2018 Crowd Watch

[Jamberoo]

Do you agree that storm crowds should be bigger considering all there success from year one, for a sporting capital it hasn't truly embraced the storm if they did they be selling out aami. All that success and still thousands of empty seats 'sporting capital'.

I thought crowds would jump up higher once AAMI opened. NRL simply has no traction here outside of NSW/QLD/UK/NZ expats. There is no RL club within 27km of AAMI. It will never get the crowds Swans get in Sydney.

I believe that the NRL schedule was announced before the AFL schedule this year, so the NRL are innocent for this bad scheduling tonight.

11th straight year this game has been a Thursday night Round 1 match. NRL knew. Still, thought Storm crown would be bigger.

 

[Jamberoo]

Regardless of the AFL game tonight (yes it was terrible scheduling, no doubt) still should of been a bigger turn out by Storm fans coming off a premiership. I dread to think what will happen when they go through a lull period.

Storm have had little impact here except amongst NSW/Qld/NZ/UK expats. But the core is loyal. Crowds have fluctuated less than other clubs. Form makes little difference. Anyone taking about a second Melbourne club is dreaming. There has been virtually no growth in 20 years. Sydneysiders might not know that there is not one RL club within 27KM of AAMI Park. There is no opportunity for juniors or families to get involved in the sport. It is not going to grow significantly. One club here is perfect.

 

[footy75]

Storm have had little impact here except amongst NSW/Qld/NZ/UK expats. But the core is loyal. Crowds have fluctuated less than other clubs. Form makes little difference. Anyone taking about a second Melbourne club is dreaming. There has been virtually no growth in 20 years. Sydneysiders might not know that there is not one RL club within 27KM of AAMI Park. There is no opportunity for juniors or families to get involved in the sport. It is not going to grow significantly. One club here is perfect.

22, 000 members or so is very good and so many others seem to be getting on board which is fantastic. Including high profile AFL Melbourne personalities.. Molly Meldrum, Sam Newman etc. Its great for the game.

GF rematch just would of liked too see more members show up. If it was stand alone would of been 20k. Feel like those at the NRL making the draw are throwing darts at times.

 

[Jamberoo]

22, 000 members or so is very good and so many others seem to be getting on board which is fantastic. Including high profile AFL Melbourne personalities.. Molly Meldrum, Sam Newman etc. Its great for the game.

GF rematch just would of liked too see more members show up. If it was stand alone would of been 20k. Feel like those at the NRL making the draw are throwing darts at times.

Melbourne the city has a memberships culture. About 600k-700k Melbournians are members of pro sports clubs. I have family membership at both Storm and Hawthorn. Almost everyone I know is a member of an AFL club. 22K for the Storm sounds good but Hawthorn who are a middle sized AFL club, have 70K. Richmond have 85k. The smaller Vic AFL club (North) will get 40k. Storm should be doing better but it is just not happening.

 

[Jamberoo]

.

 

[moffla]

Regardless of the AFL game tonight (yes it was terrible scheduling, no doubt) still should of been a bigger turn out by Storm fans coming off a premiership. I dread to think what will happen when they go through a lull period.

What do you consider a lull period? Because I recall us getting quite decent crowds while playing for no points in 2010

 

[moffla]

Also, most Victorian sports fans can love NRL all they like, but they will always be AFL a first.

Storm have 20k members, and I wouldn’t hesitate to suggest over half of those would be members of their respective AFL sides. I know 7 people alone who chose the AFL over storm tonight, where as on any other night they’d have gone storm.

So while I’d love to see more at AAMI Park, over the past 7-8 years our growth has been insane.

I have no doubt that if this game was played tomorrow night, we’d hit 20k easily

 

[King hit]

@moffla

How popular is the Rugby League scene in Melbourne and how much of a following do the Storm have? Everytime I've watched a Storm game from Melbourne there always seems to be a good bunch of supporters but are League followers hard to find in Melbourne?. Are more people involved in Rugby League now then when I visited Melbourne back in 2007? When I was in Melbourne I couldn't believe how insular people were towards anything that wasn't AFL and I've been heckled by some dumbf**k victorians over the years for being a RL follower and not liking AFL.

