AFLW fights for fans' attention after a long men's season

One of the biggest challenges the AFLW is facing is end-of-year "footy fatigue", according to diehard fans and those within the industry.

This year in its 10th season, crowds have sunk to an average of around 2,500 per game, down from 2,660 during the home-and-away season last year.

One dedicated Brisbane AFL and AFLW fan, Aurora Hodges, has only missed two AFLW games played in Queensland across the competition's 10 seasons.

Yet even she says the current timing of the season "does get a bit much".

"It's being played at a ridiculous time of the year … once AFL is done, even the biggest AFLW fans have footy fatigue," Ms Hodges told ABC Sport.

This year, the AFLW season extended to 12 rounds over 12 weeks, including a four-week overlay with the men's finals.

The AFL confirmed the 2026 season would run the same time again next year.

When asked if AFLW got enough attention during the overlapping month, Port Adelaide senior coach Lauren Arnell said it felt as though interest had drifted in general this year compared to prior seasons.

"Whether that's got to do with the timing of the comp or media interest or otherwise, I think it's on all of us — media and people involved in AFLW, coaches and players and clubs — to continue driving the narrative of AFLW," Arnell told ABC Radio ahead of her side's clash with Hawthorn on Friday night.

"I think it was done really, really well [in the] early days, and I have noticed a bit of a drift in that this year," she said.

"So, yeah, the timing is the timing. That's nothing we can control."

Time of year competing with cricket, NFL

One of the AFL's key growth strategies for the AFLW has been to target existing men's AFL fans in a bid to increase interest.

Dylan Humphries runs Cench, a popular AFL Instagram account with over 267,000 followers, not affiliated with the league.

He said after a long year of AFL — with interest peaking with finals in September and trade in October — most men's fans were looking for a break from footy.

Making things even harder for the AFLW, sports fans were often turning their attention to other codes around October, he said.

"This time of year it's pretty busy, even though AFL [men's] and NRL/W has just finished, it's still pretty busy sport-wise … NFL [has] just kicked back off," he said.

"October, November is right before cricket starts and then we [sport fans] start spending every weekend watching cricket … I know a lot of people have started local cricket, [and] that break between local footy and local cricket is not long."

Mr Humphries said from a content creator perspective, in an ideal world he would run a dedicated AFLW Cench account, but it was hard to captivate fans who were turning off footy towards the end of the year.

"When it's round one and everyone's going to Richmond versus Carlton, everyone's so excited," he said.

"But then by the time you get into round 10 … there's a lot of fatigue there.

"I just remember round one, I watched a lot of it … I reckon I watched the first couple of rounds, and then really just dropped off, obviously, because [AFL] finals started [then trade period]."

NRL run both comps at the same time

In contrast to the AFL, the NRL men's and women's seasons run concurrently, with the grand finals played on the same day.

The AFLW season has been moved over three windows.

It was played from February to March between 2017 and 2020, from January to April in early 2022, before season 7 moved to an August start in 2022.

Ms Hodges suggested the women's season should either start before or during round one of the AFL and finish before the men's finals.

Lavender Baj, a sports producer and content creator who worked across both NRL and NRLW this year, said while the NRLW fixture was far from perfect, she believed it worked because it strategically capitalised on the men's game, where it made sense.

"There's no doubt that the NRLW has its own fanbase, but by playing women's Origin fixtures in Brisbane on the eve of men's Magic Round, and having a double-header grand final, the barrier to entry to support the women is much lower," Ms Baj said.

"From a fan perspective, the concurrent fixture really works in the women's favour during finals.

"If, like me, your men's team [the Newcastle Knights] wins the wooden spoon, a lot of those rusted-on male fans will rally around the girls — and if you're a Broncos fan, for example, you can live in a blissful world of winning everything."

This year, Brisbane won both the men's and women's premierships and had dual celebrations.

In comparison to the Broncos' joint trophy lift at home, Brisbane's AFLW side had to miss the men's team playing in the grand final in Melbourne, as they had a game the following day in Queensland.

While Ms Hodges flew to Melbourne for the decider and was then on a 6am flight the next day to watch the women play, most fans could not feasibly attend both, with the AFLW side missing out on a chance to capitalise on the fanfare of the men's success.

"I was exhausted," Hodges said.

"[Plus] the Lions AFLW team didn't get to support the AFL team in the grand final, which takes away from the 'one club' mentality."

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