I believe the Academies are good for footy, full stop. Therefore, investment in the Academies is good for footy. If something acts as a disincentive to that investment, then logically it is bad for footy. I do think that there is a risk that a club will scale back its Academy investment if it perceives that the draft returns are insufficient.
I think the challenge is measuring ROI for the Academy which is unlikely to be able to be done with any meaning for several years yet. Until you know what your ROI is, you can't really measure the impact of something like the bidding system. Unfortunately, due to the constant draft rule changes and the relatively short history of the Academy system, there's a real lack of consistent baseline data to rely on.
The question is why should the Brisbane Lions spend its limited resources on the Academy. Clearly, the primary reason for us to spend money is to draft better players who are less likely to leave. So, I see it that we get three benefits - the lack of go-home factor, the discount applied to taking Academy players in the draft and whatever development we can put into these kids prior to them joining our list. The change to the bidding system really only limits one of those factors. We still have the opportunity to focus our drafting on local kids and we still get to spend several years of pre-draft development out of the kids we end up selecting. The benefit is less than under the old bidding system but, even if the discount was completely removed (not beyond the realms of possibility for this administration), then we do still get something out of drafting locals who have been through a development program. The question is whether that is enough to justify the expenditure.
There is also the broader benefit of improving local footy standards. We keep talented kids in footy throughout their teenage years. Hopefully that means more of them go on to play NEAFL which in turn lifts that level of footy. There is a knock on effect too - if the talented kids stick with footy, maybe their mates will stick with it too. This all helps us, as a Queensland club, to lift standards.
A question is whether we, as a club, should be the party investing in junior development. However, as our entire operation is subsidised by the AFL, if we decided to scale back our investment in the Academy, they may decide to decrease their financial support by the same amount.