At the completion of the home and away season Essendon was number one on the field and it was also number one off the field in a number of key performance areas. Essendon proved to be the largest drawing team in the AFL in terms of crowds. It had the largest membership of the Victorian clubs and third overall in the League and its merchandise sales are again on track to clearly exceed that of any other side in the competition. On top of this the Bombers website is clearly the most popular club website in the AFL and more viewers watch Essendon's games on TV audience than any other team in the AFL.

In season 2001, Essendon attracted 1,124,827 to its games. This was a club record and clearly the highest of any other club in the competition. The final figures for all clubs were:

Essendon 1,124,827
Collingwood 1,083,203
Richmond 974,465
Carlton 859,419
Hawthorn 760,139
Adelaide 736,499
Sydney 685,588
Melbourne 685,333
Kangaroos 664,600
Western Bulldogs 660,888
Geelong 656,157
West Coast 651,227
St Kilda 617,687
Port Adelaide 606,279
Brisbane 587,120
Fremantle 487,601

The club's membership of 36,227 was the highest of all the Victorian clubs. Essendon's reserved seat sales of 18,298 are also the highest of all Victorian clubs.

The Bombers website (www.essendonfc.com.au) is clearly the most popular club website in the AFL. According to recent Hitwise statistics, Essendon's website has a market share of 4.20% of all AFL traffic. St Kilda is the next bext with 2.57%.

According to official AFL Television Rating statistics provided to each club, Essendon had 14,566,200 viewers this season. Collingwood came in second with 11,873,700. These figures were the totals of the average number of viewers watching each game in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and Sydney. The full set of figures for TV ratings were:

Essendon 14,566,200
Collingwood 11,873,700
Kangaroos 11,743,200
Adelaide 11,497,400
Richmond 11,299,000
Sydney 10,993,600
Port Adelaide 10,395,800
Western Bulldogs 9,668,900
Melbourne 9,474,400
Brisbane 9,123,000
Hawthorn 9,092,100
Carlton 8,957,500
St Kilda 8,542,600
Geelong 8,433,200
West Coast 7,636,500
Fremantle 6,335,500

""Obviously these are positive numbers and the club is very pleased about them,"" Essendon chief executive Peter Jackson said. ""The Essendon brand is growing significantly and it is something we work hard at improving - these numbers are recognition that the work we are doing in this area is paying dividends. We might have won a lot of football matches on the field but that doesn't neccessarily translate to results off the field. Obviously winning helps but I think it is also a tribute to the professionalism of our staff.""