This month, new Tabcorp chief, and former AFL CEO, Gillon McLachlan wasted no time in noting how big betting is in the sports world.
“Tabcorp is the backbone of racing, it plays a role in sport. It’s entertainment. I know a lot of that space, and it talks to Australians who are deciding how to spend their Saturday afternoons. I understand that as well,” he said.
Five years ago I wrote the article: Why the AFL is bad for Australian Football.
I felt compelled to put down some words after seeing the collateral damage suffered by grassroots football and communities across the country in the unrelenting drive for growth and production of football content by the AFL.
In that article, I argued that the AFL should be treated more as a media organisation that produces football content than an organisation that runs a football competition or a national sport.
If understood this way, a lot of the decisions made by the AFL make sense.
I further argued that responsibility for the rules and the national game should be divested from the AFL.
Since that article was published I have received much support and recent developments in the UK may prove a model for a better regulatory system in Australia.
However, in the past five years, I have witnessed a further decline in the state of the game and governance by the AFL.
Despair that has brought me back to arguing melancholically; why the AFL is still bad for Australian Football.
Where to begin? Let’s start with McLachlan.
His move to become CEO of Tabcorp is not necessarily surprising and it got me thinking about the state of the game.
Sports gambling is an insidious growth market for sports and McLachlan does indeed know “a lot of that space”. Fond of saying the quiet part out loud, McLachlan characterises sport as entertainment.
The AFL is entertaining. It can be entertainment. The AFL is not (yet) scripted drama but it can be dramatic.
Crowds at the MCG. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
Sport is ripe for content mining and there is a voracious appetite for it; see the ever-increasing volume of “sport docudrama”, such as Drive to Survive, Welcome to Wrexham, Take the Steps etc.
But sport has a deeper meaning, a deeper connection to community that gets overlooked by an AFL that manufactures controversies, and crafts narratives in the production of football content to compete with other entertainment media.
Despite bulging AFL revenues, the game is not well. Some very recent events have brought into sharp focus.
“It’s not an even competition. Anyone that says it is isn’t talking sense,” Sydney Swans coach John Longmire said.
Longmire courted controversy by stating a fact: the AFL competition is not even. He was fending off notions that Sydney had an unfair advantage through early season byes.
Of course, the AFL competition is not even; it’s not fair. It’s designed that way; a feature, not a bug. As I pointed out in my 2019 article, the draw is one of the levers the AFL uses to manipulate results.
At the time of writing, the AFL helpfully confirmed this to the Guardian when it told them that “The two KPIs of the fixture are broadcast viewership and attendance,” according to fixture boss Josh Bowler. Fairness, a quaint notion, isn’t a KPI for the AFL.
New rules tzar Laura Kane publicly changed the rules on holding the ball. This represented a somewhat welcome departure from previous practice.
Previously, the AFL would announce rule changes or “interpretations” at the beginning of the year (treating the sport like an iPhone that requires constant updates) and tweak interpretations behind the scenes as the season unfolded to make it a “better” product for television.
Now, we have rule changes made public during the season, which instead of increasing understanding of the rules, has left everyone more confused. How fantastic for the umpires.
Kane has been busy in the short time she has been in the position. Kane finalised a competitive balance review which seems to have made recommendations so forcefully that changes to the draft may be made this year.
Carlton is furious; any changes as proposed would put into jeopardy the long-term plans they have made under the existing rules.
In law, retrospective changes or changes that affect existing contracts are shunned as they have the capacity to be unfair.
But it should come as no surprise to anyone that the AFL will arbitrarily change the rules as it goes to suit certain commercial purposes.
It’s clear the AFL has no interest in running a fair football competition. Indeed, if one were to design a system with the greatest capacity for corruption or compromise with an attendant lack of accountability and transparency, it would be hard to design a better one than the AFL.
It is telling that Caroline Wilson, as Chief Football Writer for The Age, spends most of her time writing and talking about the AFL, rather than football matches.
Outside of these obvious problems with the elite league, the situation in Tasmania highlights the problems with the governance of Australian football in the country.
“The AFL had one job – protect the game. But in Tasmania, it’s dying”, journalist Martin Flanagan said back in February 2023.
The debacle over the Tasmanian AFL team and the demands for a state-funded AFL stadium in Hobart is emblematic of AFL hubris.
While the politics of the new stadium seem to have been settled (outside of John Setka’s bizarre intervention), the glaring juxtaposition of a shiny new stadium and a shiny new team in a state that has suffered most from AFL mismanagement is jarring.
At the turn of the century, Australian football participation in Tasmania was the highest in the country.
The 2019 AFL Licence Taskforce Business Plan, which was prepared for the State Government of Tasmania, justified a new Tasmanian team by linking it to the pronounced decrease in the participation rate for Australian football in Tasmania.
Matthew Richardson poses with The Tasmania Devils inaugural jumper during the Tasmania Football Club Launch. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
The participation rate will increase in Tasmania if there is a Tasmanian AFL team and a new stadium, according to the theory. Who was responsible for administering the game in Tasmania?
In 2008, Tim Lane gave evidence to a Senate Inquiry and argued that money contributed by the AFL to Tasmania was solely for the purpose of talent development, rather than the sustainability of the game in the state.
