AFL survives ‘heart attack’ but more pain yet to come

Andrew Pridham calls 2020 the year of the ‘heart attack’ but he worries even more about what looms over the horizon.

Swans star Callum Sinclair is tackled by teammate James Bell during a training session at Lakeside Oval in Sydney on Friday. Picture: AAP

Andrew Pridham calls 2020 the year of the “heart attack” due to the COVID-19 shutdown, but he worries even more about what looms over the horizon.

The Swans chairman says his club is staring at a 30 per cent cut in revenue this year — which equates to a fall in income of about $15m — and Sydney will have to borrow money for the first time in about two decades.

Dealing with star forward Buddy Franklin’s hamstrings is one thing, but Pridham says the Swans are trying to save as many jobs off the field as possible and working on restarting plans for its much-needed new $65m training and administration facility it had to pull.

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While Pridham maintains his optimism about football surviving COVID-19 and is glad the Swans will take the field again in two weeks, albeit in an empty stadium, he admits to concerns about what is around the corner.

“I worry a lot more about 2021 than 2020,” Pridham says. “If 2020 was the heart attack for the AFL then 2021 is going to be dealing with all the pain that this year has caused. We’ll have to take on debt, and we haven’t done that in the 18 years I’ve been involved.

“How much, we just don’t know. There’s just so many variables at the moment and things have changed so quickly. But football is going to be different in the future.”

If that 30 per cent fall is replicated across the 18 AFL clubs, it means more than $300m in lost revenue alone. It is a dramatic consequence of a sport that returns to the field on June 11 but one that will have no spectators or ­lucrative corporate hospitality payers for some time.

Then there are the borrowings that most clubs will have to undertake to get through this year and probably the next two or three at least, says Pridham.

“There’s certainly going to be a lot of debt and that is something the industry will have to get used to dealing with. How much that will be, we just doing know. But it could be substantial.”

Pridham is known as one of the more pragmatic figures around the game and, as managing director of investment bank Moelis Australia, he has experienced the ups and downs of the stockmarket since early March.

That business acumen and his level-headed approach — he jokes that being labelled pragmatic simply means he’s capable of changing his views, in a sport with leaders know for their rusted-on opinions — saw Pridham quickly drafted onto a coronavirus crisis board to assist AFL boss Gillon McLachlan when the world turned upside down in March.

Pridham joined peers such as Collingwood’s Eddie McGuire and Peter Gordon from the Western Bulldogs and says such was the fear about the short-term future of the world, let alone sport, that there were genuine fears some clubs could go out of business.

“There were a lot of sleepless nights at the time,” he says.

The Swans have one of the most impressive collections of blue-chip sponsors in the AFL and Pridham says they have all stuck with the club, and members have kept signing up even with no matches on.

Another ray of light has been approval for the $65m revamp of the Hordern Pavilion and the Royal Hall of Industries the Swans were to undertake as a joint venture that included important new training and office space.

The project was paused in April after several years spent working on the deal and millions of dollars shelled out on planning documents, and the Swans gave up their lease on the precinct. Pridham says with funding in place he is hopeful of once again getting the green light for the project.

But Pridham says the Swans are still trying to figure how many employees they will have in the future, from coaches to administrative staff.

“Things are going to change, and every club is going through every line item (on their profit and loss statement) at the moment. Do you have events people with no events on? All that sort of thing.

“JobKeeper has been a lifesaver for clubs, but what happens when that ends (in September)?”

Pridham will watch the Swans’ first match back against Essendon on June 14 on TV, though says with a chuckle he knows when he will next see his team in person: “They think they’ll have spectators at the grand final, so it’ll be at that.”