A lot of people watched the AFL Grand Final. A lot.
The epic clash between the Sydney Swans and the victorious Western Bulldogs was the AFL’s most-watched decider in a decade, pulling in a TV audience of a staggering 6.5million people. Big bloody heaps.
In the Melbourne metro region, that equated to an average audience of 1.445million in-home viewers glued to the screen as the Bulldogs capped off the most stunning finals run in modern AFL history to snap a 62-year Premiership drought in front of an MCG crowd of a shade below 100,000 people.
And while those raw numbers alone are impressive enough by themselves, the Grand Final effect produced a bunch of other associated data that showed just how dialled in to the game the city really was.
Take this chart put together by Melbourne Water, for example. The overseeing body charted the city’s water usage on Saturday, and the results are eye-opening, if not wholly hilarious.
As it turns out, during the quarters water usage in the city dropped to practically zero, but huge spikes in usage just so happened to coincide with the quarter breaks.
Or, to put it another way, everyone was holding it in until the sirens went, before dashing off to the loo in the breaks.
Check that out. Right before the final siren goes, it would appear that the entire city was crossing their legs. Rates-of-flush peter off again as the Premiership Cup was rolled out on to the MCG after the game, before the city’s water usage rates begin normalising again shortly thereafter.
These bursts of usage are good indicator that, despite everyone getting well and truly on the sip, the day wasn’t completely pissed away.
Source: Melbourne Water/Instagram.
