Record interest in 2019 Finals Series underlines continued strength of SANFL

By SANFL Media

South Australia’s premier football competition, the SANFL Statewide Super League, has consolidated itself as the strongest State League football competition in the nation with outstanding crowd numbers and television ratings during the 2019 finals series.

The Grand Final crowd of 39,105 – who witnessed Glenelg defeat Port Adelaide by 28 points at Adelaide Oval to claim their first premiership in 33 years – marked the third consecutive year that the SANFL Grand Final has been attended by more than 39,000 people.

Across the finals series, attendances were at their highest since 2014, the year in which SANFL finals moved to Adelaide Oval, with the total attendance figure of 71,958, underlining the continued growth and relevance of State League football in South Australia.

“South Australian football is extremely healthy, there are more playing the game than at any point in our 142-year history and the public support for the SANFL Statewide Super League competition continues to be outstanding,” said SANFL Chief Executive Officer Jake Parkinson.

“It’s a testament to both the evenness and strength of the competition on the field and the work of all of our clubs behind the scenes in continuing to grow the game at all levels.

“Ensuring that South Australians of all ages continue to be active participants in football is a key priority for SANFL and one that we’re investing in heavily.”

Mr Parkinson said that since the introduction of the two AFL clubs’ State League teams into the SANFL competition in 2014, five different clubs had experienced premiership success, all 10 teams had advanced to at least a preliminary final and some of the longest premiership droughts in SANFL history had been broken, resulting in growing interest in the competition.

In addition to drawing large crowds, the SANFL Statewide Super League also attracted a strong TV audience on Channel 7, with an average viewership across the 2019 finals series of 66,253 and almost 40% market share. The Grand Final itself achieved 56% market share and a peak TV audience of 145,902.

Significantly, the finals numbers followed the overall season trend where crowd numbers were up by four per cent when compared with 2018, while the average Channel 7 TV audience during the home and away season grew by 19%.

“With more eyes on our game than ever before, SANFL is becoming an increasingly attractive commercial partner for a wide variety of organisations looking to put their brand up in lights,” Mr Parkinson said.

“We’d like to thank all of our sponsors for their ongoing support, in particular Statewide Super as the naming rights partner of the both our men’s and women’s state league competitions and our valued broadcast partner Channel 7.”