By Jake Niall
All 18 AFL clubs have been given an extra half-million dollars in their salary caps as a result of the huge influx of money stemming from the extra game in Gather Round.
Senior AFL sources confirmed that the 18 clubs would receive $750,000 each for Gather Round in South Australia and that, of that amount, $500,000 would go to the players at every club - potentially easing some of the fiscal and salary-cap pressure on players and clubs.
Premier of South Australia Peter Malinauskas with AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan at the launch of Gather Round at Adelaide Oval.Credit: AFL Photos
They said the players would be paid on a pro-rata basis, meaning that every player would get paid in proportion to his 2023 salary.
The clubs would spend the remaining $250,000 on football staff, with the AFL boosting the soft cap on football department spending by that amount. The soft cap had been slashed from nearly $10 million before the pandemic to between $7 million and $8 million in 2023.
The large, one-off increase in clubs’ salary caps is the result of the millions that the AFL has reaped by creating the Gather Round – based on a similar initiative of the NRL – in South Australia and of the huge ticket sales for the nine matches, six of which will largely fill the Adelaide Oval.
The salary cap for every AFL club is $13.54 million and so the increase will boost the player payments for each club to more than $14 million.
All tickets to the Melbourne v Essendon game on Saturday afternoon and the subsequent Port Adelaide v Western Bulldogs at night – the first of two double-headers at Adelaide Oval – have been sold. Richmond and Sydney are playing in another high-stakes clash at Adelaide Oval on Friday night.
There are only about 300 tickets left for the later Sunday double-header, which starts with Geelong v West Coast (1.10pm Melbourne time) and then concludes with Collingwood’s huge clash with the unbeaten St Kilda (4.50pm Melbourne time).
The South Australian government has contributed financially to the AFL’s coffers as part of their successful tender to have the Gather Round in the state. Two games – Fremantle v Gold Coast (Friday twilight) and Greater Western Sydney and Hawthorn – are being played at the suburban Norwood Oval, while the Adelaide Hills town of Mount Barker is hosting the Brisbane Lions v North Melbourne game.
All told, AFL officials said they had sold close to 190,000 tickets for the round, with an estimated 60,000 sold to people - mainly from Victoria - from outside of the host state. A sizeable number of fans have travelled across the Victoria-SA border by car.
The financial gain for the clubs and players makes it a virtual certainty that the extra round in one state will be continued next year under Gillon McLachlan’s successor as chief executive of the AFL.
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