What size should the AFL be?

[Philth]

Cheers,
I base this idea on all teams should play everyone twice to achieve a fair competition.
As for how tier 2 would look I admit it needs work and thought.
Alas I see the AFL going the other way and expanding the teams.
So then all teams should play everyone once we could even do that now.But then the draw would play apart re home and away games.
And what club gets a good home draw.

I like your idea because it means the AFL will get its much desired expansion, but we can still have a top tier league that produces quality football.

The thing is, if a team like Fremantle was relegated, they could work their way back up and still have good attendances in the meantime.
A team like Gold Coast, or a new team like NT on the other hand, could be mired in the second division for years. Small fan base would lose interest, etc.

You've given me something to think about in the boring off season, cheers!

 

[Our Game]

I think 20 would be ideal but how do you fixture that many teams without extending the season? A conference system as some have mentioned? And what new teams Tassie is one and maybe Townsville another?

 

[Kwality]

I think 20 would be ideal but how do you fixture that many teams without extending the season? A conference system as some have mentioned? And what new teams Tassie is one and maybe Townsville another?

So many players of AFL standard not even in the current player pool. 96 left the pool this year for good reason, not good enough.

 

[Dom90]

It's 2020, it should be inclusive of all sizes

 

[telsor]

So many players of AFL standard not even in the current player pool. 96 left the pool this year for good reason, not good enough.

and 96 new ones came in presumably.

Lists turn over...it happens in every sporting competition.

 

[AstroboyUK]

36DD-24-32

 

[telsor]

36DD-24-32

Seems a bit top heavy.

 

[jmac91]

I would say 22 Teams is an absolute Max the Current Fixturing system can allow but I would only go for 20. In my Eyes there needs to be way less teams in Victoria. This can be achieved by Merging or Relocating Lesser Successful clubs like North, St Kilda, the Bulldogs and Melbourne (Merger only for Melbourne though). A team in Tassie is a must. Either Relocation or Expansion. Other places that should have a team is Perth 3rd, Canberra and Northern Australia (NT and Nth QLD).

 

[Pistol Night]

It's 2020, it should be inclusive of all sizes

So people that now identify as a football club can join?

 

[What else we can do]

10 team AFL premier leage
10 team AFL second division
Promotion relegation.

 

[NorthernBastard]

Extra Medium

 

[Virgin Dog]

If we're going to shrink the size of the competition:

Relocate and merge Hawks + North to Tassie. Tough on Hawks since they're a pretty well established and dominant club now, but this is purely for the sake of shrinking the competition without forcing the Dogs
Merge Melbourne and Saints (these two clubs struggle more than most financially and have for years).
Merge Brisbane + Gold Coast (i.e. get rid of GC)
Merge Sydney + GWS (both financially unviable anyway)

Allow Bulldogs to continue as their own club since they've been generating a profit for a few years now and are becoming less and less reliant on AFL handouts. This shrinks the competition down to 14 teams while allowing for a team in Tassie. Tough on Hawks since they're a pretty well established and dominant club now, but this is purely for the sake of shrinking the competition without forcing the Dogs to merge

If we want to go further, merge West Coast + Freo, merge Port + Crows to bring it down to 12.

This leaves us with:
Perth Eagles
Collingwood Magpies
Richmond Tigers
Hobart Hawks
Western Bulldogs
Essendon Bombers
Geelong Cats
Carlton Blues
Adelaide Power
Brisbane Lions
Sydney Swans
St Kilda Demons


Take it even further and we can merge Dogs + Cats, while also merging Essendon and Carlton, who draw the short straws thanks to being responsible for two of the bigger club scandals in the last few decades.

Now we're down to 10 teams. One in WA, one in SA, one in NSW, one in QLD, one in Tassie, five in Victoria (with one side representing basically country Victoria, which would be the Bulldogs and Geelong merger).

 

[FootyJunkie]

Long term... 100 years from now... 24 sides

Tasmania Devils

If Perth are going to get a third side in the next decade… Adelaide, Sydney and SEQ should follow suit for balance.

WA - Joondalup Falcons
SA - Norwood Redlegs
NSW - Southern Sydney Celtics (first dibs on GAA players)
SEQ - Sunshine Coast Ironmen ("Sun Clash" with Gold Coast)

#24 to be either NT (if enough people campaign for it like what's happening with Tasmania now) or NZ (Auckland based)

23 games with 1 round to be an "International Round" (neutral games) where 4 cities are chosen to hold 3 games each over 1 weekend.
Perhaps start the season off with this round in March with a week's break before sides commence Round 2 back home.

