between North Melbourne and Port Adelaide at Whitten Oval that drew just 943 spectators in gruelling weather conditions.

Just over 1000 fans saw the Eagles upset Collingwood in a Tuesday night AFLW fixture. Picture: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

“We understand this season has scheduled games at inopportune timeslots, such as early Friday evening as well as midweek games, which makes it difficult for fans to attend and/or view and may have negatively impacted the agreed metrics,” the email from AFLPA women’s football boss Julia Chiera reads. “As such, the AFLPA has been advocating to the AFL to exclude these matches from this season’s metrics total. We are pleased to report that we have secured exclusions for 15 games on these bases.”

Tuesday and Wednesday night games are also understood to be excluded.

When home-and-away crowds were at their peak in 2017 – the AFLW’s inaugural season – 32,502 fans attended the four games held at Whitten Oval.

Since the start of the 2023 season, Adelaide’s Norwood Oval and Sydney’s Henson Park have been the best-performing venues to hold more than five home and away games, with average crowds exceeding 4000 (excluding Sunday’s game hosted by GWS at Henson Park against West Coast, which drew only 938 people).

Crowds have been strong for some clubs. Picture: Russell Freeman/AFL Photos via Getty Images.

This masthead reported last week that early discussions had indicated that July had been floated as a potential start date for next season, with the expansion pushing the women’s competition further back into the men’s season.

This season has seen a compressed period of games in the men’s finals series with teams forced to play as many as four games within 14 days in order to complete the season within the usual time frame of the men’s pre-finals bye until the end of November.

Monday’s email to players confirmed that report and said that “there are no formal positions” regarding next season’s start date.

“With the competition guaranteed to grow to at least 12 home and away games in 2025, the season’s start date will need to be adjusted forward or backward into the calendar year to accommodate this,” Chiera wrote, also seeking further player feedback.

“We have only very recently begun such discussions, and the AFL has confirmed that there are no formal positions on season timing at this point.

“We will be discussing the fixture and season start time with the AFL in the coming weeks.”