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AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE HISTORY PAGE
AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE HISTORY
The AFL is the most attended professional sporting league in Australia: it is the
most popular sport competition in terms of attendances and TV ratings of the nation.
The previous three AFL Premiership Seasons have had a total regular season
attendance of over six million (currently the 10th most attended professional sports
league in the world) and the average attendance of over 36,000
(the second highest of any professional sports league in the world).
The 16 teams play against each other in 22 rounds between late March and early
September in a non-divisional format. These matches are followed by a series of finals
matches which culminate in the two best teams playing off for the Premiership
in the AFL Grand Final, the best attended domestic club championship event in the world.
The AFL began as a breakaway league from the Victorian Football Association
(VFA) in 1896 and evolved from the Victorian domestic competition known as
the Victorian Football League (VFL). Since 1982, it has grown into a national competition
and was rebranded as the Australian Football League in 1990 and today has teams based
in five of the six Australian states. Since becoming a national competition, the AFL
has gained considerable media and financial strength, as well as control over the game
at most levels. The expansion of the AFL in the 1980s effectively ended 70-year-long
competition for public interest with its former rival state leagues, the SANFL, the WAFL
and VFA (which became the VFL in 1996). In recent times, most of these leagues
and clubs have either sought or subsequently been granted licenses to compete
in the AFL and formed affiliations with the AFL to field its reserves sides and
developmental players.
