Collingwood, Brisbane Broncos top rankings as Australia's most popular football clubs

COLLINGWOOD, Brisbane Broncos or Melbourne Victory. What is Australia's biggest sporting club? The answers may surprise you.

Brisbane Broncos

WHAT is Australia's most popular football club?

And how would one go about determining that?

The NRL's Brisbane Broncos have a Facebook army of 274,000 - 44,000 more than any club in Australia - a huge number that would carry weight in any argument.

But AFL powerhouse Collingwood has the biggest Twitter following (nearly 46,000) and also last year attracted the largest average crowd and highest cumulative television audience of any team in the country.

The Reds are everybody's favourite Super Rugby team in Queensland, while Melbourne Victory has aspirations that stretch far beyond the A-League and these shores.

Whatever way you spin it, competition for the hearts and minds of Australians is tough.

Our sport-loving nation has a population of just over 23 million, yet supports 47 professional football clubs across four codes.

By comparison the American state of California has a population of 38 million yet has just 16 teams in the United States' four major codes.

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Chief executive of Twenty3, a strategic business and marketing consultancy specialising in sport, John Tripodi says there is no definitive answer.

"There are so many different ways you can look at the question and define what is the most popular,'' Tripodi says.

"Like anything, you could define a ranking on TV audiences, membership, gate receipts, all those types of things.

"Then also to have a good understanding you have to know if the effort is there by the clubs. If a certain club has a lot of social media followers, be it on Facebook likes or Twitter followers versus a so-called bigger club, is that because that club is more popular or is it because they're doing a better job in investing in their social media department?''

RMIT university sports marketing expert Con Stavros agrees, but says the level of engagement a club has with its fans is a key consideration.

"Melbourne Storm is a really good example of this, I think you could ask any sport-loving Victorian what NRL team they follow and by default they're going to say the Melbourne Storm,'' Stavros says.

"Whether they go to the matches or go buy a membership is another thing, but they've got a very high supporter base that they could theoretically draw from.

"The challenge for all sport teams all around the world is how to you monetise that support. You can have that brand, but what does that brand actually mean?

"In some ways they're getting better at it. They're starting to say, 'OK, we can set up merchandise opportunities, we can use social media to drive hits to our sites which will attract sponsors' but it's obviously a real challenge for sporting teams to do that on a more broad basis.

"Even a team like Collingwood has got very broad support across the state and even interstate as well and it's not that hard to engage that core 30-50 thousand fans that bleed black and white, but getting those that are at 200, 300, 400 thousand on the list engaged is another question.''

Collingwood dominates the social media scene.

It is third on the Facebook followers ladder, first on Twitter and even has aspirations to launch its own 24-hour television network in the near future.

Chief executive Gary Pert played for the club in the days when home ground Victoria Park was the club's hub.

Now, he argues, that hub has shifted to the digital world.

"We don't have a bricks and mortar club anymore,'' Pert says.

"The Westpac Centre is our training facility and our administration, the MCG is in effect our home ground but we don't own it, it's used by other clubs, so what is the Collingwood footy club?

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"And the Collingwood footy club, like it was historically, is where the Collingwood community connects and communicates. It's online and it's on social media , through websites, blogs, through Twitter and Facebook.

"So the interesting twist is when you move away from the traditional model of the stadium being the hub of the club, we now have various hubs.''

And that lends weight to the argument that social media - effectively a nationwide poll - is the most accurate gauge of a club's popularity.

With a click of a button a fan can effectively vote for their club and in the process keep in touch with the goings on of their players and administrators.

Collingwood fan

Membership is another category in which Collingwood dominates.

The Magpies ticked past 76,000 members on Tuesday morning and wants to eclipse 80,000 for the first time this year.

Hawthorn has 61,000 members, Richmond has 56,000, Essendon nearly 53,000.

Gallery: AFL Twitter stars

Membership is the lifeblood of AFL clubs and a sphere that NRL clubs is desperate to penetrate.

NRL clubs have generally not had a strong membership culture.

But that has to change, according to Broncos chief Paul White.

Brisbane has 25,000 members, eclipsed only by South Sydney which has a tick under 26,000.

Super Rugby membership numbers are on a par with rugby league.

