foreshock
IndexSportsNo. 27 emerging

AFL finals systems

Playoff system used by the Australian Football League

14×
vs its own baseline
year on year
+122.7%
per month, last 90 days
69
confidence / 100
55 1,200 2,346 3,491 where it used to sit Nov 25 Jan 26 Mar 26 May 26 Jul 26 Sep 26
Attention share · views per billion sitewide, weekly 42 weeks to 2 Sep 2026 Normalised, deseasonalised — sitewide swings removed

Why we think this is real

Six tests · all shown, pass or fail

The floor moved, not just the peak

Its quietest recent week still sits 94% above the old baseline. A news spike leaves the floor where it was.

1.94×

Not one event

Share of the last four months of extra attention that landed in its busiest seven days. High means a single story, not a trend.

59%

Not the calendar

How much of this topic's shape repeats every year. The annual cycle is estimated per topic and divided out before anything is measured.

0%

Human traffic

Bot and scraper traffic is flat across the week. Anything with implausibly low day-to-day variation, or with no weekday/weekend pattern at all, is dropped before it reaches this page.

1.44× weekend

Enough history to judge

Long enough to separate this year's move from last year's level.

297 days

Confirmed somewhere else

No second source yet. Common for consumer and culture topics, which do not show up in developer data.

0 of 4 sources

What it is

Wikipedia

The AFL finals systems are the premiership playoff tournaments developed and used by the Australian Football League since the 2000 season. There have been two systems: the AFL final eight system, used by the league between 2000 and 2025; and the AFL final ten system, to be used from 2026 onwards. In both systems, the teams are ranked or seeded in advance of the tournament, and the higher ranked teams have an easier path to the premiership, including double chances and the opportunity to receive byes. The…

Excerpt from AFL finals systems on Wikipedia, by its contributors, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Trimmed for length.

Near this on the curve

Sports
046

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Sports · 6k views/mo
+40%
vs baseline
declining