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With much change about to occur in the Australian football landscape over the next few years, I thought it might be instructive to look at end of year financial performances of the AFL clubs for 2009.
Such a study confirms a few of our expectations for the coming years, and allows us to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the current AFL competition vis-à-vis its clubs.
I’ve listed the clubs in order of their memberships for 2009, although, as you can see, the correlation of members to overall operating result is not strict.
Source: The Sunday Age, March 7, 2010
Hawthorn: 52,496 members; $2.72 million profit
Adelaide: 46,472 members; $0.10 million profit
Collingwood: 45,972 members; $0.60 million profit
West Coast: 43,927 members; $0.24 million profit
Carlton: 42,408 members; $0.75 million profit
Essendon: 40,412 members; $0.76 million profit
Fremantle: 39,206 members; $0.59 million profit
Geelong: 37,160 members; $0.63 million profit
Richmond: 36,981 members; $0.08 million loss
St Kilda: 31,906 members; $1.14 million profit
Melbourne: 31,506 members; $0.02 million profit
Port Adelaide: 30,605 members; $1.57 million profit
North Melbourne: 28,340 members; $0.60 million profit
Western Bulldogs: 28,215 members; $0.24 million profit
Sydney: 26,269 members; $0.75 million loss
Brisbane: 24,873 members; $0.60 million loss
No surprises that Sydney and Brisbane have both the lowest memberships and the largest losses. In fact, only one other club recorded a loss, and that was Richmond’s small loss of some $80,000.
It’s becoming clear that you need a membership base of around 30,000, as a minimum, to compete in the AFL, and the two clubs operating in non-AFL territory are starting to lag behind a bit. Of course the interesting aspect is that it’s in precisely these two areas where the AFL is seeking to establish new clubs over the next two seasons.
It just goes to show, if we needed any reminding – and this goes for all four codes – that it’s very tough to establish new clubs at the best of times, let alone in areas where the game has not been followed traditionally.
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