AFL Round One crowd breaks record attendance

The AFL’s Round One of the 2025 Toyota AFL Premiership Season attracted 431,505 fans at matches across the weekend - breaking the record of the highest ever attended round.

It is only the fifth time in history more than 400,000 fans have attended a single round.

The average attendance across each of the host venues in Round One was 47,945.

Thursday night kicked off with the third consecutive crowd of over 80,000 for the opener between Carlton and Richmond, marking the eighth time in history this match has delivered a crowd of 80,000 plus in Round One.

The 80,735 fans who attended the Hawthorn vs Essendon match up was the highest ever home and away crowd between these two clubs. The previous best was 78,294 in 2017, while Sydney and Brisbane saw their Grand Final rematch reach 34,906, the largest crowd between these two clubs in 19 years.

AFL Chief Executive Andrew Dillon thanked fans who came out in such huge numbers across Round One and shared “Round One and all nine matches is always such an exciting time for all our clubs, and we are so thankful for all the fans turning out in record numbers.

“The clubs do so much work connecting with their fans and making the matches must attend events and on behalf of the AFL I want to thank all the fans, venues, broadcasters and clubs for giving us a Round One for the history books."

Top 10 attended rounds all-time

1. Rd 1 2025 - 431,505

2. Rd 1 2024 – 413,405

3. Rd 7 2024 - 408,433

4. Rd 8 2024 - 403,452

5. Rd 1 2017 - 400,401

6. Rd 3 2018 - 393,537

7. Rd 1 2023 – 392,248

8. Rd 5 2017 - 391,980

9. Rd 5 2018 - 381,880

10. Rd 1 2019 – 380,789

Image. Hawthorn fans celebrate a win over Essendon in round one, 2025. Credit: AFL Photos