The AFL and its place in the world of sport as a business

[jim boy]

Interesting report came out this week on sports salaries. Whilst its no surprise that there is a massive gulf between the likes of EPL, La Liga, NFL, NBA etc and the AFL, to see them represented on a graph is startling. Report can be downloaded at http://www.globalsportssalaries.com/

 

[Kwality]

Interesting report came out this week on sports salaries. Whilst its no surprise that there is a massive gulf between the likes of EPL, La Liga, NFL, NBA etc and the AFL, to see them represented on a graph is startling. Report can be downloaded at http://www.globalsportssalaries.com/

The title of this thread doesnt mention salaries. ... ?

 

[jim boy]

The title of this thread doesn't mention salaries. ... ?

Well spotted Sherlock!
Left it out as the report isn't exclusively about salaries (despite its name), such as the section on social media.

 

[The_Wookie]

great find jim!

 

[Kwality]

Well spotted Sherlock!
Left it out as the report isn't exclusively about salaries (despite its name), such as the section on social media.

business instead of salaries ...

 

[Our Game]

Thanks Yep a great holiday read and some very interesting facts.Considering our smallish population against some of the other countries the AFL is not doing too badly.Still room for more improvement.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Interesting report came out this week on sports salaries. Whilst its no surprise that there is a massive gulf between the likes of EPL, La Liga, NFL, NBA etc and the AFL, to see them represented on a graph is startling. Report can be downloaded at http://www.globalsportssalaries.com/

Interesting report. Thanks for the link

The AFL salary figures listed by individual club club on pages 40 and 41, where are ranked against other sports salaries Richmond at 290th and Essendon at 309 with only 2 non ASL teams in that range and AFL specific at pages 102 and 103 are a bit dodgy.

Not sure what outside source surveys they do for AFL but on page 102 they say

THE STATE OF PLAY
As ever, we highly recommend the AFL’s annual report for the granular detail on many aspects of the way the competition is run - including salary expenditure - and the latest editions are available here: http://www.afl.com.au/afl-hq/annual-reports.

One reason we include the 2018 AFL season in this report (and not the recently finished 2019 season) is the annual report provides an excellent corroboratory source for the survey material we gather; the other reason is related and more prosaic - some team information takes longer to piece together than others. What isn’t in doubt is that, officially, the 18 team rosters included 703 players collectively earning AUS$253.9m which equates to £142,230,928 at the prevailing exchange rate, and thus average pay last year of £202,320. The AFL remains outstanding in one key aspect - the ‘fairness’ as measured by the difference between the club with the highest average first-team pay and the lowest. A salary floor and ceiling for player payments helps with this. Clubs with the biggest overall spending (the extra, in effect, being on more or better coaches, facilities and other auxiliary spending) tend to win more. That’s too complex .

The table on page 103 with the exchange rate of £1 = AUD$1.786, means Richmond at 1st placed average player salary is AUD$375,958 and Essendon at 18th is AUD$350,415.

I have my doubts as to how accurate these individual club figures are, but the total over 18 clubs is correct.


Disappointed they didn't have info from a few more of the big soccer leagues the Mexican Liga MX, Campeonato Serie A in Brasil, and the Superliga in Argentina to have a wider spread. But they explained why on page 7 after talking about what they started with in 2010;

Subsequent reports have expanded to add Australian Rules football and Canadian CFL gridiron, then Chinese Super League football, Japanese J-League football and Ligue 1 from France. The WNBA became the first women’s league to join the main list in the survey in 2017 when we finally obtained the accurate team-by-team pay data required, from the WNBA players’ union. As and when reliable numbers can be sourced for new or growing leagues, we’ll be happy to include them, and welcome any assistance in obtaining such data.

For now, the 18 leagues in the GSSS comprise most of the biggest professional domestic sports leagues in the world (measured by average attendance per game), plus a handful of other leagues significant for their own reasons. The attendances for the 18 leagues in GSSS 2019 are as follows, each for the most recently completed seasons.
<they insert a table of the 18 leagues average attendance / game and total attendance per season>

*Best guesstimate from local information; the IPL has been consistently poor in measuring and publishing accurate crowd levels.

Of the current 15 best-attended leagues in the world (by average gate) the GSSS 2019 includes 13 of them, the exceptions being the Big Bash (Australia, cricket) and Liga MX (Mexico, football), where full and accurate team-by-team wage data remains elusive. The Big Bash (average crowd 20,554) would be 14th in the table above, or one place above the J-League, while Liga MX (average 22,787) would be 13th, attracting a bigger average than Major League Soccer and a smaller average than Ligue 1 in France.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Re AFL and salaries the following is reported at pages 102-105











For many years I have written on big Footy that the NFL has a hard salary cap and the AFL has a relatively hard cap muck like the NHL one, where as other sports have an almost useless cap with so many exemptions eg NBA or no cap ie MLB, Euro soccer. Here is what their graphs look like per club average salaries.

NFL first - couldn't find anything why Atlanta at one end and Miami at the other are so extreme compared to the other 30 teams.




NHL - Toronto Maple Leafs are ridiculously low for some reason. Take them out Top and bottom is about 1.5 times difference.

 

[NoobPie]

Clubs with the biggest overall spending (the extra, in effect, being on more or better coaches, facilities and other auxiliary spending) tend to win more. That’s too complex .

This is obviously incorrect as it omits the soft cap on the football departments

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

This is obviously incorrect as it omits the soft cap on the football departments

There is no cap on capital expenditure.

 

[NoobPie]

There is no cap on capital expenditure.

Which in no way negates my statement

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Which in no way negates my statement

Your statement says they were incorrect. When you look at total spending they are correct. Also clubs break the soft cap.