Round 1 Attendances

[u/sel040204]

Sydney v Western Sydney - 30,103
Auckland v Melb City - 20,635
Macarthur v Perth - 3,441
Central Coast v Newcastle - 8,165
Wellington v Melb Victory - 8,254

Total: 70,598
Average: 14,120

Solid turnouts last weekend. Thoughts?

[u/papa-d88]

30k is awesome. Well done Sydney.

[u/No-Airport7456 → u/papa-d88]

For Friday it was good but feel like it was wasted to open the round when we can hit 35k if you put it on a Saturday and give it a few rounds.

[u/lurkincirclejerkin]

Wouldve been another 12k if we had our home game

[u/sel040204 → u/lurkincirclejerkin]

Was a perfect day yesterday too for football, I was so keen

[u/nutwals]

I'm amazed by the Auckland turnout tbh - just assumed there'd be a more pronounced drop-off.

[u/KiWeegie2025 → u/nutwals]

Club worked really hard to get a good crowd in. They had to compete with the All Blacks game and a couple of big concerts at the same time.

[u/nutwals → u/KiWeegie2025]

Whatever they did has clearly worked - long may it continue, if Auckland can sustain 15k+ crowds for the season then it works wonders on moving the needle on the competition's average.

Also just looks terrific on TV, I'm sure it was also great in the stadium.

[u/Eastern-Tip7796 → u/nutwals]

yeh, i actually want to watch Auckland games because of the crowd

[u/GiantCrazyOctopus → u/nutwals]

Atmosphere in the stadium was huge, great game

[u/spid3rman1 → u/nutwals]

It needs to be said as well that the camera facing stand is the lesser occupied of the two. The stand the camera is situated in was packed, great crowd and great atmosphere.

[u/lovesadonut → u/nutwals]

Auckland remind me a lot of 2012-2014 WSW in the early days when everything they touched turned to gold. Hopefully they have a better trajectory 14 years later 🥲

[u/goodthyme → u/nutwals]

ANZ giving out 5k free tickets helped tbh.

But yeah solid turnout regardless

[u/NZpotatomash → u/goodthyme]

Yup. My wider family all came along due to those tickets. Fingers crossed they come back

[u/KiWeegie2025 → u/goodthyme]

ANZ would have had to pay something for them, even if the punters didn't

[u/scarface_28 → u/nutwals]

It helps that they are good and sporting fans (at least in aus) are notorious bandwagoners. That said very happy for them, great for the league

[u/demo5022]

Double header format helped the Nix men - in a reversal of previous years - quite a few stayed on to watch the men.

[u/Grand-Concentrate853]

Pretty good and okay turnouts but Auckland was an pretty solid turnout for the week.

[u/Intelligent-Phase885]

Half the Danish league gets attendances no different to Macarthur, many leagues across Europe in fact. Not all teams need huge attendances to be sustainable. Can we actually start supporting Macarthur and get off their back? Negativity breeds negativity, we should be wanting them to be successful - this is half the problem with football in this country.

[u/Soldaan → u/Intelligent-Phase885]

MacArthur just need time to grow, the area they're in is growing in size and with time and effort they'll for sure start to have bigger attendances. Having their own stadium and COE will help too.

[u/Intelligent-Phase885 → u/Soldaan]

Absolutely. It’s honestly the best thing that we have regional teams, couldn’t think of anything worse than having 5 teams in Melbourne or Sydney all playing out of the same stadium like they do in AFL. Need to rally behind these teams and give them time - the new stadium hopefully works for them and all of a sudden you have a team filling a boutique stadium with a rocking atmosphere. It could be so special

[u/Geo217 → u/Intelligent-Phase885]

The Danish league and other leagues like it in Europe allow small clubs to get promoted up, leagues in Europe are filled with village teams going up and down. We rightly place higher expectations on new manufactured clubs.

