Soccer is just one of four beautiful football codes in Australia

On 24 June 2026, SBS aired a show titled "Wogball: Australia's Beautiful Game" that highlighted how soccer had become an important part of Australia's sporting culture despite earlier decades when the sport was seen as a foreign threat to local sporting interests as immigrants from Southern Europe and the Balkans embraced various soccer clubs attached to their ethnicity.

But while I too embrace soccer and recognise that the World Cup is the biggest global sporting event by far, I argue that it is a bit petty to describe soccer as "the" beautiful game in Australia given that so many Australians passionately follow a number of football codes that may also include several codes including Australian Rules, Rugby League and Rugby Union.

The simple truth is that all four football codes in Australia today are popular for very different reasons which reflects our love of many sports and helps explain why each code has proven superior with regard to different measures.

In terms of club crowds, the A-League reached a peak of around 15,348 in 2007-08 before declining to 8,539 during the 2025-26 season for the ten Australian teams, well behind the 2025 averages for the AFL (38,214) and NRL (21,211).

There are many reasons why the A-League crowds are much smaller than the AFL and NRL.

First, club soccer in Australia is competing with sports that have strong cultural connections within each state since the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the various football codes were just emerging and competing with each other.

For NSW and Queensland, though rugby league only emerged in 1908 after a split with rugby union over professionalism, rugby was the most popular sport in both of these states from the late 19th century.

Likewise, by the late 19th century, Australian Rules had become the most popular sport in Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania.

Second, unlike the AFL and NRL which has little overseas interest or rival international competition, with England the only country with a comparable professional rugby league competition, the A-League competes for the attention of soccer fans who also have pay-to-view television access to the biggest national leagues in the world, especially the most popular Premier League.

Enormous Australian interest in leading foreign club competitions is why matches between international clubs get very large crowds in Australia, as was the case when 99,382 attended the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in 2015 to watch Manchester City play Real Madrid.

Third, while the A-League plays in the warmer months to avoid competition with the AFL and NRL, it is highly likely that fewer people will attend soccer matches on days of extreme heat.

Fourth, it may well be that many Australians prefer the physical nature of AFL and NRL in terms of live viewing, albeit that important A-League games with crowds above 30,000 have become much rarer in recent seasons.

As is the case for Rugby Union where Australia's four Super Rugby teams averaged just 11,140 for 20 games in 2026 while the Wallabies have attracted crowds of over 80,000 since 2023 when playing the British Lions and New Zealand, Australians also embrace our national soccer teams with 95,103 attending the MCG in 2006 when the Socceroos played Greece, while 75,784 attended Stadium Australia for the Matildas semi-final against England during the 2023 Women's World Cup.

Of television audiences, important soccer internationals also attract numbers on a par with the biggest AFL and NRL matches with a reported 7.13 million watching the Matildas' 2023 Women's World Cup semi-final against England and 4.8 million Australians watching the Socceroos' FIFA World Cup 2026 matches against Türkiye and Paraguay.

In terms of participation, soccer is the most popular football code in Australia by far with Ausplay noting in 2024 that there were 1,232,726 adults and 632,249 children playing the sport, including a growing proportion of females (around 25 per cent).

Soccer also has the most registered club participants with 640,000 compared to 500,000 for Australian Rules, and over 200,000 for the rugby codes where participation is mostly confined to NSW and Queensland.

Despite the choice of four different football codes, along with many other important team sports like basketball, netball and hockey, many Australian parents encourage their children to play soccer to avoid the prospect of major head injuries when compared to collision-heavy Australian Rules and rugby codes, albeit soccer also carries a high risk for knee/ankle sprains and injuries.

While Australia's four very different football codes create many more opportunities for Australians of different shapes and sizes to play and excel in, soccer relies less on brute strength and more on skill and mobility with Argentina's superstar Lionel Messi being just 170cm tall with the average size of Premier League players being around 182-183cm and 76-77kg bodyweight.

In contrast, AFL and NRL players are taller (188-190cm) and weigh more (87kg and 99kg) with the AFL having 50 to 60 players that measure over 198cm while the NRL has 45 to 50 active NRL players that weigh 110 kg or more.

Having four different football codes also give Australians many opportunities to be involved in a community sport, with such interaction helping to break down cultural barriers between Australians from different ethnic backgrounds.

Soccer, which from the 1950s had many clubs with substantial representation from migrants from Southern and Southeast Europe, now involves many Australians from Middle Eastern and African backgrounds with 34 Africans playing in the A-League by the 2020-2021 season.

The AFL also has around 15 per cent of players with international backgrounds or multicultural ancestry, while the NRL has representation from 65 different national heritages with around half of Pasifika and MÄori descent, with both leagues having many Aboriginal players.

The four different football codes in Australia also provide an opportunity for many young Australians to earn substantial income from their chosen code.

Of soccer, with around 200 males and females playing overseas in 2025-26, many earn salaries from $500,000 to $2 million per season.

Top soccer players also earn significant match fees and prizemoney for playing for the national team, as evident at the 2026 World Cup where each player of Australia's 26-man squad is reported to have received $US211,538, which represents around 50 per cent of the $US11 million earned by Australia for making the last 32 (the knockout stage).

While the A-League allows payments of $500,000 to $1 million for marquee players (which can include Australian players returning from overseas), established starters earn $250,000 to $300,000 with Regular First-Teamers ($160,000 to $240,000).

Of male footballers, the average AFL salary is now $505,691 (ranging from a minimum of $130,000 to a high of $2 million), with the NRL average being $400,000 (ranging from $150,000 to over $1 million).

Of female club players, A-League players earn an average $30,000 to $40,000 and a minimum salary of $25,000, AFL players an average salary around $82,000, and NRL players a minimum salary of $46,200 with some top players earning up to $110,000 per season.

While rugby union players earn much less than the AFL and NRL, the base wage for leading Super Rugby is between $85,000 and $100,000 with top players earning more, boosted by match payments for playing for the Wallabies or abroad for clubs in the top leagues of France and Japan.

Elite Super Rugby female players, those contracted to both Super W and the national squad (Wallaroos), earn up to $72,000 while both male and female Rugby Sevens players earn an average of around $110,000 per year.

Collectively, the four football codes, when you take account of both paid and amateur players, officials, families, fans and volunteers, make an enormous contribution to Australia's cities and towns in terms of the time and resources they spend through involvement in their chosen football codes.

According to the Confederation of Australian Sport, when also including preventative health cost savings, community infrastructure, and educational benefits, the total value of sport is estimated to be as high as $50 billion to $83 billion per year (around 2 to 3 per cent of GDP), with one of the football codes being the most important game in virtually every Australian suburb and town.

Despite some soccer supporters wishing they had their own stadiums given the heavy wear and tear caused by the rugby codes to grass fields, Australia's support of many football codes also helps gain substantial public funding to enable world-class rectangle stadiums to be built.

For example, Melbourne's decision to build a world-class 30,000 seat rectangle stadium by 2010 was influenced by a number of professional soccer and rugby teams needing their own venue to create an intimate spectator experience for fans much closer to the game action.

To conclude, Australia's love of four different football codes represents the reality that Australia has many beautiful football games, and we should celebrate this reality rather ridicule rival codes as if only one is "the" beautiful game when clearly Australia expresses support for all four football codes.

Just which football code is "the" beautiful game comes down to our own individual perspective, and SBS should remember that when it makes a dig at Australia's past just because soccer has proven to be the most successful of all football codes in international terms.