AFL funding ladder revealed: $100m gap between top and bottom clubs

Geelong, Collingwood, Hawthorn and West Coast each received at least $100 million less than both expansion teams Greater Western Sydney and Gold Coast and more than $50m less than St Kilda in AFL funding over the past decade.

In a funding table that reveals remarkable and growing differences in allocations to clubs, the Saints were clearly the most subsidised of the Victorian clubs, obtaining close to $17m more than the next Melbourne club, the Western Bulldogs, in variable funding over the decade to 2021. The Saints have a large debt of $9.5m, behind only the Brisbane Lions, but did reduce their debt by $4.26m last year.

The Giants have received about $100 million more funding from the AFL than the Pies over the past decade.Credit:The Age

An investigation by The Age into the different funding of the 18 clubs over 10 seasons also found that Richmond – now a competition benchmark on and off the field – had surprisingly been given more funding than seven clubs over the past decade, gaining variable funding of more than $13m compared with Collingwood’s none, West Coast’s $525,000, Geelong’s $2.6-$2.8m, Essendon’s $2.3m, Hawthorn’s $4.106m and Fremantle’s approximately $6m.

AFL sources said the larger allocation to the Tigers reflected their far weaker position earlier in the 2010s, when they carried a sizeable debt and did not have anything like their present day membership or income. They were still given total variable funding, however, of just less than $2.5m, from 2018 to 2020, after they won the 2017 premiership, but nothing in 2021.

Collingwood fared worst in terms of funding by the league, the Magpies receiving zero dollars in variable funding over the decade, marginally behind the competition’s financial behemoth, West Coast. Collingwood’s only non-base funding, according to the figures obtained by The Age, was $174,710 in 2012. Sources said this was a travel allowance.

The extent of what is effectively taxation of the richer clubs is a sore point for some powerful clubs. Hawthorn, for instance, is facing the imminent loss of the huge income from playing in Tasmania if that state gains a team, plus an eventual transition to a future without pokies earnings – two key planks of the Hawks’ rise to financial heavyweight.

The Giants averaged $10.46m in variable funding from 2012-2020, followed by the Suns ($9.8m), with a jump down to Brisbane Lions ($6.03m) and then the Saints ($5.69m). In 2021, the Suns were granted what industry sources said was about $14m on top of the $10.45m base funding, with GWS said to have gained an additional $13m, the Lions around $10m and St Kilda close to $9m.

These allocations in 2021 boosted the expansion teams’ funding to an aggregate of more than $400m over the 10 years that both teams have been in the AFL. (The Suns joined in 2011 and are paid extra to manage Metricon Stadium for the AFL).

Rival clubs largely accept that GWS and Gold Coast will need massive levels of AFL support for decades to build backing in their challenging, non-traditional markets. There is more agitation between traditional clubs about differences in funding.

Battle lines between clubs are expected to be drawn when the AFL reviews the 2022 funding.

Essendon president Paul Brasher said the AFL’s removal of $2m from certain clubs for 2022 was done on the basis that a working group would review it.

“We’d be pretty keen, we’d have a lot to say in that,” said Brasher. “Other clubs will as well.

“Every club is going to speak through self-interest and if you look at it, the clubs that would expect to get more out of variable funding will want one thing. The clubs that think that they’ve probably sacrificed too much already will want something else. Whatever way it goes, [we] want to have a strong voice in that discussion.”

Variable funding is the AFL’s primary tool for evening up the competition financially and the league has increased the level of redistribution enormously since 2012, when St Kilda and the Lions were given several million fewer dollars than they were later granted from 2015-16, as Gillon McLachlan and his team increased subsidies to the poorer clubs.

In other findings:

• North Melbourne, who have faced constant financial pressures and talk about relocation to their second home in Tasmania, ranked only sixth in variable funding, surprisingly trailing not only GWS, Gold Coast and the Lions (in that order), but the Saints and Bulldogs, despite the Dogs’ 2016 premiership and superior balance sheet. North became debt-free last year.

The Roos were slightly ahead of Melbourne, who were a clear seventh on the AFL funding ladder, but will lose some funding after winning the premiership.

• Geelong and Adelaide are not far behind the so-called power clubs of Collingwood and West Coast, in terms of receiving modest funding from headquarters, the Cats getting variable funding (aggregate of $2.13m from 2012 to 2020) in only six of the past 10 years. The AFL view is that the Cats have a superb stadium deal at their government-funded home ground, which means they need less support.
• There is a clear view that teams based at (now AFL-owned) Marvel Stadium, except for Essendon and Carlton (which split home games with the MCG), required more variable funding than MCG tenant teams. The Saints and Bulldogs, for instance, have gained more AFL funding than Melbourne.
• Carlton, despite a decade of on-field struggles, received slightly less than Richmond in variable funding, over the nine years to 2020. The Blues are seen as a club with enormous potential to generate interest and money if they can rise to premiership contention.
• The gap in funding and the extent of the socialised model was evident in a table, obtained by The Age, that showed what the profit and loss position of the 18 clubs would be, from 2017 until 2020, with and without variable funding.

It showed that West Coast, which made a monstrous profit after the 2018 flag, would have an aggregate profit of over $32m ($8m plus per year) without variable funding, and that under the same scenario the top six clubs would have averaged more than $3m in profits, but that only eight clubs would be in the black.

The figures said St Kilda would have lost $32.6m, Melbourne $19.1m, Port Adelaide $14.56m, Brisbane Lions $35.2m and Gold Coast and GWS would have had aggregate losses of $45.2m and $50m, respectively.

Clubs, of course, tailor their spending to their revenue and so the figures are largely a demonstration of funding differences rather than a reflection of what would happen.

The redistribution from rich to poor over the decade – and especially figures from 2017 to 2020 that counts one year of the pandemic – also raises questions about the sustainability of the financial model in the eyes of some clubs, given the large number of teams that rely on the AFL to remain in the black or to manage debt. It also raised questions about the level of support needed for a Tasmanian team.

“We have a club funding model that is integral to the competitive balance of the competition and supports the notion of ‘any given Sunday.’”

All clubs receive the same standard distribution, which was $10.45m in 2021 and will reduce to $8.45m in 2022, when Richmond, West Coast, Hawthorn and Collingwood will receive only that amount, with the remainder of the money re-allocated to teams deemed to have the greatest need.

GWS, thus, is expected to get a small boost in funding, while the Bulldogs – who rank only behind the Saints among Victorian clubs for extra funding – will have their funding chopped. Melbourne will also have a reduction after winning the premiership, but they will not be cut as heavily as the Bulldogs, according to competition sources, because the Dogs have had a longer period of profitability.

The AFL view and that of smaller clubs is that this shift to a more genuinely socialised funding system has been successful in that teams such as the Bulldogs and Melbourne have managed to win flags and build stronger balance sheets. It is also essential to the northern market teams, albeit the Swans need much less help than the Lions, Suns or Giants.

In a statement on the club funding differences, an AFL spokesman said: “We have a club funding model that is integral to the competitive balance of the competition and supports the notion of ‘any given Sunday’, and clubs get different levels of funding depending on their individual circumstances.”

The AFL would not respond to specific questions about clubs and their funding.

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