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Not really sure where this should go so I'll put it here.

Tigers top AFL revenue ladder as Covid hits footy balance sheets
Richmond have been the strongest team on and off the field in the past year in the AFL, but Covid has many teams running losses. FULL TABLE

Covid cost AFL clubs tens of millions last year, with future disruptions set to disrupt balance sheets of even the strongest clubs in the competition.
Figures compiled by IBISWorld show that revenue for the 18 teams in the competition fell by 31.4 per cent last year to $762.7m as a hit to gate takings and associated revenue due to a Covid related lockdown hit the clubs hard.

The AFL clubs are still battling fixture changes and a cap on crowds during the current 2021 season, which is again having a marked effect on the balance sheet of many of the clubs in the competition after a tough 2020.

The AFL saw a 15 per cent decline in revenue in 2019-20, to $674.8m. “The AFL also reduced its total distribution to clubs by $83.8m, in an effort to mitigate losses,” said IBISWorld senior industry analyst Matthew Barry.


AFL financial league table 2020
RankClubRevenue ($,000)Profit ($,000)2019 revenue rankRevenue growth 2019-20
1Richmond73,9552182-19.8%
2Carlton50,2143,6525-29.4%
3Brisbane Lions49,6923,0738-15.7%
4Hawthorn49,442-4973-36.0%
5Essendon49,1431,2236-28.9%
6Collingwood47,822-1,8074-34.9%
7West Coast44,6386831-56.5%
8Geelong43,802-2,5677-27.2%
9Fremantle40,412-1,06511-30.1%
10Port Adelaide39,684-4,0419-32.0%
11Adelaide Crows38,391-2,84410-34.1%
12St Kilda36,449-96316-21.9%
13Western Bulldogs35,5611,80115-24.0%
14Melbourne34,756-3,69013-28.8%
15Sydney34,723-6,10012-34.3%
16Gold Coast33,129-95318-23.8%
17North Melbourne32,25521417-27.7%
18GWS28,634-7,26614-41.0%
Source: IBISWorld


Notably, the West Coast Eagles have fallen from first place in 2019 to rank seventh on the revenue ladder in 2020, with a 56.5 per cent decline in revenue given crowd restrictions in Perth last year. The Eagles are usually the most profitable football club in Australia, and with crowds returning in Perth this year are expected to post stronger financial results.

The remaining four clubs in the top eight on the revenue ladder were Victorian clubs, which have all faced declines in membership, match day and hospitality revenue due to extended lockdown restrictions in Victoria.

AFL supporters remained loyal to their club, with membership numbers only falling by 6.1 per cent in the 2020 financial year. The federal government’s JobKeeper wage subsidy also aided clubs through the COVID-19 pandemic, helping clubs retain and pay existing employees.

from $88m 2019 to $45m in 2020 is a huge drop This shows how much of a hit Covid and hubbing had on West Coasts finances, but the ability to absorb it without issue is straight Nizzy magic tbh. 2016 was a $6m profit, 2017 was $5.6m, and 2018 was $7.5m, 2019 was $8m. Those enormous year-on-year operating surplus' are massive and WC has ridic liquidity iirc, even after pumping 60m into Lathlain. Absolutely leagues ahead of other clubs in that regard.

Brisbane killed it due to the hub, mind you they got fully half their $revenue from equalisation measures. You'd be ropeable as a CEO of the largest clubs in that regard, and I reckon it's played no small part in the rise of some of the board issue we've seen across the comp in 2021.
 
How the hell did the Bulldogs make a $1M profit? Hope the AFL is bumping them down to the lowest level of financial distribution, along with clubs like ours, Richmond and Collingwood.

