Extract from ABS website;
"Many well-known organisations are non-profit organisations, for example: Opera Australia and the Australian Football League; the ACTU and the Business Council of Australia; the Australian Jockey Club and the Surf Lifesaving Association; the Melbourne Club and the Returned Services League; the Brotherhood of St Laurence and the Salvation Army; the Australian Labor Party and Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party; the Australian Medical Association and Greenpeace; Geelong Grammar and the Workers Educational Association. Many more non-profits constitute the fabric of local communities, for example: local play groups and child care centres, sporting clubs and associations, recreation clubs and societies, churches and church groups, residents' associations, and service clubs.
Non-profit organisations are many and varied, but together they constitute a separate, distinct class of organisations, neither government nor business, with their own distinctive rules and characteristics. These are reviewed below. The rules for defining the non-profits are easy enough to state, but a little more difficult to apply in all circumstances.
Non-profit organisations are, first of all, organisations. This means that a non-profit organisation will have a set of rules or a constitution that gives it a life beyond the group that began it. Non-profits may be incorporated, a legal term meaning that the organisation has a legal identity independent of its members. Larger non-profits, which employ people, are incorporated in most instances. However, the great majority of non-profits, which are small and rely entirely on volunteer behaviour, are not incorporated."
AFL in my opinion definitely go over their brief as custodians of the game. There is plenty of money in the game to have equality in TV rights, fixturing, etc for all teams. The will own the $1B Etihad stadium before long ffs.
As a non profit, they gain tax concessions as they are in theory there as a benefit to the community on a whole, but really the AFL have become more like greedy swine, just trying to win the 'we have the most money' race with other sports, and lining the administrators (boys clubs) pockets.
