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FORD Australia has once more confirmed the wisdom of maintaining its long-running sponsorship of the Geelong Cats with an emphatic win over the Sydney Swans (Volkswagen) in the AFL Grand Final after capping off the home-and-away season in top place; two games ahead of the Melbourne Demons (Jaguar).

Geelong’s demolition of the Swans by 81 points in the grand final probably took a lot of the gloss off a successful season for Volkswagen which had ridden high on the Sydney team’s third place in the home and away games – up from seventh place last year. 

But winning its way through the bonus exposure that comes with playing most of the games in the finals series would have had a benefit for Volkswagen especially as the Swans have the highest number of followers in the competition – more than a million supporters.

And Volkswagen has also seen the Swans deliver a grand final place from just 16th place on the ladder in 2020.

The 2022 season proved to be a disappointment for MG Motor (Port Adelaide) which came on top of the ladder in 2020 and second on the ladder last year but dropped to 11th this year; thus missing the bonus exposure of being in the finals series. 

Two car brands missing this year were Jeep, which separated from the Richmond Tigers for this season, and Kia which pulled out of its sponsorship of Greater Western Sydney Giants at the end of last season.

Of course, the two big winners for the 2022 season are Toyota as the main AFL sponsor with its logos on all the grounds and AFL signage and Carsales which is a prominent buyer of boundary advertising.

These two are inextricably linked to the game and get huge exposure through the TV coverage throughout the season across 18 teams.

The Aussie Rules code has proven to the a happy hunting ground for car brands over the years with its vast band of more than nine million supporters of AFL clubs according to Roy Morgan Research

According to the website Sports Industry AU, these auto sponsors were exposed to total AFL audiences during the 2022 season estimated at 106.265 million people, with an average audience of 537,000 watching 265.662 million hours of football (including Kayo).

Some 24 AFL games in the 2022 season were watched by more than one million viewers.

The most watched AFL team in 2022 appears to have been Melbourne (Jaguar) followed by Collingwood and the Western Bulldogs.

The AFL Grand Final was the highest rating TV program in the 2022 ratings survey year and scored an average total television audience of 3.06 million viewers. Seven’s 2022 AFL Grand Final audience was up nationally on the last daytime Grand Final in 2019 between Richmond and the GWS Giants.

Sports Industry AU said that on 7plus, an additional 95,000 viewers watched the Geelong Cats (Ford) triumph on connected TVs, with 14 million minutes streamed.

The website said the game dominated with a 90 per cent share of TV viewers during the game. In Melbourne, the game achieved  a 98 per cent share of viewers during the game. Sydney achieved 80 per cent of viewers in its time slot.

Final result for the top eight teams and car sponsors

1 Ford – Geelong Cats

2 Volkswagen – Sydney Swans

Equal 3rd. Hyundai – Brisbane Lions, Collingwood

Equal 5th. Jaguar – Melbourne; Fremantle 

Equal 7th. Richmond Tigers; Western Bulldogs


By John Mellor

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