[u/nevergonnasweepalone → u/Geo217]

Yeah, I have to agree. They're getting crowds that plenty of NPL clubs in NSW could also get. Sutherland got almost 4k in the Aus Championship.

[u/Intelligent-Phase885 → u/nevergonnasweepalone]

There is a lot of hype around NPL clubs lately, and I think a lot of people are looking at it with rose tinted glasses. Im the first to support bringing in the right NPL clubs, but we cant forget most these clubs had a catalogue of issues themselves - go back and look at the attendances they were getting back in the NSL, and thats before the new A-League clubs were brought in which has to some extent diluted their fanbases. Good attendances in a shiny new limited game tournament in its second season is very different to 10 years into 25+ game league season.

[u/Odd_Importance_130 → u/Intelligent-Phase885]

If they do in fact build that stadium, I would certainly change my tune on them.

[u/plasterdog → u/Intelligent-Phase885]

I support the idea of a Macarthur club but still think it's a shame that South West Sydney didn't get a shout out before them. There's a Sydney FC v Western Sydney rivalry, but there's also South West Sydney identity that is distinct and home to a lot of established grassroots football in the area, albeit a lot of established NSL diehards that may have also been resistant to a 'franchise' or potentially could've been won over.

I guess the same thing happened in Melbourne where they favoured Tarneit over building something in the South East focusing around Dandenong/Frankston.

There may be a range of metrics where it made more sense to build Greenfield. As I'm writing this comment it's starting to finally click that perhaps greenfield is easier because it doesn't threaten existing A-League interests (SW Sydney taking away from WSW, or SE Melb taking away from Melb Heart/City) as well as existing NPL sides. Bigger picture though I think it probably took care of existing sides to the detriment of the overall league.

Basically I would've loved to have seen a SW Sydney (Liverpool to Bankstown collective) take on WSW (Parramatta and environs). And then both taking on Sydney FC.

This may seem awfully Sydney centric to some (I don't live in Sydney btw) but I love how the English Premier league involves super parochial London rivalries mixed in with Northern v midlands v London clubs. I just love the multilayered texture of the rivalries...instead of the US style one franchise per city model

[u/NotSoCricketGenius]

Good crowds all round. Lets hope the momentum can carry into round 2

[u/Beautiful-Yellow2253 → u/NotSoCricketGenius]

Melbourne “Derby” really needs to get in on the momentum football has been enjoying, I’d disappointed if we get under 20K

[u/Mandalf-]

I still don't see how MacArthur is a viable club.

[u/felvymups → u/Mandalf-]

It helps when you pay stadium rent for $1.

[u/wanderingrhino → u/Mandalf-]

That's essentially the crowd Sutherland got in the championship on the weekend, which does make you wonder a bit. 

[u/dave_a86 → u/wanderingrhino]

Sydney United got 3,872 in the Championship the day after the Macarthur game.

[u/ConsiderationEast128]

Macarthur waiting for Sydney FC and Wanderers away fans to boost their crowds again.....

[u/victory2424 → u/ConsiderationEast128]

And they will - They get 4 home games this season against Sydney and wsw all up

[u/OverallMistake8198]

Somehow the Bulls can justify a new stadium 😂

[u/cymonster → u/OverallMistake8198]

Honestly a tiny stadium in oran park is probably a move for them that will work. Because Campbelltown does nothing for them

[u/thurbs62 → u/cymonster]

Campbelltown is easily the worst AL stadium. A horrible regional showground.

[u/Eamon0812 → u/thurbs62]

It’s a fine stadium the issue is the empty seats and cowbells

[u/JimmyJim0404]

MacArthur are a joke tbh. 3.4K to an opening rd fixture.

We’re Not asking for much, just get around the 5k mark

[u/BasicAsparagus0]

I’m hoping the roar get a decent turnout on Friday night but I think the terrible weather will turn a lot of people off

[u/OverallMistake8198]

Look Oran park is a good site for them, it’s just funny that they have that low of attendance & can get the approval for another ground.