Report outlines record year
4:18:33 PM Tue 14 March, 2006
Paul Gough
Sportal for afl.com.au
The AFL's record-breaking year on the field in 2005 has led to a record-breaking year off it with league revenue smashing the $200 million mark for the first time following the release of its annual report on Tuesday.
After a year in which the AFL set an all-time attendance record of 6.28 million - in fact surpassing the seven million spectator mark for the first time including the pre-season competition - this resulted in the league achieving its highest-ever revenue in a single year.
This effort was even more remarkable considering the AFL's number one venue - the MCG - was only at full capacity for the grand final due the finishing of rebuilding works for the Commonwealth Games.
The league's total revenue for 2005 was $203.7 million, up 9.4 percent on last year's total of 186.3 million and this will jump even further next year in the first year of the league's new $780 million, five year television deal with Channels Seven and Ten.
As a result of the record revenue, the league's surplus for the year - before distributions to clubs - was $130.4 million while the 16 clubs received a total of $92 million from the AFL, up from $89.6 million last year.
And with the game's revenue set to increase dramatically next year, the players are set to be the big winners.
The AFL annual report revealed that last year three players in the competition received more than $800,000 a year while the average salary of those players that played last year was $213,952 with a total of 97 players receiving salaries from their clubs in excess of $300,000 per year.
Back in 1996 just two players in the competition received more than $300,000 a season when the average player salary was around $70,000 per season.
The AFL has already agreed to a further three per cent pay rise for the players this year - taking the Total Player Payment (TPP) figure for each club from $6.3 million to $6.47 million per club.
However it is what sort of increase the players can expect when the league sits down soon with the AFL Players' Association to set the TPP figures for 2007 and 2008 that will be interesting, given the huge increase in revenues from next year due to the new broadcasting deal - which is worth $280 million more than the current five year deal with Channels Nine and Ten.
"I am not going to hypothesise on the percentage increase the players might get, but they are entitled to an increase (in 2007 and 2008)," AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou said on Tuesday.
Demetriou, who was the boss of the AFLPA before joining the league, said the two organisations had a strong relationship and insisted that all pay negotiations would be fair to both sides.
However he ruled out the players being given a set percentage of AFL revenue under any new agreement with the AFLPA, as is the case with Australia's cricketers with Cricket Australia.
Demetriou said while the AFL's revenues would "spike" again in 2007 because of the new broadcasting deal, as was the case in 2002 under the first year of the current deal, what was most pleasing about the growth in revenue in the past three years was "not a lot of it has come from broadcasting rights."
"It has come from areas like memberships and corporate sponsorships," he said of the league's record $200 million-plus revenue in 2005.
The AFL now has 44,670 members while club memberships exceeded the half a million mark for the first time with the 16 clubs between them having a total of 506,509 members with Adelaide leading the way with 43,256 season ticket holders while the Western Bulldogs had the fewest with 21,974 but enjoyed a 14 percent increase last year.
Demetriou said what was also pleasing for the AFL was the improved financial performances of the clubs as he praised "the best group of (club) CEO's we've had for a long time."
"The clubs have worked diligently to turn their finances around," he said.
"But there are still some clubs that are (financially) fragile and we have a way to go before we get all 16 clubs profitable."
A total of 12 of the 16 clubs made profits in 2005 with total clubs profits up by $14 million, but the league's financial statements did reveal the AFL was acting as a guarantor for loans undertaken by several clubs - Carlton, the Bulldogs, Sydney, the Kangaroos, Port Adelaide, Richmond, Melbourne and Geelong.http://afl.com.au/default.asp?pg=news&spg=display&articleid=250899
