A quick review of trading for the AFL Grand Final public holiday yesterday in Victoria it looks like we have another Australia Day type public holiday. Traffic was down at shopping centres to Australia Day levels with people opting to use the day to party or get out of the city for the weekend. Revenue was down 25% on the usual Friday.
As with Australia Day, the day before was considerably bigger as people preloaded shopping.
While net across the two days we’re on par, the disruption to trade by this new public holiday is something to work through.
Now that I have seen how the day plays out I’ll plan better for next year – for the day before and for the day itself.
I encourage other Victorian newsagents to share their thoughts.
Down by over 75% not too many businesses in town opened. Probably have the day off next year
A 75% downturn in trade hardly sounds like the economic bonanza Daniel Andrews was promising Victoria from his ridiculous holiday. A politician making a stupid decision and then justifying it with a steaming pile of empty statements, what is the world coming to?
Our paper only just arrived 1pm so guess who’s sales will be down today. We usually close at 1 pm so everyone has given up on them arriving even though we are still open. Public holiday here too but not it’s Labour Day holiday and end of school holidays. Have they really given you a public holiday for Footy Finals? Unbelievable!
Carol the public holiday in Victoria wasn’t for the actual Grand Final, that at lest would be defendable. The public holiday was actually for the Grand Final Parade held on Friday if you can believe it.
I like my footy but that is so stupid and wasteful. People on properties are walking off and families destitute because of drought. These are the people who put the meat in footy fans hamburgers. Cowboys fans complained about the price of their airfare to Sydney. I only wish some of the waste of money could have gone to our farmers. A contribution by the AFL and NRL would have been a great publicity opportunity for them.
Grand Final eve this year was down 48% on Grand Final eve last year and cost our staff their days hours. Grand final day was up 29% which surprised me but may have been contributed to by the interstate factor. Overall trading for the 2 days was down 20%. seeing as these are the busiest 2 days of the week that can only be bad for us.
In SA last Saturday I was up 40% on 2014, traditional grand final week.
This weekend is our Labor Day long weekend and even with the GF we were up 12% yesterday.
Lets keep the GF in October.
Now you just have to get the Crows or Port into the GF.