Lane argued that the AFL extracted the best talent from Tasmania and by doing so devalued local Tasmanian football by depriving it of the best Tasmanian talent.
This causes a vicious circle where over time the infrastructure that supports football in Tasmania falls apart. A state league fell over, the VFL team shut down, and many local clubs and leagues have closed down.
Participation rates in Tasmania are now at similar levels to the ACT. Having refused to learn from the mistakes of the past, this approach looks set to continue as the Business Plan admitted that community-level grassroots football would only exist to deliver talent to the AFL, “a total ‘end-to-end’ approach to the sport in Tasmania”.
In my 2019 article, I argued the AFL is vertically integrating Australian football across the country, undermining local football communities to serve the elite league.
This is unsustainable in the long-term and will be particularly exacerbated through granting additional AFL licences amid declining participation rates and the increasing dominance of soccer in youth participation.
Interestingly, in arguing against a new Tasmanian team at that time, the AFL admitted to the Senate inquiry in 2008 that with GWS and the Suns entering the league, there were concerns about the talent pool being spread too thin.
All this is a concern. But from where I sit, there are two longer-term threats to the AFL: concussion and gambling. Both of these are self-inflicted.
The AFL is all at sea on concussion, again. An early season strong missive out of AFL House on the sanctity of protecting the head and new concussion protocols has collided with the perception/reality of AFL manipulation.
The AFL has been perceived as giving favourable treatment to high-profile players either through the match review panel, the tribunal or even the standard of umpiring.
All this would be very problematic for any organisation that wants to run a fair football competition.
But the AFL should be considered less an organisation that runs a fair football competition and more a media company. The liability risks are self-evident and the AFL faces years of litigation over allegations of historical negligence.
The incursion of gambling into every waking moment of football culture can have real-world consequences for punters but also raises risk for the AFL.
Alex Pearce of the Dockers questions a call with the umpires after the siren. (Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images)
This year the AFL stumbled upon limited mea culpa (a Latin term meaning my fault or my mistake) with respect to certain umpiring decisions.
While admirable, it may have significant liability consequences for the AFL if it acknowledges a decision was wrong and that decision loses a lot of people and a lot of money.
It will be hard to argue causation, but the most glaring example is the decision in last year’s ultimate game not to award a goal to Adelaide late in its game with Sydney, which meant the Crows didn’t make the finals.
Returning to McLachlan, I can only reproduce the words of the great Gideon Haigh when he said “Here’s a man who helped sport and sports broadcasting develop their parallel addictions to gambling money. Gambling is, as smoking was, a slow-acting poison that uses sport to mask its taste.”
That he could so effortlessly walk into the top job at a gambling company from the top job at the AFL, just as his mentor had done previously, says a lot about these organisations.
Perhaps the AFL should be treated as a gambling company.
While AFL House is fond of kicking them, Australian football does not have an own-goal rule (please don’t give them any ideas).
Looking at a sport that does have an own goal rule may give policymakers in Australia some ideas on how best to manage a sport in a country where the organisation of the elite league is horribly conflicted and the interests of the elite league do not align with the interests of the sport generally.
In the UK, where several high-profile soccer clubs attempted a breakaway league while others suffered chronic financial mismanagement or collapsed entirely, the UK Government is looking to step in.
The UK Government has cited shortcomings in the current model of self-regulation as a factor in the case for reform.
The Football Governance Bill will establish a new Independent Football Regulator for men’s elite football in England and Wales.
The regulator will have three primary objectives 1) club financial soundness; 2) systemic financial resilience; and 3) safeguarding the heritage of English football.
All clubs in the five tiers of English football will require a licence and the regulator will have broad discretionary powers.
Clubs are regulated and so too are the leagues. The Bill has bipartisan support.
The Sports Minister Stuart Andrew said of the Bill, “Football clubs are vital community assets and for far too long some fans have been taken for granted”.
The same could be said for football in Australia.
In my 2019 article, I argued that the organisation that administers the elite competition must not also administer the sport in the country and set the rules of the game.
The UK model is something that must be considered for Australia. Australian football is too important to leave to the AFL.
North Melbourne Kangaroos
v
Western Bulldogs
AFL : Head To Head
Sat, 29 Jun 2024, 13:45
Sydney Swans
v
Fremantle Dockers
AFL : Head To Head
Sat, 29 Jun 2024, 13:45
Gold Coast Suns
v
Collingwood Magpies
AFL : Head To Head
Sat, 29 Jun 2024, 16:35
Geelong Cats
v
Essendon Bombers
AFL : Head To Head
Sat, 29 Jun 2024, 19:30
Adelaide Crows
v
Greater Western Sydney Giants
AFL : Head To Head
Sat, 29 Jun 2024, 19:30
St Kilda Saints
v
Port Adelaide Power
AFL : Head To Head
Sun, 30 Jun 2024, 13:10
Richmond Tigers
v
Carlton Blues
AFL : Head To Head
Sun, 30 Jun 2024, 15:20
West Coast Eagles
v
Hawthorn Hawks
AFL : Head To Head
Sun, 30 Jun 2024, 16:40
* Odds Correct At Time Of Posting. Check PlayUp Website For Latest Odds
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