IT WAS the year of fairytale football in Australia. Premierships in both the AFL and NRL went to sides that had never climbed to the very top, or last did so when most of us weren’t yet born.

While some jubilant fans are probably still recovering from the side effects of truly heroic celebrations, the story was not quite so rosy in the Automotive Football League. Only one of of the Premiership teams had a car company sponsor, and that was the Cronulla Sharks via Holden.

That’s right. AFL premiers the Western Bulldogs had no car company support.

This despite seven of the top 10 AFL teams at the end of the home-and-away series having car company sponsors on their books, and the prescient writings of Jordan Pakes, Roy Morgan Research’s group account director automotive.

Back in 2014 Mr Pakes published detailed research on the number of fans following each AFL team and their probability of purchasing a new car.

He said: “Although fans of Greater Western Sydney and Western Bulldogs are respectively 21 per cent and 16 per cent more likely than the average Australian to be new car intenders, neither team currently has an automotive sponsor.

“Is that the sound of opportunity knocking?” he asked.

The irony of the lack of a car-maker backing the Western Bulldogs will not be lost on the auto advertising community.

For the three previous AFL premiership seasons, the three-in-a-row winner, the Hawthorn Hawks, was also without an automotive sponsor for all that time in spite of it winning premierships and playing in all finals rounds.

After GoAutoNews Premium highlighted the fact last year, Audi jumped in to back the Hawks only to have the flag favourites knocked out early in the finals series of matches this year.

It’s an expensive miss for a would-be Bulldogs sponsor. Viewer figures for the AFL grand final were through the roof.

According to trade publication, Ad News, the Western Bulldogs win over the Sydney Swans drew the largest AFL grand final TV audience in 10 years, averaging 4.09 million viewers with a peak 5.16 million viewers tuning in.

This is up 16 per cent on last year and included 3.04 million watching in metropolitan regions. It is the largest TV audience since 2006. The largest TV audience of any team sport in the country is an AFL grand final.

Over the day, the TV coverage reached more than 6.5 million combined in-home viewers, with 4.8 million in metro areas.

An average audience of 1.45 million Melbourne viewers tuned in, while in Sydney the average audience was up 44 per cent to 534,000.

The OzTam stats don’t tell the full picture, however, as many more fans would have clambered into local pubs and clubs to watch the AFL’s annual showstopper.

People in motor racing sometimes wonder aloud why car companies mostly sponsor football and tennis and just about anything else rather than motorsport, and these figures should make that plain. It’s because lots of people watch those other sports on live TV.

Volkswagen will be happy for their brand’s exposure even though their team, the Sydney Swans, was unable to win the AFL Grand Final. The Swans were also minor premiers by topping the ladder at the end of the home-and-away rounds. Any team that makes it deep into the final series adds serious value for a sponsor as these games are well attended and attract vast live TV audiences.

Other car companies to feature well in the AFL final series included Ford with the Geelong Cats. As mentioned, Audi came late to the sponsorship party with the then-dominant Hawthorn, Toyota via the Adelaide Crows and West Coast Eagles and Mazda who sponsored the North Melbourne Kangaroos.

Car companies or dealer groups represented in the AFL but not featuring in this year’s final series were 10th placed Renault (Port Adelaide), 11th placed AHG (Melbourne), 12th placed Holden (Collingwood), 13th placed Jeep (Richmond), 14th placed Hyundai (Carlton), 15th placed Fiat (Gold Coast Suns), Hyundai again in 17 (Brisbane Lions) and wooden spooners Kia (Essendon).

It should also be noted that Toyota has been the overall series sponsor of the AFL since 2004, and as such are a consistent Automotive Football League winner with a major presence at all games including the finals.

Car company pickings are much slimmer in the NRL with only four brands represented across five of the code’s 16 teams. One reason for this may be a lesser TV audience for this code.

As Australia’s second most popular sport, the NRL has grand final audiences that typically hover around the 2.5 million mark, though last year’s decider produced similar numbers to the AFL (see how they compare below). This year’s first State of Origin game broke its metro audience record attracting 2.7 million viewers.

The Cronulla Sharks’ first NRL premiership win attracted a record metropolitan audience of 2.65 million, eclipsing the competition’s previous record of 2.62 million in 2014 when the Rabbitohs were victorious.

This included a national peak audience of 4.23 million and an average audience of 3.73 million viewers.

As mentioned earlier, Holden supported the Cronulla Sharks to its historic first premiership while Suzuki won the home-and-away series via their sponsorship of the Melbourne Storm.

Toyota came fourth with the North Queensland Cowboys, Suzuki feature again in 10th with the Auckland Warriors, while Peugeot came second last with the Sydney Roosters.

Footnote: Long-standing Bulldogs fans will remember that Mazda once sponsored the western suburbs football club but the sponsorship lapsed during a period when Mazda worldwide sales fell. When Mazda once again returned to AFL it was with the North Melbourne Kangaroos.

By Daniel Cotterill and John Mellor