Brand valuation researchers Brand Finance has determined the AFL’s Collingwood Football Club to be Australia’s most valuable sporting brand, worth an estimated $145 million.

That figure was more than $20 million ahead of the next placed club, the NRL’s Brisbane Broncos, with both teams notably failing to qualify for this year’s finals after having competed in their respective league deciders in 2023.

At the other end of the charts were the AFL’s two newest northern state franchises, Greater Western Sydney and the Gold Coast Suns, the latter worth a relatively paltry $28 million, albeit only marginally behind fellow Gold Coast club the Titans.

That the Titans are based in a traditional rugby state wasn’t the only seeming anomaly in the rankings, with the Dolphins, the NRL’s most recent addition, slotting in at ninth among League entries. Meanwhile, the Melbourne Demons were ranked sixth among all AFL teams, ahead of Hawthorn and West Coast, despite the club’s previous decades-long drought and having significantly fewer members.

Here, the methodology adopted by Brand Finance – which has long been assessing sporting brands abroad but has for the first time turned its attention to Australia’s biggest codes – can explain many of the surprises, being as it’s in part based on ‘brand strength’, which concerns a range of attributes beyond the trade name and logo etc. that impact ‘business’ performance and feed into brand value.

Essendon, for example, which placed fifth among AFL clubs with a brand value of $85 million, slipped below the Demons ($75 million) on the ‘Brand Strength Index’, having famously not won a final for more than 7,000 days and counting and perceived to be lacking as to governance and community engagement. Meanwhile, Melbourne benefits from its historic association with the MCG.

Cross-code rivalry

While tribal AFL fans will undoubtedly argue over the merits of the results, they can at least come together and boast of the sport’s standing as Australia’s most followed and second-most preferred ahead of the NRL according to the Brand Finance data. All up, 76 percent of respondents surveyed expressed an interest in Australian Rules, placing it well ahead of rugby league at 69 percent.

Further to that, the AFL was perceived to outperform the NRL on a number of important emotional and functional brand metrics, including management, reputation, community impact, ethical governance (more scoffs), and overall heritage and prestige. These factors have contributed to the AFL clubs claiming a $1.3 billion slice of the overall $2.3 billion cross-league value of all 35 combined.

Here, Brand Finance notes that perceptions of a sports’ “heritage and prestige” are important for sponsors who adopt these indicators as a core part of their positioning. The MFC for example has recently counted on Jaguar and Zurich among its major sponsors, while the supposedly demographically-opposed Magpies feature Emirates on their jumper. Meanwhile, the Broncos rely on Kia and XXXX.

In conducting its inaugural analysis of Australia’s sporting landscape, Brand Finance also noted the added importance of brand distinctiveness due to the strong equalisation measures in place for each of the country’s most popular codes to ensure a reasonably even financial and competitive playing field among the generally membership-owned clubs, as compared to most overseas leagues.

“This valuation shows that despite being almost entirely domestic competitions, Australia’s leading sporting clubs are as strong as some of the brands playing in the world’s richest and biggest European and American football leagues,” stated Brand Finance Australia managing director Mark Crowe. “The Australian clubs have incredibly valuable assets in the form of their brands.”