The Reds have 33,000, the NSW Waratahs 18,000.

"I certainly respect and have an active interest in the membership culture that is present in the AFL,'' White says.

"But by the same token we don't use it as an excuse, and our game shouldn't use it as an excuse, for under-performance in that area.

"The challenge for administrators in rugby league is for us to work out what are the key drivers to develop that membership culture.

"It's a really important one. I see it more as an untapped opportunity rather than a negative - and I say that not because I'm trying to take a positive spin out of something - I say that because it stands to reason that when you look at some of those other measures then there must be an untapped market out there that we've got to continue to work hard to bring on board.''

The Broncos rank first for Facebook fans, sixth for Twitter followers, had the second-highest cumulative television audience in the country last year and averaged the 10th highest crowd.

It is clearly the most popular NRL team and arguably one of the top three sporting clubs in the land.

White isn't one to pat himself on the back, nor is he content.

"We'll never, ever be arrogant about performance, where we sit in relevant terms,'' White says.

"We'll celebrate strong performance, but we'll always be challenging ourselves as to what's next. There's no end point to your performance and nor should there be, you should be constantly looking at what's next and what is driving that.

"There isn't an arrogance about what we do, it's actually the reverse. We use the saying around here that we're comfortable being uncomfortable.''

Brisbane Broncos

Tripodi said TV viewership is an important consideration in any popularity discussion, but Stavros said it is a hard metric to assess considering you can't tell exactly who is watching at any one time.

And assessing the merits of A-League and Super Rugby clubs in that area is hard considering all games in those codes are shown exclusively on Fox Sports - a medium which less than half of the population has access to.

As such, the cumulative audiences for all AFL and NRL clubs last season surpassed even the highest-rating A-League and Super Rugby teams.

Will that change when the A-League moves in to the free to air market (via SBS) next season?

MORE: Pies want their own TV channel

The Western Sydney Wanderers are perhaps the growing giant ready to take the Australian sporting landscape by storm.

In their first A-League season the team averaged 12,466 but if their late-season charge is anything to go by that figure will rise substantially next year.

Already the Wanderers are the competition's third-most popular television club.

Sydney FC was the most watched in 2012-13, but, for now, Melbourne Victory is the competition's benchmark across most other measurements.

Managing Director Richard Wilson wants 50,000 members in 10 years' time.

But unlike AFL - and largely NRL and Super Rugby teams as well - external factors can also enhance or decrease support.

If the Socceroos can continue to qualify for World Cups there is no telling how big the Victory brand can get.
Wilson is happy with what his club has achieved since its first game in 2005.

Melbourne Victory fans

It has nearly 90,000 Facebook followers, an average crowd of 20,742 - which ranks above seven AFL clubs and 10 NRL clubs - and this year trailed only Sydney FC in terms of television audiences.

"But we don't let that impact on what we can achieve either,'' Wilson says.

"This is only our eighth year and for a club that started really from nought in a code that was really dysfunctional, to effectively non-existent, to hit these sorts of numbers I think that shows there is a passion and there is an interest and love for the game that is there but is only, as the competition becomes more credible, stabilise.

"Yes, the Melbourne sporting landscape is cluttered, but our product actually allows us to have a point of difference that can actually attract AFL supporters or NRL supporters to come and watch our code.

MORE: Victory aims for 50,000 members

"That's where I see our growth. We're still at a pretty low base, we're making some inroads but I don't think we're anywhere near what we can be in 10 years if we keep on building.

"If the Socceroos keep on making World Cups that heightens the profile, free to air coming in to the equation helps as well.''

So which football club can lay claim to being the most popular in Australia?

Collingwood, surely, has justifiable claims on the mantle.

But the chasing pack, led by the Broncos, is coming fast and Pert knows it.

"We don't sit back and say how good is it that we've got 80,000 members,'' Pert says.

"We ask the question that if we've got over a million supporters and we're engaged with 80,000 of them, how do we engage and communicate on a regular basis with those that either can't attend games or aren't signed up members?

"And this is where your traditional and non-traditional media come in to play. This is how UK soccer clubs do it. They engage with supporters all around the world and we've started that process.''

AFL crowd