Top 12 single elimination Finals Series a la NFL.

 

[Carringbush2010]

Conference the league:

AFL Conference: All non vic clubs.............. add a 3rd club to WA and SA or NSW in a generation or two

Vic Conference: The current vic clubs

Each Conference plays for their conference flag, then a championship game between the conference winners.

 

[FootyJunkie]

Conference the league:

AFL Conference: All non vic clubs.............. add a 3rd club to WA and SA or NSW in a generation or two

Vic Conference: The current vic clubs

Each Conference plays for their conference flag, then a championship game between the conference winners.

Grand Final has pretty much been this since 2012.

 

[NorthernBastard]

I'd love to know where people are getting some of these fantasy ideas in their heads!

Inventing clubs, derbies and all sorts :'-)

Also, relegation and promotion won't work without out billions of league investment, unless you have 2 divisions of 10 and the league props up a new side in Tassie and perhaps ACT?. The current gap between AFL and the state leagues is HUGE. it's not like football(Soccer) where the top 4 divisions are all professional, and you get some overlap in talent - EG best team in England 4th tier can comfortably compete in the next level up. In Aussie Rules there is no state league club that you could say the same about.

Whilst I don't see it changing any time soon, I personally think the ideal number of teams is 16, which means the worst 44 players currently getting an AFL game each week are back down in state leagues. The talent pool only runs so deep, 44 less plodders getting a game each week will give us better quality footy.

 

[Carringbush2010]

Grand Final has pretty much been this since 2012.

If you mean a vic side vs a non vic side in the gf then yeah.

 

[kranger]

20 teams. All the current ones, plus a Tasmania and a Canberra team. This makes 10 Victorian teams and 10 non-Victorian teams.

Reduce the rounds down to 20 home and away games, being 1 against everyone, and with 1 extra against another team from your state. This leaves us with 10 home and 10 away games, so only 1 less home game than currently.

But with the introduction of Tasmania and Canberra as stand alone teams, Hawthorn, North Melbourne and GWS no longer play games in their respective cities.

With the above consideration and suggestions on BigFooty that Melbourne is currently over-saturated for AFL games, and there are other Australian cities currently without AFL games, this could be a great opportunity to spread AFL out into new territories and get some cash for the smaller clubs.

So these teams would sell some home games to alternative locations in the following cities:

• Western Bulldogs x2 Ballarat;
• North Melbourne x2 Bendigo;
• Melbourne x1 Darwin and x1 Alice Springs;
• St Kilda x1 Auckland and x1 China;

• Canberra x2 Albury/Wodonga;
• GWS x1 Newcastle and x1 Wollongong;
• Gold Coast x1 Townsville and x1 Cairns; and
• Brisbane x1 Sunshine Coast.

The 8 games hosted by the Victorian teams, would be played against the 10 non-Victorian teams, but with a rotation so no team would ever have more than 1 away game in a year in these alternative locations.

The 7 games hosted by the non-Victoria teams, would be played against the 6 Victorian teams that don’t sell any games (Collingwood, Essendon, Carlton, Richmond, Geelong and Hawthorn), plus one of the two non-Victorian teams that did not play an away game in one of the Victorian sold games. So 1 lucky non-Victorian team each year would not have to play an away game at one of these alternative locations.

This way everyone gets a bit of a spread when it comes to travel.

You would remove a little bit of the over-saturation of games in Melbourne. Despite there still being a proposed 82 games a year in Melbourne in this system whilst in 2019 there were only 88 games. The 82 games comprises of - 9 Melbourne teams with 10 home games (90), minus the 8 games sold to alternative locations (82).

Smaller clubs can make some money.

And the game can be grown into new markets.

Thoughts?

 

[telsor]

20 teams. All the current ones, plus a Tasmania and a Canberra team. This makes 10 Victorian teams and 10 non-Victorian teams.

Reduce the rounds down to 20 home and away games, being 1 against everyone, and with 1 extra against another team from your state. This leaves us with 10 home and 10 away games, so only 1 less home game than currently.

But with the introduction of Tasmania and Canberra as stand alone teams, Hawthorn, North Melbourne and GWS no longer play games in their respective cities.

With the above consideration and suggestions on BigFooty that Melbourne is currently over-saturated for AFL games, and there are other Australian cities currently without AFL games, this could be a great opportunity to spread AFL out into new territories and get some cash for the smaller clubs.

