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The AFL finally has their shiny new broadcast rights deal.
On Tuesday afternoon it was announced that the incumbent duo Channel 7 and Foxtel had retained the rights to broadcast AFL and AFLW matches.
For this privilege, between them they will pay $4.5 billion over seven years starting in 2025, with Foxtel bearing the cost of roughly 60 per cent of it.
It’s a colossal uptick from around $473 million per year for the 2023 and 2024 seasons, up to $642 million a year from 2025 and beyond.
This broadcast money is the financial backbone of the league – albeit supplemented by attendance money – and it allows the league to run effectively.
As a result of this significant uptick in revenue, the AFL Players Association has the perfect opportunity to act.
The AFL’s Collective Bargaining Agreement with its players is up this year, so AFLPA CEO Paul Marsh and president Patrick Dangerfield will be back negotiating with the AFL to try to get better rights for the players after this new broadcast rights deal.
The key thing to note is that the salary cap is directly tied to league revenue. In the last CBA, for instance, the players managed to negotiate 28 per cent of all league revenue up to $6.574 billion, and then 11.2 per cent of additional club revenue above that.
Seem like a lot? Actually, this is absurdly low when you consider the huge amount of players in the league, as well as their vital role in making the sport what it is. Without the players, the AFL just wouldn’t exist.
Compared to the AFL, the NFL and NBA players associations are far more adversarial with the league, and therefore more demanding. This is mostly because it’s not technically the league who cuts their cheques, but the owners of the teams.
It’s a more pure form of collective bargaining than the AFL and looks more like the bargaining process that happens across Australia in various industries. As a result, the NBA and NFL are essentially at an even revenue split. That’s how someone like Aaron Rodgers is going to take home about $50 million in cash this year.
The AFLPA, on the other hand, is far more willing to kowtow to the league, largely because of the degree of control that the AFL wields.
That’s why the highest-paid players of 15 years ago under the 2007-2011 broadcast rights deal, when the AFL was ‘only’ raking in $156 million per year (Jonathan Brown and Chris Judd), are still only earning about the same amount as the highest-paid players of today (your Lance Franklins, Dustin Martins and Jeremy McGoverns) – a little over $1 million per year.
(Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)
Whilst the rest of the league is making more money – 26 players in 2009 were making between $500,000 and $800,000, and more than half the league was making between $100,000 and $300,000 – it is apparent that the players need to push for a bigger piece of the pie. The average player salary in 2021 still sits at a comparably meagre $372,000.
Yes, it’s the AFL that signs the cheques, and the AFL has a number of other things that they underwrite – namely Gold Coast, GWS and a burgeoning concussion lawsuit settlement fund. But a 28 per cent split with its primary employees is closer to the UFC than it is to other comparably structured sports.
I’ve referred to the UFC here because that body has actively sought to destroy any attempts by fighters to unionise and are constantly – and correctly – lambasted for not paying fighters what they are worth. The UFC is a legal cartel with no real competition in their space; that sounds familiar.
The game earns more money than ever before, and yet that rising tide has not lifted all boats in the way that it should – indeed, in the way that it has in every single other comparable professional sporting association.
The Players Association must push for the league to move with the times and demand more money, despite the hold that the AFL has over the league.
The league cannot cry poor like they did over COVID, nor can they claim that there just is not enough to money to pay the players. There is enough money to go well above 28 per cent of league revenue being devoted to the salary cap, whilst still being enough left over for the AFL executive to hand themselves some bonuses.
The players need to, and should, push for a far bigger chunk of the revenue pie than they are currently getting.
But do I have faith in Dangerfield and Marsh doing it? Based on history, why should I?
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