Last time, I introduced the concept of Cap. Cap is the ratio of the number of people in the area of a game compared to the number of people who actually turn up over the season. In this case, the lower the Cap (i.e. the more people who attend compared to the size of the local population), the more popular the sport, accounting for the local population and number of games. Cap is mostly for comparative analysis in fairly like-for-like situations but can also be used for very loose estimating, as we will see.

Average attendances can be a bit deceiving: AFL teams play 11 home games, NRL 12, A-League 13 or 14 and Super Rugby only 7 or 8. If, for argument’s sake, the Roar and the Reds have average attendances of 12,000 in a given year, a lot more people actually turned out for Roar games because they played nearly twice as many. If ticket prices are the same, that would also mean Roar fans spent a lot more money. Cap accounts for this by using the total gate receipts for a given year.

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