So these teams would sell some home games to alternative locations in the following cities:

• Western Bulldogs x2 Ballarat;
• North Melbourne x2 Bendigo;
• Melbourne x1 Darwin and x1 Alice Springs;
• St Kilda x1 Auckland and x1 China;

• Canberra x2 Albury/Wodonga;
• GWS x1 Newcastle and x1 Wollongong;
• Gold Coast x1 Townsville and x1 Cairns; and
• Brisbane x1 Sunshine Coast.

The 8 games hosted by the Victorian teams, would be played against the 10 non-Victorian teams, but with a rotation so no team would ever have more than 1 away game in a year in these alternative locations.

The 7 games hosted by the non-Victoria teams, would be played against the 6 Victorian teams that don’t sell any games (Collingwood, Essendon, Carlton, Richmond, Geelong and Hawthorn), plus one of the two non-Victorian teams that did not play an away game in one of the Victorian sold games. So 1 lucky non-Victorian team each year would not have to play an away game at one of these alternative locations.

This way everyone gets a bit of a spread when it comes to travel.

You would remove a little bit of the over-saturation of games in Melbourne. Despite there still being a proposed 82 games a year in Melbourne in this system whilst in 2019 there were only 88 games. The 82 games comprises of - 9 Melbourne teams with 10 home games (90), minus the 8 games sold to alternative locations (82).

Smaller clubs can make some money.

And the game can be grown into new markets.

Thoughts?

If the Melbourne market is as over saturated as you suggest (enough that it needs significant adjustments to compensate for), how do you justify adding teams in Tas & ACT?

82 (proposed) games in Melb for 4.9M people would be ~1 game per 60K people.
10 Games in Tas would be 1 game per 51K
10 Games in ACT would be 1 game per 42K

 

[footyfan1978]

Ross Oakley is to be congratulated for having the vision to expand the VFL to a national competition.

Ross Oakley...lol...failed in first sentence.
VFL was expanding nationally as an idea well before Oakley...
Rom Barassi and others had grand vision of expansion decades before the league started to go into Sydney and then other states.
Allen Aylett and others were way more visionary than very pragmatic financial conscious Oakley

12 or 14 for the sport would have been most ideal so every team could play each other twice but it has become an entertainment business foremost now so the pure best thing for sport rarely has the biggest say now. It is contracts to do with television money that dictates the business of how big a size the league operates it's entertainment business. For tv 16 to 20 seems to be the size that works best and why that is where we are at.

 

[kranger]

If the Melbourne market is as over saturated as you suggest (enough that it needs significant adjustments to compensate for), how do you justify adding teams in Tas & ACT?

82 (proposed) games in Melb for 4.9M people would be ~1 game per 60K people.
10 Games in Tas would be 1 game per 51K
10 Games in ACT would be 1 game per 42K

Hmm, interesting way of equating it.

Though the Tasmanian taskforce is currently trying to prove they are worth it.

And for fairness, for the ACT I did theorise that two games were sold off to Albury/Wodonga. So that would mean 8 games in the ACT for 1 game per 52.5k.

But another way of putting it, is that Melbourne would have 8 games a fortnight. ACT would have less than 1 game a fortnight. Tas would have 1 game a fortnight that would be split between the northern and southern halves of the state, to actually be 1 game a month in each location.

So it’s a sense of over-saturation in the sense that in those smaller cities people would be a bit more desperate to attend the only AFL games that are available for them, compared to just going to a game the next day in Melbourne.

 

[telsor]

Hmm, interesting way of equating it.

Though the Tasmanian taskforce is currently trying to prove they are worth it.

And for fairness, for the ACT I did theorise that two games were sold off to Albury/Wodonga. So that would mean 8 games in the ACT for 1 game per 52.5k.

But another way of putting it, is that Melbourne would have 8 games a fortnight. ACT would have less than 1 game a fortnight. Tas would have 1 game a fortnight that would be split between the northern and southern halves of the state, to actually be 1 game a month in each location.

So it’s a sense of over-saturation in the sense that in those smaller cities people would be a bit more desperate to attend the only AFL games that are available for them, compared to just going to a game the next day in Melbourne.

Agreed, scarcity does make for people making a bigger effort to get to those that are available.

Another factor to consider is that Vic (esp Melb) clubs benefit from an economy of scale. Games between 2 Vic teams (roughly half) would have 2 sets of fans willing/able to attend, and also cuts costs due to the potential to share and expand resources (e.g. MCG/Docklands, but also access to specialised medical/training facilities, etc. ) that doesn't really apply elsewhere.