The $1.8M profit listed by the Bulldogs is inclusive of the AFL distribution ($11.8M), Victorian government subsidies for COVID ($3.5M) and Whitten Oval redevelopment ($0.9M), and "Commercial Partnerships" [Poker machine revenues] ($7.5M).

https://resources.westernbulldogs.com.au/aflc-wb/document/2020/12/02/12ec22e7-2e99-47c8-b09a-9b213d232fe8/Western-Bulldogs-2020-Financial-Report.pdf


West Coast on the other hand, received $2M less in distribution from the AFL ($9.8M), despite losing over $6M in match revenues compared to 2019 ($9.4M to $3.3M) - the Bulldogs posted a $1.1M loss in match revenues, taking in less than $750k in 2020.

The bigger story for me is the remarkable resilience of the commercial side of the club, still operating at a profit despite an unanticipated revenue loss of over 50% ($45.5M) in a single year.

The Eagles obviously also don't have those additional "income" streams of government subsidy and parasitic gambling revenues.

http://footyindustry.com/files/2020%20Reports/WCE%202020%20Annual%20Report.pdf


If the Bulldogs didn't have their safety blanket of pokies and hand-outs, their comparatively much smaller loss of revenue at 32% ($13.8M) in 2020 would have forced them into liquidation.
 

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We were going to draft Cotchin at pick 1.

Kennedy or Cotchin........

The best player Carlton have ever drafted plays for another club
The best player that has ever been drafted by the Carlton Football Club wasn’t one of the five pick No.1s that the Blues have garnered over the past 16 seasons, starting with Marc Murphy in 2005.

The player concerned isn’t Patrick Cripps, despite the co-captain’s mastery of the stoppages in his eight seasons in the AFL. Not the flint-hard Andrew McKay, who captained the club and was a defensive bull after he was drafted off a farm in south-west South Australia.
Not Harry McKay, who leads the goalkicking table and might be the best emerging young key forward in the game.
Unfortunately for the Blues, their best-performed draftee will be running around for another club on Sunday.
Josh Kennedy will play his 272nd AFL game against the Bulldogs. Only 22 of those games were for Carlton, who chose him at pick No.4 in the 2005 national draft, three selections after Murphy and one before the only player who’s near universally regarded as his superior in that cohort, Collingwood’s Scott Pendlebury.

Kennedy has booted 662 goals for West Coast, the club that acquired him in the Chris Judd trade of 2007. Twice, he’s won the Coleman Medal and three times he’s made the All-Australian team.
He was a cornerstone of the club’s 2018 premiership, booting three goals and plucking 13 marks in a grand final his team won by five points.
Kennedy’s value was unclear when the Blues traded him, along with picks three and 20, for Judd, whose recruitment to the Blues was an essential step to reviving a dormant power.

 
My understanding was we wanted pick 1 which Carlton refused to handover, instead only offering pick 3 so we demanded JK as a result (once we convinced him to leave Carlton which he was reluctant to do)

Ended up so much better for us, rather than Cotchin we picked up not only Kennedy but also Masten who despite his critics still ended up a 200 game premiership player
 
My understanding was we wanted pick 1 which Carlton refused to handover, instead only offering pick 3 so we demanded JK as a result (once we convinced him to leave Carlton which he was reluctant to do)

Ended up so much better for us, rather than Cotchin we picked up not only Kennedy but also Masten who despite his critics still ended up a 200 game premiership player

It would be interesting to know who we would have picked if it was No.1 that we got.
 

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Hey folks, made a lil vid looking back at Simmos first 22 against the Dogs in 2014 and where they are now. Enjoy!

Great video. Fascinating to see that we essentially rebuilt our entire defence since then, as well as most our HFF and small forwards. Midfield has also had a bit of a change.

Goes to give us a bit of perspective on how well our list management has operated. Not been perfect, but rebuilt on the run while playing finals in all but that 2024 season (where we finished 9th with 11-11).

I did lol at us playing 3 rucks in that game.
 

A really good analysis. When we had McInnes trying to replace Darling/Kennedy a couple of years ago I remember realising that the philosophy of maintaining your structure and simply slotting players into roles was not going to work for us when our gameplan relies on players doing the most difficult part of playing forward (contested marks) for most of our scores.

Others have noted from the Bulldogs game that our mids seem to rely on Naitanui making a brilliant tap straight to them to win a clearance.
 

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