 

[footy75]

What do you consider a lull period? Because I recall us getting quite decent crowds while playing for no points in 2010

A lull period in laymen terms means when they are shit.
But Storm are such a well run professional club I don't expect it to happen anytime soon my friend.

 

[footy75]

@moffla

How popular is the Rugby League scene in Melbourne and how much of a following do the Storm have? Everytime I've watched a Storm game from Melbourne there always seems to be a good bunch of supporters but are League followers hard to find in Melbourne?. Are more people involved in Rugby League now then when I visited Melbourne back in 2007? When I was in Melbourne I couldn't believe how insular people were towards anything that wasn't AFL and I've been heckled by some dumbf**k victorians over the years for being a RL follower and not liking AFL.

Its way more popular now... Storm have been awesome for RL. Loads of people get behind them and as I stated before media identities.
As for heckling... I've never experienced that once as an RL fan in AFL territory. My AFL mates that were born in Melbourne and Adelaide all like RL now.. yes thanks to me.
The only thing between the codes I notice comes from some RL fans that seem to have a deep seeded hatred towards AFL.
And if the powers that be at the NRL were smarter the Grand Final rematch would of been huge... so frustrating that something like that can be so easily overlooked.

 

[Phil McGrawhan]

Oh I just noticed Titans are at Clive berghopher .. capacity 7k

+ Dogs at anz at 6pm on Friday

Roosters home game ..

This Rd is f**ked

Where did you pull that number from .
It's about 10 k
We had 10 k for a trial game .

 

[Stallion]

Doesn’t take much of a brain to work out when AFL season would start when you know their grand final is the same weekend every year. Even if there is any doubt you don’t put it in Melbourne on one of the few Thursday night games they have during the year.

Notably it's only a few Thursday night games scheduled by the "training run ". Unlike the NRL which has compromised so many fans and relevance by not having its competition more strictly alligned with our weekend. The NRL scheduling negatively impacts fan participation, anticipation & cultural things like tipping comps etc. Meanwhile the AFL has its unimpressive "training run" shown on free to air tv every Saturday and the NRL does not?

 

[Timmah]

You are also a derp. It’d take two minutes and a quick call to the McG to figure out the gf day

Go play in the traffic

I wasn't wrong

 

[T-Boon]

Oh dear, how many times were you dropped on your head as a kid?

not as many as you

Who ever wins this gets the nickname Sherrin.

 

[T-Boon]

I thought crowds would jump up higher once AAMI opened. NRL simply has no traction here outside of NSW/QLD/UK/NZ expats. There is no RL club within 27km of AAMI. It will never get the crowds Swans get in Sydney.

What is it about the game of rugby league that the sports fans have not warmed to in Melbourne? What are the things the locals say?

 

[Hank_Scorpio]

there were no Comm games in 2016

Correct, my mistake

 

[Hank_Scorpio]

This is patently untrue. It's been in October multiple times in the past two decades. AFL seem to flick back and forth with that, so it's perfectly reasonable to assume they might not have started the season tonight.

Three times in the past 15 years that I can see with those three falling into very early October. The point is, you have a reasonable expectation on when the AFL season would start so why take your chances when you have a very good idea of when they would be, give or take a week? Just stupid scheduling that could have been avoided.

 

[El Diablo]

Where did you pull that number from .
It's about 10 k
We had 10 k for a trial game .

his arse

he doesn't even follow Rugby League

 

[hutch]

I thought crowds would jump up higher once AAMI opened. NRL simply has no traction here outside of NSW/QLD/UK/NZ expats. There is no RL club within 27km of AAMI. It will never get the crowds Swans get in Sydney.
.

Crowds averaged 18k last year in Melbourne. The averaged 11k in the last year at the old Olympic Park. To say the sport has no traction or that the new stadium hasn’t increased crowds is not correct.

 

[Hank_Scorpio]

Crowds averaged 18k last year in Melbourne. The averaged 11k in the last year at the old Olympic Park. To say the sport has no traction or that the new stadium hasn’t increased crowds is not correct.

Agreed. How many Sydney teams does the 2017 Storm average beat again? In a city dominated by AFL, Storm still manages to beat out every single Sydney team, a RL city. If that question needs to be asked of Melbourne does it need to be asked if it has enough RL traction in Sydney?