Is this all 'fair'? Not really, but at the end of the day, having half the market is in one place is always going to significantly distort the competition, for good and ill (especially as the second biggest market is the most isolated city on the planet), so the best we can really hope for is to try to find a reasonable balance.

 

[kranger]

Agreed, scarcity does make for people making a bigger effort to get to those that are available.

Another factor to consider is that Vic (esp Melb) clubs benefit from an economy of scale. Games between 2 Vic teams (roughly half) would have 2 sets of fans willing/able to attend, and also cuts costs due to the potential to share and expand resources (e.g. MCG/Docklands, but also access to specialised medical/training facilities, etc. ) that doesn't really apply elsewhere.

Is this all 'fair'? Not really, but at the end of the day, having half the market is in one place is always going to significantly distort the competition, for good and ill (especially as the second biggest market is the most isolated city on the planet), so the best we can really hope for is to try to find a reasonable balance.

True true. The economy of scale of Melbourne and its stadiums definitely is beneficial.

I was actually thinking about it, and in this concept, selling only 8 home games by Victorian teams would actually be less than the number of Victorian home games that get sold at present.

When at present you count up the 8 games in Tas, 2 in Ballarat, 2 in Northern Territory and 1 to China, that’s 13 Victorian home games being sold.

The biggest reduction in games in Melbourne in this concept would actually come from reducing the number of rounds by 2 home and away games, being 9 less Melbourne home games.

 

[kranger]

20 teams. All the current ones, plus a Tasmania and a Canberra team. This makes 10 Victorian teams and 10 non-Victorian teams.

Reduce the rounds down to 20 home and away games, being 1 against everyone, and with 1 extra against another team from your state. This leaves us with 10 home and 10 away games, so only 1 less home game than currently.

But with the introduction of Tasmania and Canberra as stand alone teams, Hawthorn, North Melbourne and GWS no longer play games in their respective cities.

With the above consideration and suggestions on BigFooty that Melbourne is currently over-saturated for AFL games, and there are other Australian cities currently without AFL games, this could be a great opportunity to spread AFL out into new territories and get some cash for the smaller clubs.

So these teams would sell some home games to alternative locations in the following cities:

• Western Bulldogs x2 Ballarat;
• North Melbourne x2 Bendigo;
• Melbourne x1 Darwin and x1 Alice Springs;
• St Kilda x1 Auckland and x1 China;

• Canberra x2 Albury/Wodonga;
• GWS x1 Newcastle and x1 Wollongong;
• Gold Coast x1 Townsville and x1 Cairns; and
• Brisbane x1 Sunshine Coast.

The 8 games hosted by the Victorian teams, would be played against the 10 non-Victorian teams, but with a rotation so no team would ever have more than 1 away game in a year in these alternative locations.

The 7 games hosted by the non-Victoria teams, would be played against the 6 Victorian teams that don’t sell any games (Collingwood, Essendon, Carlton, Richmond, Geelong and Hawthorn), plus one of the two non-Victorian teams that did not play an away game in one of the Victorian sold games. So 1 lucky non-Victorian team each year would not have to play an away game at one of these alternative locations.

This way everyone gets a bit of a spread when it comes to travel.

You would remove a little bit of the over-saturation of games in Melbourne. Despite there still being a proposed 82 games a year in Melbourne in this system whilst in 2019 there were only 88 games. The 82 games comprises of - 9 Melbourne teams with 10 home games (90), minus the 8 games sold to alternative locations (82).

Smaller clubs can make some money.

And the game can be grown into new markets.

Thoughts?

So I thought I would change up the locations of sold games slightly, to get better exposure of the sport into the northern states.

20 teams. Current 18 + Tas + Canberra.

20 rounds. 1 game vs every + a second game vs intra-state rival (except Tas vs Canberra due to being single team states).

So slight change from before for the Non-Vic teams (in bold) with these teams selling home games to these following cities for exposure of the sport:

• Western Bulldogs x2 Ballarat;
• North Melbourne x2 Bendigo;
• Melbourne x1 Darwin, x1 Alice Springs;
• St Kilda x1 Auckland, x1 China;

• Canberra x1 Albury/Wodonga, x1 Wollongong;
• GWS x1 Newcastle, x1 Gosford;
• Gold Coast x1 Townsville, x1 Cairns; and
• Brisbane x1 Sunshine Coast, x1 Toowoomba.

 

[magpienato]

From now to 2050, 20 teams would be the upper limit.