AFL Chief Executive Officer Andrew Demetriou today said the AFL wish to thank every one of the game's supporters across the country after the competition achieved the highest Toyota AFL Premiership Season attendance in the history of the game.

Mr Demetriou said the Round 22 attendance figure of 272,885 took the 2008 season total to 6,511,255, eclipsing the previous record mark of 6,475,521 established 12 months ago in 2007.

“The 2008 season again affirms the AFL as the number one spectator sport in Australia, when combined with the fact that our clubs built a record tally of 574,091 club members for the Premiership season " Mr Demetriou said.

"On behalf of the AFL Commission and our 16 clubs, we would like to thank every one of our supporters across the country who made the commitment to attend matches in person this year, enabling the game to post a record year for the second consecutive season.

"This was an outstanding result considering the impact of the Olympics in the latter part of the season, which had an effect on three weeks of our year, and our commitment to play matches in Darwin, Carrara, Launceston and Canberra with limited capacity,” Mr Demetriou said. 

The leading five clubs, in terms of home ground attendance for the 2008 season, were:

Collingwood: Avg. 59,213 – (651,345)

Carlton: Avg. 48,589 – (534,483)

Essendon: Avg. 46,368 – (510,051)

Richmond: Avg. 43,548 – (479,027)

Adelaide: Avg. 40,678 – (447,455)