Gillon McLachlan has a communication problem. This seems obvious after news emerged that the 2019 AFLW season is likely going to be the same length as 2018 — but with one week of regular season removed to make way for a qualifying final.
As I wrote in my wishlist for 2019, a 44-week offseason is real stretch for most athletes, and this recent explosion of social media displeasure from senior players and figures is alarming only in the sense that the AFL apparently didn’t see it coming.
Gil’s communications problem stems from the fact that the AFL does have some solid reasons for trying to align the AFLW season the way that it is, but the AFL is reluctant to talk about any of these issues openly for a combination of commercial and social reasons.
With the women’s league, the AFL is attempting to pursue a strategy of maximum visibility within a limited window. That limited window lies in the space between the Australian Open tennis and the beginning of the AFL regular season.
The primary reason why the AFL does not want to compete against the tennis is not so much that the Aus Open absolutely cannot be competed against, but rather that both it and the AFLW are broadcast on the same network — Channel Seven.
Asking Seven to broadcast both at the same time would be asking them to compete against themselves, when Seven’s best commercial interest is to concentrate all attention on the tennis with no distractions.
This is a bad look for the AFL because obviously they’re putting Channel Seven’s commercial interests ahead of the entire sport of women’s football. Therefore, they don’t want to talk about it. Hence McLachlan’s strangled attempt at incomplete and inadequate explanations for why female footy players should work their butts off all year for a season that’s not expanding, but shrinking.
In 2020, the tennis moves to Channel Nine. Will this open up space for AFLW expansion? Gil can’t talk about it. Channel Seven will then have the cricket instead of the tennis, in a giant game of network musical chairs.
Will Channel Seven then demand that the AFLW season remains short so it doesn’t compete against the cricket? Gil can’t talk about it.
What are the AFL’s long-term plans for AFLW expansion anyway, if such plans even exist? Gil has so far made no attempt to talk about it.
What have the AFL’s very excellent market analysis people discovered about the popularity of women’s football as a going commercial concern? The fact that Gil doesn’t want to talk about it raises concerns that the results aren’t great.
All of the planning for the AFLW’s future is taking place behind a veil of secrecy and commercial confidentiality.
Add to this a reluctance to talk openly about the commercial struggles of a women’s sport to attract viewers and advertisers due to the divisiveness of some such blunt observations, and the lack of transparency turns into a brick wall.
The AFL’s problem is that this brick wall works both ways — not only does it blind everyone on the outside of the AFL hierarchy from looking in, but it stops the AFL from clearly seeing out.
So they keep smacking into the wall themselves, first most notably when they got everyone offside by changing the congestion rules after Round 1 last season, and now by apparently failing to predict the current backlash.
If they hadn’t built this brick wall of non-communication between AFL HQ and the top female players and coaches, they might not collide with it quite so often and painfully.
It’s not inconceivable that all the senior female players could simply refuse to play next season under the current arrangement — a drastic step, perhaps, but given that they’re barely playing now, it could be argued that they’re not giving up very much at all.
At this point some transparency from the AFL would go a long way to fixing things. Female athletes playing this sport at the highest level are taking a lot on faith — namely that their enormous sacrifices of time and effort will eventually amount to something worthwhile.
Right now their faith is fading, and the AFL needs to pull back the curtain and show them all a glimpse of the way ahead so they can feel more like co-passengers on a group journey, and less like sheep crammed into a road train on the Princes Highway.
Who knows — the AFL might not be actually doing anything wrong. But when no one is allowed to see the reasoning behind their decisions, people will always assume it’s a stuff up, and the resulting bad PR will dog the AFL for as long as this brick wall stands.
Lroy
Guest
Junior male players dont receive anything. In under 19s you begin to win prizes like movie tickets for the top 3 players which are donated by supporters, or at least thats how it was at my club. Thursday nights they had a meat raffle which you could win, but you had to buy your own tickets ;-)
asd
Guest
Seems nearly unwatchable
pauly
Guest
The WBBL, WNBL and W-League all run alongside their respective men's competitions. Why can't the AFLW? Is it really humane to send the female players to play in conditions considered unsuitable for the male players?
