AFL Rich 100: The teenagers who should be worth millions as AFL salary cap balloons
AFL clubs wanting to be part of the next Harley Reid bidding war will have to be prepared to stump up $2m a season. We delve into footy’s newest millionaires in this year’s Rich 100.
Footy’s new breed of millionaires are richer than their wildest dreams.
They deserve every penny and yet they are still waiting for the new king to leapfrog them with a historic deal worth $2 million in a single season.
Most of these youngsters are only just starting their peak earning years as the game’s new stars and off-field influencers.
We reveal many of them in the AFL Rich 100 list.
Gold Coast’s 24-year-old Ben King spearhead climbs into the million dollar bracket for the first time after being well paid in his development years.
His great mate Jack Lukosius isn’t short of $1 million a season already even as the final two years of his back-ended deal escalate even more given the Suns’ Total Player Payments demands.
Port Adelaide skipper Connor Rozee’s new eight-season deal kicks in this year and if he’s on just under $1 million this season the new pay deal will see him as a million-dollar man in the remaining years of his contract.
Nick Daicos is in the third season of his previous deal and earning around $900,000, but his new four-season contract kicks in for 2026.
The Collingwood ace will earn a vast fortune that might end up being $2 million a year at some point.
Tom De Koning is now an AFL rich lister on around $700,000 a season but with free agency around the corner at the end of 2025 he too will surely hit seven figures a season from 2026 onwards.
The question is whether Harley Reid will slingshot past all of those players by the time he hits his fourth season in 2027.
He is locked into a three-year mandatory deal that means he is criminally underpaid.
Industry figures believe that to lock away Reid for a fourth season the Eagles would need to pay him $2 million in that year.
He would be the AFL’s first $2 million man.
Rivals attempting to lure him back across the country are already coming up with outlandish figures, but a $2 million deal for 2027 would see him earning $3 million over his first four years.
That is only what he is due given his star power and marketing power.
What about players like Jason Horne Francis, who are locked in long-term on deals that were signed before even Port Adelaide knew he could be the game’s best player?
Those deals have myriad performance based bonuses and triggers that can escalate quickly to reward them for their talent.
Horne-Francis is only on around $700,000 this season, but that deal will ramp up in coming years.
Make no mistake – he will get his right whack from the Power.
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