Multicultural Round highlights the contribution multicultural communities have made to the game’s history and welcomes new communities to embrace Australian Football as fans, players, umpires or administrators.
AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan said he is proud to announce a record number of activities will take place in Round 19 to mark the Toyota AFL Multicultural Round.
“With 27 per cent of Australians born overseas and around 200 languages spoken every day in Australian homes, the AFL is committed to reflecting Australia’s growing cultural diversity.
“As an industry we will continue to reach out to new and emerging communities not only because it’s important for the growth of our game but as the number one sporting code in the country, we have a leadership role to play in social cohesion.”
In 2015, 14% of AFL players listed are born overseas or have one parent who was born overseas.
Toyota AFL Multicultural Round highlights:
● All nine AFL matches during Multicultural Round will each be broadcast in the seven most spoken languages in Australia, other than English via the AFL app.
● The Round 19 AFL Record will feature an introduction to Australian Football in the seven languages.
● All venues will feature in-language markings on field and in-language messages in stadium.
● The Sherrin official AFL match ball will be translated into Arabic, Hindi or Mandarin and will feature at all nine matches.
● The AFL field umpire shirts will feature the word umpire translated into one of the seven most spoken languages in Australia, other than English.
● The AFL is excited to launch its official AFL Sina Weibo account. Weibo is the largest Chinese social media network and has over 538 million users, including 1.2 million Australian Chinese users.
● During Multicultural Round, the AFL will highlight the role of its 13 Australia Post AFL Multicultural player ambassadors and 233 community volunteers across the country who share their passion for Australian Football and connect communities through engaging in AFL.
● The first AFL Multicultural Festival celebrating ‘Many Cultures, One Game’ will be held at the MCG in Yarra Park at the Collingwood v Carlton game on August 8. The festival will run from 11.30am - 5.30pm and will include loads of free and fun activities for the entire family, including live entertainment from SBS PopAsia, Hip Hop dance, African drummers, Bollywood and many others.
● This year marks 10 years since the AFL launched its Multicultural Program in 2005 to engage people of all ages from multicultural backgrounds in Australian Football.
