Win or lose against South Korea in the Asian Cup final at Stadium Australia, coach Ange Postecoglou's team, headed by fearless forward Tim Cahill, will have been at the heart of a successful three-week sporting event which highlighted Australia to audiences from Saudi Arabia and Iran in the continent's far west to China and Japan in its far east.

Moreover the broken attendance and broadcast records – the semi-final between Australia and China drew 95 million viewers in China, its largest ever audience for a football match – legacies for Australian society and the domestic economy are anticipated to extend far beyond the final whistle.

"I spoke to a gentleman the other day who works for a large construction company in China and he said his organisation probably wouldn't have undertaken plans to do business in Australia had they not been here for the tournament," Football Federation Australia chief executive David Gallop said.

"There have plenty of examples like that, big and small, of the networking that has gone on around the tournament as a knock-on effect.

"We always said that football can be a bridge to the rest of the world like no other sport. This tournament has demonstrated that."

The potential boost to tourism and business has been matched by a spirited and dynamic celebration of Australian multiculturalism, which has created a spine-tingling atmosphere at nearly every game.

With the final and playoff for third still to come, aggregate attendance stands at 561,178, with average crowds set to eclipse 20,000 a game. The previous Asian Cup, in Qatar – which was awarded the hosting rights for the 2022 World Cup ahead of Australia – drew 405,361, or 12,668 a match.

Organisers were particularly pleased by crowds at games not involving Australia, which drew 370,000 fans, an average of close to 15,000 a game. Four non-Socceroos matches were sold out, Iran versus Iraq and China versus North Korea, each in Canberra, and Japan against Jordan and South Korea against Uzbekistan, each in Melbourne.

"People celebrate their heritage within their own cultural groups around the country, but it's not very often that they get a chance to come out and show that heritage in such a public way," Gallop said

"I went past a bus stop in Brisbane the other night and there were hundreds of Chinese and Australian supporters mingling together in their colours, waiting for buses. I got thinking, that is what you want the country to be.

"We talk in this country very often about multiculturalism and the Asian century, but it's not often that it's right there on display.

"To see people celebrating their Asian heritage like that has been really exciting and something that political and business leaders who have attended games have remarked on in positive terms."