There have been articles written referring to the AFL’s “crowd slump” in Sydney, but I’m sticking with known facts to make some Sydney Swans attendance projections for the first season of the AFL’s “billion-dollar plus media deal” and the last season before Sydney has to compete with the new Sydney AFL franchise, GWS Giants.

This is also designed to illustrate just what the significance of the crowd decline so far might extrapolate to by the AFL season’s end. And just what hope there is within the last rounds for a rise in Swan’s AFL crowds over the run home before having to compete with GWS next year.

So far this season, overall AFL crowds are down on last season and even lower than 2008. The downward trend seems to be worse outside of Melbourne, particularly in Sydney and Brisbane.

This, of course, does not take into account the fact that AFL crowds are usually better for the opening few rounds and that Melbourne teams are doing very well in the 2011 competition. Melbourne teams like Collingwood, Essendon and Carlton are the biggest AFL crowd pullers, so if they do well, the AFL does well.

In fact, Collingwood have played all their games so far this season in Melbourne and all bar one of their games at the MCG to give the AFL its best possible crowd aggregates for 2011.

However, this continues the declining trend in AFL attendances since 2008, which was the AFL’s record year for regular season attendances so far.

Now let’s look at the Swans decline in Sydney in more detail.

So far this season the Swans are averaging 25,546 per game. Last season’s average attendance was 30,593, so this represents a 19.8 per cent drop in Swans’ attendances so far this year over last season.

The Swans’ best average attendances occurred back in 2006, when an average of 37,292 fans saw the Swannies play. This year’s average of 25,546 represents a 45 per cent drop so far in attendances on their record year.

The Brisbane Lions have a remarkably similar pattern of falling attendances to the Swans.

So far this season the Lions are averaging 25,784 per game, almost exactly the same as the Swans. Last season’s average attendance was 29,060, so this represents a 13.8 per cent drop in Lions’ attendances so far this year.

The Lions’ best average attendances occurred back in 2004, when an average of 36,687 fans saw the Lions play. This year’s average of 25,784 represents a 42.3 per cent drop in attendances on their record year.

In the past, some teams have experienced a late season ‘surge’, or at least increase, in attendances in the run home to the finals. So a forecast allowing for the best exhibited increase in crowds for each venue from here onwards in the AFL season would see somewhere around 80,000 and a worst case of about a 160,000 drop in Swans’ attendances if this downward trend continues and the Swans don’t make the finals.

A similar fate awaits the Lions if their downward trend continues.

So at this point in time an estimate of dropping about 100,000 in Swans attendances this season looks like a reasonable one.

Very interesting analysing the AFL attendance figures for Brisbane and Sydney in the year when the billion-dollar plus media deal was announced and when the Lions have a new team already to compete with in the GC Suns and a new team coming for Sydney in the GWS Giants next season.

It’ll be interesting to see how the AFL will reverse this trend.