MQ
Guest
True, but we just have to move past the idea that there is a period of the year where nothing else is on. Foxtel has a 24/7 channel, so that could show one game per night 7 days a week, while 7 has two secondary channels, which are likely to be the ones used for women's football.
Timmuh
Roar Guru
Seven have the Big Bash on practically every night in January. It is a conundrum. Most of these women aren't paid enough to be full time footballers, how many would have jobs that allow them ten weeks off if they get drafted to the other side of the country?
MQ
Guest
Good post. Also worth adding that the revenue the 8 teams raise easily surpasses that annual salary bill (Collingwood alone earns sponsorship for the women's team in excess of $2 mill per annum).
Jed Lanyon
Roar Rookie
You just can't add two new teams to a league and not expect every team to play each other once. Have the AFL not planned for this scenario? more teams coming the next year too!
IAP
Guest
Your post is just plainly wrong.
bobbo7
Guest
Good idea - might generate more interest. As it is it simply cannot compete with other weekend sports.
BrainsTrust
Guest
Mens AFL is a charity and it receives the most government funding of any charity. That government funding in the billions is dependent on now having a womens competition or the lot would be cut off. The womens competition is then tokenised and used then as a marketing device to promote mens AFL. So its funding the mens AFL in two ways. How many junior male AFL players are receiving money, and in most cases more than the average top level women, plus they are playing in the AFL season, and a lot more matches than the women and not televised so all that money is being spent without any commercial return.
Cat
Roar Guru
No, they aren't.
Paul D
Roar Guru
In 2018 the combined cap for the 8 AFLW sides was $ 2,752,000 For 8 male sides it would be about $96,000,000 Let me know when they start demanding that missing $93 million dollars. I normally don’t respond to such stupid lowbrow comments but it’s amazing how much lies and insecurity can be packed into a single post.
buttery
Roar Rookie
Two years in and the women players are demanding a bigger competition, next they will want to be paid on a par to the men, & so on & so forth, slow & steady wins the race & a bit of gratitude goes a long way.
Shane
Guest
Simple, obvious solution.
Shane
Guest
A deluded soul who secretly doesn't want women to enjoy the same opportunities as men.
IAP
Guest
You can't have a week off from the AFL in the second week to play a grand final of a second tier competition. That suggestion is ridiculous.
IAP
Guest
Why would the AFL pay the players to not be on TV? If they're serious about women's footy becoming a professional sport they're going to have to do the hard yards, just like every other sport has. They can't take short-cuts. They need to lift the standard of the women's VFL to the point that it's ready to be televised. The AFL can support the league, but the players are going to have to make some sacrifices along the way.
IAP
Guest
That's the main reason why they don't run it during winter; they know that if they play while the AFL is on no-one will watch it. It's a purely commercial decision that shows that the AFLW isn't actually commercially viable. Unless someone else wants to fund the league this is the best they're going to do. The AFL isn't a charity; women's footy doesn't deserve to be given charity, just because they're women, so they need to suck it up and bide their time.
MQ
Guest
I wonder whether down the track, the solution might be more mid-week games. I can imagine both 7 and Fox being receptive to footy during the week. It could at least be considered so as to have less of a clash with the men at the start of the AFL season. Also, it's inevitable that they are going to have start the league in early January, that's the only way with more teams. It's less of an issue if they're all evening games.
Paul D
Roar Guru
Disagree with the whole premise of this article. The AFLW is not a commercial endeavour at this stage, and I don’t see that the absence of a widely publicised PR drive is a bad thing for the competition. The people who it matters to, the players – and women in general who are getting into footy, they know all about it. People on this place who have daughters who are playing can’t talk highly enough of it, anecdotally here in Brisbane there has been an explosion of interest amongst ladies wanting to get involved – just because the elite level isn’t quite where you want it to be, doesn’t mean its broken For the record – 100% I believe that the AFL men’s comp proper should fund and pay for the AFLW’s game, hundreds of thousands of female fans pay memberships and go along to games, and it is vital that there is a top-line professional competition in some shape or form available for half of all Australians to play. I don’t watch it, I don’t pay attention to it, but I will always support its ongoing existence because I think it’s a vital cog in the relevance of Australian Rules going forward. The game would be irreparably diminished by its absence or failure.