By Jake Niall
North Melbourne will overtake St Kilda as the AFL’s most heavily funded Victorian club this year in the AFL’s latest distribution of variable funding to the 18 clubs.
And the same four power clubs – Collingwood, Richmond, West Coast and Hawthorn – again will not receive any additional dollars this year, besides the base distribution of between $10.5 million to $11 million.
The Saints and North are the two Victorian clubs who will receive the most funding from the AFL.Credit: AFL Photos
Expansion teams Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney will remain well ahead of the 16 other clubs on the funding ladder, receiving around $25 million each in 2023, or more than $14 million in extra funding.
Shedding light on the funding figures, as done by The Age on Friday, prompted Collingwood president Jeff Browne to call on the AFL to do something about the shortfall between funding and total player payments.
Variable funding is the AFL’s system for equalising the competition, ensuring that all clubs can compete on a relatively level footing. It has been instrumental in the likes of the Bulldogs and Demons winning drought-breaking flags.
As the AFL finalises the variable funding for 2023 – most, if not all, clubs have been told what they will receive this year – The Age can also reveal the following details about the 18 clubs from senior competition sources:
- The Brisbane Lions, who have the competition’s largest debt, will retain a similar level of funding to 2022, a total of more than $18 million, and will rank third on the funding table, narrowly ahead of North Melbourne. The Kangaroos have had variable funding increased this year to more than $18 million after several years in which they were well behind St Kilda and even the Western Bulldogs financially.
- St Kilda also will exceed $18 million, a figure that has been reduced from more than $20 million in 2017, 2018 and 2019, when they were easily the most-funded Victorian club. AFL boss Gillon McLachlan challenged the Saints to improve their financial performance nearly five years ago. The extent of their extra funding has incensed some rival clubs, particularly in comparison to the smaller teams, the Kangaroos, Bulldogs and Melbourne. St Kilda have paid off a major chunk of a debt that peaked at nearly $14 million a few years ago during COVID-19, but have more than halved it to a little more than $6 million. As The Age revealed last year, the Saints had received about $17 million more than the next Victorian club, the Western Bulldogs, in the decade from 2012 until the end of 2021.
- Essendon will be the fifth least-funded club, gaining less than $1 million in additional funding.
- Their great rival Carlton are expected to receive $1 million to $2 million extra. However, the AFL views the Blues as a club that will not need additional support for much longer given their vast support and on-field improvement.
- Melbourne will receive fractionally more in variable funding than the Western Bulldogs. Both clubs have greatly improved their financial position over recent years, and are falling into the same funding bracket as Port Adelaide and the Sydney Swans of close to an additional $5 million.
- 2022 premiers and regional powerhouse Geelong will receive between $1 million and $2 million in addition to the base funding, placing the Cats in the same funding group as Adelaide, Fremantle and Carlton, but ahead of Hawthorn, Collingwood and Richmond on the funding table.
- Hawthorn remain in the gang of four clubs – as they have been since 2020 – that gain no additional funding. This is despite a lean period on the field and long-term rebuild with a young list, and the prospect of losing their millions from a second base in Tasmania if/when a Tassie team gains entry to the AFL (from 2027 most likely). The Hawks have an outstanding balance sheet, however, having sold their pokies assets for more than $40 million, with freeholds at Waverley and their next home at Dingley. The Hawks have net assets of more than $90m according to their annual report.
All told, nine clubs, or half of the competition, have been granted comparatively little extra funding this year and are viewed as being financially robust. They are, unsurprisingly, the six strongest Victorian clubs (Collingwood, Richmond, Hawthorn, Essendon, Carlton and Geelong) plus the two Perth clubs and the Adelaide Crows.
While the amounts shift each year, according to the position of the clubs, the AFL has been careful to not slash the funding of clubs with significant debt, notably the Lions and Saints. The Brisbane Lions still owe more than $13 million to either the AFL or their bank, but made a sizeable profit last year and have recovered strongly from the COVID-19 pandemic period.
The variable funding total shared between the clubs will be about $100 million, of which the expansion teams share more than $28 million. The clubs have regained the $2 million that was removed from their base funding due to COVID-19 cuts.
The AFL has not yet finalised the salary cap amount for 2023, as negotiations continue with the players’ union (the AFL Players’ Association), which is why the base funding amount is estimated in a range between $10.5 million and $11 million. The clubs have been told to budget for a salary cap increase of 5 per cent. This will be funded in the base amount for all clubs.
Collingwood’s ‘bridging the gap’ call
Magpies president Jeff Browne on Friday called on the AFL to bridge the gap between funding and annual total player payments.
Half of the 18 AFL clubs will receive less than the annual salary cap, which was $14.7 million in 2021.
Bridging that gap will put pressure on several clubs, with Browne saying the AFL needed to find ways to increase their revenue, so they can hand out more across the board than the 2023 figure of approximately $270 million.
“As part of the review of the club funding model, the AFL needs to give high strategic priority to bridging the gap between the base distributions to clubs and the minimum spend required under the total player payments,” Browne said.
Gold Coast chairman Tony Cochrane believes Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs would not have won their drought-breaking premierships if not for the AFL’s financial equalisation model.
“Equalisation works. Without equalisation, I would be so bold as to suggest that Melbourne, the Western Bulldogs and GWS wouldn’t have been in grand finals [in the last decade],” Cochrane told The Age.
“You’ve only got to look at this year. If you’re well-balanced, and you’re looking ahead to this year, you’d be very hard-pressed – with the exception of about three teams – to work out what’s going to be the top eight.
“It’s a very even competition, and equalisation is part of that; versus we turn ourselves into an EPL [English Premier League], in the UK, and you have four or five big, successful clubs and everybody under them struggles to maintain their position and be in a position, on a reasonably regular basis, where they can be competitive.”
Cochrane said it was an exhaustive process to arrive at the final funding decisions, and was unable to project exactly when the Suns would no longer need such a significant injection of annual cash.
“It’s a very hard question to answer. I think I’m on the record as saying I thought it was a 20-to-25-year process, so we are in year 12, so we’re roughly halfway there,” he said.
“I’ve never been one to begrudge another club, whatever they get, in the hope that any other club wouldn’t begrudge, in our case, what is a club in its infancy, in only its 12th season.”
“Everyone gets roughly $10.5-$11 million. That’s a point that really needs to be made because a lot of people will ... go, ‘Oh God, they get $25 million more than my club’ – and that’s not true at all.
“The equalisation model has a baseline to it and, fortuitously, we’ve got a number of clubs that don’t need any extra funding because they’re so strong and have massive memberships and incomes.”
With Peter Ryan, Marc McGowan
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