Skill errors, poor crowds and a $200m loss: Why the league is worried about AFLW

3 hours ago 3

The AFL has told the 18 clubs that the women’s game is losing $50 million a year and that the No.1 priority for AFLW in its pivotal 10th season is for on-field performances to improve.

In a lengthy presentation this week to the 18 club chiefs, AFL boss Andrew Dillon and his team acknowledged the significant challenges presented by the rapid and costly expansion of the nine-season-old competition, which has endured diminishing TV audiences and crowd numbers.

Five club bosses contacted by this masthead described the two-day conference run by Dillon and his team over Tuesday and Wednesday as the best-prepared and most impressive they had attended.

Ebony Marinoff was named AFLW best and fairest last November.

A detailed review of AFLW has concluded that the players’ wish for an expanded season by 2031-32, in which every team played each other once, would come at a $200 million annual loss. That revelation to club chiefs who gathered for the talks on the Gold Coast came with the AFL presenting a deep dive into the AFLW game style in which comparative numerical skill errors between the men’s and women’s competition were also revealed.

With improved playing standards the top priority, AFLW’s second-most urgent requirement was to lift attendance numbers and TV ratings. The competition’s financial viability was the third priority as head office works towards its long-term goal of the women’s game achieving its own broadcast deal beyond 2031.

Collingwood CEO Craig Kelly spoke most strongly among the club chiefs, urging the AFL to consider the heavy cost of expanding the AFLW competition too quickly. He said the game should not invest too heavily in the women’s competition at the expense of upgrading the MCG, creating better facilities for the game across Australia and improving the AFL experience for fans. Kelly was contacted for comment.

AFLW players now rank as the fourth highest-paid sportspeople nationally behind AFL, NRL and cricket. The lowest-paid player earns about $67,000 and the average wage sits at $87,000. While the players are now paid full-time since the most recent collective bargaining agreement, some clubs have struggled to provide full-time support for the women footballers. The AFL’s view is that the players must be well paid in order to attract the best athletes.

Two years ago, Dillon used the cautionary example of cricket’s Big Bash League, saying that competition had expanded too quickly and had been forced to reduce games as a result. Speaking to clubs during the AFLW pay negotiations with players demanding more games, Dillon reported TV ratings were down 70 per cent on season one and crowd numbers down by 60 per cent.

While several CEOs on the Gold Coast pointed to the additional government funding, sponsorship, cultural benefits and new audiences driven by AFLW, Dillon and his team remained adamant the competition could not afford to support significant further expansion as it heads towards the next player wage negotiations. Currently, the AFLW costs about $100 million per year to run, earning back about $50 million.

In 2024, the AFL posted a profit of more than $40 million, according to its annual report.

The AFLW season this year opens with Carlton-Collingwood on August 14 at Ikon Park. The Thursday night clash will be televised on Channel Seven and the season will run for 12 home-and-away rounds – one additional round from 2024 as dictated by the current collective bargaining agreement. The women’s salary cap sits at $1.175 million and will increase to $1.375 million by 2027 in the final year of the current deal.

Having completed an extensive review into AFLW, the game has also bolstered its women’s competition committee, chaired by commissioner Simone Wilkie. It has eight new members including Essendon president David Barham, incoming AFL COO Tom Harley, Tasmania Football Club executive Kath McCann and West Australian women’s pioneer Jan Cooper. Key priorities going forward following the review include prioritising the role of second-tier competitions and identifying and celebrating the key differences between the women’s and the men’s game.

Captain Emma Kearney celebrated as North Melbourne took the premiership last November.

Among a number of minor rule tweaks to improve the spectacle and open up the on-field game, the AFLW considered but ultimately rejected allowing players to run 25 metres before bouncing the ball, a skill a number of players, particularly the growing Irish contingent, have struggled with.

Tasmania’s push to launch its inaugural AFLW team in 2027 before the AFL side scheduled for 2028 now looks unlikely, largely due to cost considerations.

The presentation on the Gold Coast, led by the competition’s strategy boss Walter Lee, Dillon and football and AFLW executive Laura Kane, included extensive research into women’s sporting competitions and compared the merits of private ownership against subsidised models such as AFLW.

They included the Women’s Super League in the UK, a soccer competition that has had an evolving structure since its inception in 2010 and a complicated relationship with private investment. In 2023 the clubs broke away from the FA to form their own competition. Also included was the WNBA in the US, in which the teams and the competition were collectively owned by the NBA until 2002 when the men’s national body sold all the teams either to their men’s counterparts or to third parties.

The AFL also presented the highly successful example of Angel City FC, a professional women’s soccer team based in Los Angeles formed in 2020 and including a long list of high-profile female celebrity owners before Disney CEO Bob Iger and his wife Willow Bay became the team’s majority shareholders in 2024.

Although private ownership for AFLW teams looks unlikely, AFL bosses concluded to the clubs on the Gold Coast that historically the most successful women’s sporting clubs began as independent products not affiliated to traditional men’s sports. The annual timing of the women’s fixture remains a topic of ongoing debate for the competition along with the choice of grand final venue and representative games.

The keynote speaker at the two-day talks was Michael Miller, the executive chairman of News Australia and a director of Foxtel. Miller spoke extensively about driving audiences and highlighted fan phenomena ranging from Taylor Swift to the Formula 1 documentary series Drive To Survive.

To date, seven seasons of the highly successful behind-the-scenes collaboration between Netflix and Formula 1 has radically expanded the profile of international motorsport, with significantly bigger audiences including a new female market now watching Formula 1.

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