AFLW confident of more growth as new season looms

NEW AFLW boss Emma Moore says the competition can build the momentum needed to thrive and hit its own metrics for further season expansion.

The 2024 season starts during next week’s AFL pre-finals bye, beginning with Sydney hosting Collingwood at North Sydney Oval on Friday night.

The 18-team competition, which is now 11 games plus finals, is due to expand to 12 regular-season rounds by 2025, and potentially 14 during the five-year deal signed last September.

But the latter expansion is dependent on achievement of key audience metrics (average attendance of 6000 fans, average broadcast viewers of 100,000).

There were 234,525 fans across 90 regular-season AFLW games last season (average: 2606) while the regular-season average viewership was 54,969, according to the AFL’s annual report.

“There’s great momentum. The fixture was released earlier this year than ever before,” Moore, who replaced Nicole Livingstone in July, said at Tuesday’s captain’s day.

“We’re really clear about where we’re going, what the metrics are.

“We’ve got a very integrated marketing and branding campaign going on. We’ve worked incredibly closely with all of the talent and all of the clubs to ensure that they’re talking to all of their fans as well