The AFL fixture for next year was released earlier today, and contains such marvels as the first games in Shanghai and Ballarat, a Good Friday game, and the continued pre-finals bye.
As I did last year, I’m going to analyse the fixture based a method of prime-time exposure.
To newcomers, the system works as follows:
- Thursday and Friday night games are worth two points.
- Saturday night games are worth one.
- Sunday games lose you a point.
Firstly, the teams ranked by Thursday and Friday night games:
- 10: Sydney
- 8: W Bulldogs
- 6: Adelaide, Geelong
- 4: Hawthorn, St Kilda
- 3: Collingwood, Essendon, GWS Giants, Pt Adelaide, West Coast
- 2: Carlton, Richmond
- 1: Melbourne, N Melbourne
- 0: Brisbane, Fremantle, Gold Coast
This is well balanced. The top two teams get the most, every top eight team but one gets at least three, and no bottom ten team but one gets more than three.
Secondly, the Saturday night rankings:
- 8: Essendon, Gold Coast
- 7: Adelaide
- 6: Collingwood, Richmond, Fremantle
- 5: Geelong, Carlton, N Melbourne
- 4: Hawthorn, West Coast, Brisbane
- 3: Sydney, W Bulldogs, St Kilda, GWS Giants, Pt Adelaide, Melbourne
Every team gets at least four night games for 2017 (Melbourne and GWS got just two in 2016), and teams that don’t get many Thursdays and Fridays get plenty of Saturdays, as a rule.
And lastly, Sunday games from least to most:
- 2: Sydney
- 3: Gold Coast, W Bulldogs
- 4: Adelaide, GWS Giants
- 5: Geelong, Pt Adelaide
- 6: Essendon, Hawthorn
- 8: Collingwood, Richmond, N Melbourne, St Kilda, Melbourne
- 9: Carlton, West Coast, Brisbane
- 12: Fremantle
Add them all together and you get the following tally:
- 21: Sydney
- 16: W Bulldogs
- 15: Adelaide
- 12: Geelong
- 8: Essendon
- 6: Hawthorn
- 5: Gold Coast, GWS Giants
- 4: Pt Adelaide, Collingwood
- 3: St Kilda
- 2: Richmond
- 1: West Coast
- 0: Carlton
- -1: N Melbourne
- -3: Melbourne
- -5: Brisbane
- -6: Fremantle
The six teams that made the semi finals or further are all in the top eight. The correlation is not as strong at the bottom, but only four out of eighteen teams have negative exposure ratings, compared to six in 2016.
And before we go, two more lists to bide your time:
Clubs by exposure point difference from 2016 to 2017
- +13: Sydney
- +11: GWS Giants
- +9: Essendon
- +8: W Bulldogs, St Kilda
- +5: Adelaide, Gold Coast
- +4: Geelong, Carlton, Melbourne
- 0: West Coast
- -1: Pt Adelaide
- -2: Brisbane
- -6: Hawthorn
- -7: Collingwood
- -9: Fremantle
- -13: N Melbourne
- -14: Richmond
Points per 10,000 members (2016 membership figures)
- 4.05: W Bulldogs
- 3.89: Gold Coast
- 3.72: Sydney
- 3.27: GWS Giants
- 2.76: Adelaide
- 2.37: Geelong
- 1.39: Essendon
- 0.80: Hawthorn
- 0.79: St Kilda
- 0.74: Pt Adelaide
- 0.54: Collingwood
- 0.28: Richmond
- 0.15: West Coast
- 0: Carlton
- -0.22: N Melbourne
- -0.77: Melbourne
- -1.16: Fremantle
- -2.15: Brisbane
Statscrunch 