Skill errors, poor crowds and a $200m loss: Why the league is worried about AFLW

Sydney Morning Herald

19 hours ago

Two years ago, Dillon used the cautionary example of cricket's Big Bash League, saying that competition had expanded too quickly and had been forced to reduce games as a result. Speaking to clubs during the AFLW pay negotiations with players demanding more games, Dillon reported TV ratings were down 70 per cent on season one and crowd numbers down by 60 per cent.
While several CEOs on the Gold Coast pointed to the additional government funding, sponsorship, cultural benefits and new audiences driven by AFLW, Dillon and his team remained adamant the competition could not afford to support significant further expansion as it heads towards the next player wage negotiations. Currently, the AFLW costs about $100 million per year to run, earning back about $50 million.
In 2024, the AFL posted a profit of more than $40 million, according to its annual report.
The AFLW season this year opens with Carlton-Collingwood on August 14 at Ikon Park. The Thursday night clash will be televised on Channel Seven and the season will run for 12 home-and-away rounds – one additional round from 2024 as dictated by the current collective bargaining agreement. The women's salary cap sits at $1.175 million and will increase to $1.375 million by 2027 in the final year of the current deal.
Having completed an extensive review into AFLW, the game has also bolstered its women's competition committee, chaired by commissioner Simone Wilkie. It has eight new members including Essendon president David Barham, incoming AFL COO Tom Harley, Tasmania Football Club executive Kath McCann and West Australian women's pioneer Jan Cooper. Key priorities going forward following the review include prioritising the role of second-tier competitions and identifying and celebrating the key differences between the women's and the men's game.
Among a number of minor rule tweaks to improve the spectacle and open up the on-field game, the AFLW considered but ultimately rejected allowing players to run 25 metres before bouncing the ball, a skill a number of players, particularly the growing Irish contingent, have struggled with.
Tasmania's push to launch its inaugural AFLW team in 2027 before the AFL side scheduled for 2028 now looks unlikely, largely due to cost considerations.
The presentation on the Gold Coast, led by the competition's strategy boss Walter Lee, Dillon and football and AFLW executive Laura Kane, included extensive research into women's sporting competitions and compared the merits of private ownership against subsidised models such as AFLW.
They included the Women's Super League in the UK, a soccer competition that has had an evolving structure since its inception in 2010 and a complicated relationship with private investment. In 2023 the clubs broke away from the FA to form their own competition. Also included was the WNBA in the US, in which the teams and the competition were collectively owned by the NBA until 2002 when the men's national body sold all the teams either to their men's counterparts or to third parties.
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The AFL also presented the highly successful example of Angel City FC, a professional women's soccer team based in Los Angeles formed in 2020 and including a long list of high-profile female celebrity owners before Disney CEO Bob Iger and his wife Willow Bay became the team's majority shareholders in 2024.
Although private ownership for AFLW teams looks unlikely, AFL bosses concluded to the clubs on the Gold Coast that historically the most successful women's sporting clubs began as independent products not affiliated to traditional men's sports. The annual timing of the women's fixture remains a topic of ongoing debate for the competition along with the choice of grand final venue and representative games.