Richmond celebrates on AFL grand final day in 2019. (Inset): Post-match scenes at the 2021 Super Bowl.
Every year, the Super Bowl in the United States generates hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenue, and the viewership numbers need to be seen to be believed.
But despite those gaudy numbers, we’re lucky enough to have an even better sporting event right on our doorstep, and these are five reasons the AFL Grand Final is better than the Super Bowl.
1. The sport is better
This, of course, is comfortably the most significant reason the AFL Grand Final trumps the Super Bowl. Sure, the NFL makes for entertaining viewing, and an argument could be made that this is a subjective metric.
But as anyone who follows the AFL knows, it’s the greatest sport in the world and combines skill, fitness and strength in a way that no other sport does. At their core, both events are ultimately about the sport itself, and it’s in this way that the AFL Grand Final separates itself from the Super Bowl as the better spectacle.
2. The atmosphere
This one is not purely about the numbers, though the AFL Grand Final does generally top the Super Bowl for attendance – the Super Bowl crowd has only exceeded 90,000 on seven occasions, while the AFL Grand Final reached that in all but three years between 1955 and 2019, and peaked at 121,696 in 1970.
Even more important to the atmosphere, however, is the fact that the AFL Grand Final regularly has many fans supporting each team at the game. It’s a unique quirk of the league that so many teams come from the same city, and even when interstate sides are playing, they regularly have good support on the last day in September.
This is diametrically opposed to the Super Bowl, in which few cities have multiple teams and there is rarely an even spread of support in the crowd.
3. It caters to the needs of fans more than sponsors
There’s no doubting the fact that the Super Bowl pre-game and the halftime show are great entertainment, and they are regularly able to attract some of the biggest stars in the world to perform.
But in order to do so, the main break is almost doubled from what it is during the regular season. A large portion of the day is also based around getting in as much advertising as possible – somewhat understandable, given those spaces can generate around $5 million in revenue for a 30-second ad.
It would be naive to think the AFL doesn’t also search for ways to make as much money as possible from its biggest day, but much more so than the Super Bowl, this day caters to the wishes of the fans, who make the game what it is, while in the NFL, the game almost feels as though it comes second.
4. It has more history
It’s not often that Australian pastimes can lay claim to having a more extensive history than those in other countries, but in this case we can.
Though it was known as the VFL back then, the top tier of Australian Rules football has been around since way back in 1897, meaning we’ve had a whopping 124 incarnations of the Grand Final over the course of three different centuries.
The first ever Super Bowl, in contrast, was held comparatively recently, in 1967. This gives us an extra 70 years of history on our American counterparts, and is yet another tick in the favour of the AFL Grand Final.
5. It’s held at the same place every year
Of course, last year was a notable exception, when the Gabba hosted a decider which both Richmond’s and Geelong’s odds to win the 2021 Grand Final suggest might well be repeated this season, but virtually every normal season, the biggest game of the year takes place at the MCG.
Fans out west or up north might not agree, but the fact that it is almost always held at the greatest stadium in the country – and one of the best in the world – each and every year only adds to its mystique
It’s the dream of millions of children around the country to run out on to the hallowed MCG turf on Grand Final day, with 100,000 screaming fans in attendance. The Super Bowl has no such tradition. Instead, it’s played at a different ground every year, removing the prospect of such a dream and reducing an element of its allure.
Of course, at the end of the day, it all comes down to personal preference, and there’s no doubt that any American reading the above reasons would scoff at them. But despite the fact that many around the world may have no idea of its existence, the AFL Grand Final is one of the best sporting events on the planet, and the above five factors are just some of the reasons for that.
