AFL Power Index: How your club is really faring off the field
From social following and total supporters to league handouts and revenue, we take an in-depth look at the financial health and growth of every AFL club. Who has the true power?
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The 18 AFL clubs will battle relentlessly for a shot at finals football over the next four months, but off-field the competition is equally hot.
No one wants to be the club who looks dependent on the AFL’s coffers to survive, and everyone wants to get to the end of the season in a position to declare record membership numbers.
Some clubs are flushed with cash, some have invested heavily in redevelopments or creative business ventures, and many have moved away from controversial pokie machines.
Where does your club perform strongest, and where is there work to be done to catch up to the competition?
With access to all clubs’ 2023-24 financial reports, we unpack the numbers across four crucial categories in an interesting look at the AFL’s current economic landscape.
Membership and crowds
A surprise purple interloper has used its new stadium to become a growing force in football attendances, with Fremantle shooting to the top four for home crowd average in 2024.
Generally, high membership numbers equate to high attendances – of the top six teams per home crowd average, five have more than 80,000 members on the books.
So it may be somewhat of a surprise to see the Dockers, with an average of 46,580, sitting fourth for fans at home matches.
Fremantle beat out rivals West Coast in that figure by more than 3000 per game, despite having more than 40,000 less members.
Fremantle’s membership tally of 62,237 last season actually ranked 14th last year.
As a percentage of membership, the Dockers home attendance was almost 75 per cent of its membership base.
If Collingwood achieved that same level in its home crowds, the Pies would have had to average 82,971 at games last year, just over 14,000 more than the Magpie Army secured.
It’s a mark of the keenness of West Australian footy supporters that the Dockers pulled in such a strong crowd – West Coast ranked six despite a dismal season results wise.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ‘big four’ Melbourne sides dominated home and away average crowds, benefiting from a constant stream of MCG blockbusters.
But despite ranking second for home and away attendance, Essendon sat seventh for membership.
The two bottom sides for membership, GWS Giants and Gold Coast, were also the two lowest for attendance.
In its annual survey to calculate soft support – footy fans who aren’t members – Roy Morgan as usual had Sydney at the top.
The Swans have 1,337,000 supporters, according to the research, way ahead of Brisbane (1,049,000) and Collingwood (908,000).
Support like that may not always help the bottom line but when a team gets on a roll and even a portion of those numbers jump on board it can create some wild momentum.
Social media
Sometimes even the very best strategy on the socials can only stretch so far.
GWS Giants have been rightly lauded for being the best in the game on your social feed but ultimately, the orange team just doesn’t have the supporters of the big Victorian clubs to blow up their follower totals.
Social gurus will tell you that the follower count isn’t as important as engagement but on those raw numbers, the Giants sit 16th for followers across Facebook, TikTok and Instagram.
Collingwood comes out well clear on top, almost 200,000 above second-placed Hawthorn for total count. The Pies top the tally across all three platforms.
Hawthorn has ridden the wave of HokBall to second on the tally, a jump above the membership ladder, where the Hawks naked sixth last year.
St Kilda is another side who does better on socials than the membership count, ranking 11th on your iPhone compared to 16th with members.
Port Adelaide drops from 10th in members to 14th on socials and Melbourne slips from 11th to 15th.
Despite being a huge club off field, West Coast seemingly has little interest with the youngsters on TikTok, ranking comfortably last in follower count with 64,000.
Curiously, fellow WA side Fremantle sits second-last with just 75,600 TikTok followers.
Those in the west need to do more dance videos.
Followers were counted before the start of round 4.
Business scale
An expanding gym empire has Richmond on top as the club that turned over the most money last year.
The Tigers led all comers with $125m in revenue last year and ended with a profit of $2.8m.
Their fitness, health and communities forays – led by Aligned Leisure – drew in $58.7m in revenue alone, more than the total revenue of three rival clubs in Melbourne, Gold Coast and North Melbourne.
But pushing tin hasn’t made Richmond rich, the losses from that part of the club left a profit of just $63,265, so revenue doesn’t always mean profit.
One former club president described members and the income they bring as the bedrock of any good club’s finances.
Unsurprisingly Collingwood dominated that field last year, while GWS Giants, Gold Coast and North Melbourne struggled.
As a result, those three clubs drew in the most money in help from AFL HQ.
The Giants and Suns combined to receive more than $69m, about the same as the bottom four clubs – Collingwood, West Coast, Hawthorn, Richmond – for league handouts.
Fremantle’s strong attendance at home games at Perth Stadium saw it jump into the top three for membership and ticketing income, an impressive effort for a club once seen as a minnow.
Assets and spending
A surprising rival to one of footy’s financial powerhouses is one that was almost shuttered multiple times due to debt.
The ownership of Whitten Oval means the Western Bulldogs have $103m in total assets, second only to mighty West Coast.
Being asset rich doesn’t necessarily make the Dogs a rich club, they still ranked midtable for cash in the bank.
Richmond has the healthiest bank balance as it raises money for a new upgrade at Punt Rd, while St Kilda is the only club in the league with less than $1m tucked into its account, with the Saints sitting at $651,341.
Gold Coast is well down the list on its assets with just $92,542 listed, but that is a marked improvement on 2023, when the Suns were almost $6m in debt in that area.
What fans really care about it on the field though and despite promoting a $1.4m increase in spending on the football department last year, St Kilda is last for football spend on $31.2m.
Saints chief executive Carl Dilena said in December that improved “financial stability has allowed us to significantly increase our investment in football operations”, but the Saints have some way to go.
Melbourne spent the most on football last year, but that figure was clouded with a $3.1m payout to Angus Brayshaw after his medical retirement.
Hawthorn and Adelaide ignored requests to provide a football department spend figure.
All clubs are limited on football spend by a league-wide soft cap, which meant there was little variation between those figures.
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