AFL concedes entire 2020 season might be played without crowds due to coronavirus pandemic
The AFL is growing increasingly confident it will get a full season in this year but will fans be able to attend matches any time soon? If there are no crowds during finals, the AFL will sacrifice a fortune.
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The AFL would sacrifice more than $20 million in ticket sales for the finals series alone as the league conceded a season without fans was increasingly likely.
But the league is growing increasingly confident of an imminent return to football as early as June without the need for quarantine zones.
The league’s chief health officer Brett Sutton held a lengthy meeting with AFL boss Gillon McLachlan on Sunday that charted the way forward for football to resume in June or July.
It would require the league to put forward a detailed national proposal that could be ticked off by state and federal governments and avoid 14-day quarantine periods for clubs flying interstate.
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Sutton and Victorian premier Daniel Andrews both advocated a return to football this year, with Andrews saying of footy’s importance: “it will be a real boost if we can get footy going again”.
But McLachlan admitted the likely banning of mass gatherings for the entire 2020 year meant it would be “challenging” to have fans in stadiums all year.
The league’s own finals ticketing document in 2015 stated the league made a $20 million windfall from finals tickets and secured a $9 million profit from Grand Final tickets.
Clubs would be battered by further multi-million dollar losses if they played every game for the entire season behind closed doors.
Collingwood made $30 million from membership and match day revenue last year, while West Coast made $14 million from corporate hospitality and $27 million from membership.
The league’s 2019 annual general report stated 6,951,304 fans attended 198 home-and-away games, but it increasingly likely the league will miss out on the revenue from seven million fans paying to attend games in 2020.
No fans in any stadiums for the season would have financial ramifications for the AFL and its AFL Members and the MCC’s membership base as well as clubs.
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But it would ensure the $418 million of revenue from TV rights flows to the league, which has taken out a $600 million line of credit to survive the coronavirus crisis.
McLachlan said he hoped to get the season finished well before New Year’s Eve but potentially without any crowds — which would include the Grand Final.
“I take a line through what (Victoria’s Chief Health Officer) Brett Sutton said on Saturday … (and) I think that’s going to be challenging (to host crowds) this year,” he said on 3AW.
“That doesn’t mean it won’t happen later in the year, but certainly not contemplating crowds at the start.
“And I think if you take a line through what Brett Sutton said, who in Victoria will be the guy making the decision, I think it’s a challenge to have (crowds) at all this year. But we are going very well and things change.”
“We are all keen to get AFL back and get moving again with the right timing and the right assurances,” he said.
“My suggestion was it needs to be a national conversation because it does relate to how teams can move around the country.
“We don’t want a situation where everyone’s in quarantine crossing a state border for 14 days. The AFL can’t work in that regard.
“But it needs a detailed proposal that works through exactly how this is managed, how the physical distancing will be in place and surveillance for illness of any players is managed so that’s still to come through.”
Originally published as AFL concedes entire 2020 season might be played without crowds due to coronavirus pandemic