How the west was won: will there be a 3rd AFL team in WA?
Andrew Dillon, the Australian Football League (AFL0 CEO has hosed down the chances of a third team from Western Australia (WA3) to join the West Coast Eagles and the Fremantle Dockers in the AFL as the league’s 20th team. But of all the options for the 20th licence the WA3 team is probably the most robust financially. But will it add a new dimension to the league and is there a demand for it another side in the West? Will West Coast or (as seems more likely) Fremantle object? Let’s investigate WA3 as one of the options for the 20th licence.
The awarding of the 19th AFL licence to the Tasmanian Devils, after a long bruising campaign, set the starting gun for the 20th licence, for which WA3 is a strong contender. Why 20 teams? The AFL has expressed a preference for an even number of teams. So, barring a merger (something the AFL wants to avoid after some bitter brawls in the old Victorian competition) the AFL will look to a 20th team once Tasmania is settled in as the 19th.
The race for AFL team 20 is a four (maybe five horse race) with a couple of dark horse outsiders.
The sentimental favourite of footy fans is definitely the Northern Territory. There could be a team in Darwin (the Darwin Dingoes or Crocodiles has been suggested) playing some games in Alice Springs (when Darwin is still in wet season). The problem is population (the NT only has 252,200 people which is less than half that of Tasmania), infrastructure, (TIO stadium only holds 12,500), climate and tyranny of distance. The NT’s taskforce says a team would lose $15 million a year commercially, so would need significant investment. But others say it would be worth it in terms of social impact. After the failure of ‘The Voice’ referendum, perhaps sport is one of the best vehicles for reconciliation, but significant work needs to be done on the economic case for a NT team. There is the option of playing some games in Cairns as a team for Northern Australia, but Cairns has similar issues to Darwin in terms of climate and infrastructure, so would also need significant investment to develop footy in the north of the continent.
The second favourite is Canberra, our nation’s capital. When Canberra was chosen as capital and the parliament moved from Melbourne many Victorian public servants brought Aussie Rules football with them. It was only after the Canberra Raiders and ACT Brumbies started that rugby league and rugby union took hold, but there is plenty of Aussie Rules in the ACT and in southern NSW. Canberra is right on the mythical ‘Barassi line’ (the geographical line that splits the Australian continent between Aussie rules and rugby league named after Aussie rules footy legend Ron Barassi). In addition, Canberra has a growing wealthy population, good infrastructure and plenty of footy fans near Manuka Oval. But there’s a Giant in the room in Greater Western Sydney (GWS) and a $2.85 million 10-year deal to keep GWS Giants playing part time (3 games a year) in Canberra. The AFL is unlikely scuttle an arrangement that is working so well for both parties.
Other suggestions on the rugby league side of the Barassi line have been Newcastle, Central Coast in New South Wales and the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. But most have never hosted an AFL game so is unlikely to adopt a team (and pay for a stadium) outright.
In South Australia, the likely third team candidate (SA3) is a traditional football club Norwood, the most famous and best supported team after Port Adelaide, that entered the AFL in 1997. The club has Norwood Oval on The Parade in eastern Adelaide, that hosted 2 matches this year and last year at the AFL’s successful ‘Gather Round’, a good support base and strong sponsorship from food and wine companies like Wolf Blass and Coopers. But the Adelaide Crows may not want a rival for support, and the duopoly with Port seems to suit both clubs just fine. Furthermore, SA has a smaller population than WA and not as much iron ore.
This leaves a third team in Western Australia (WA3) as the remaining but most economically viable option. Before talking economics, it is important to recognise the great story of Aussie Rules in WA. The gold rushes of the 1890s boosted interstate migration from the Victorian goldfields to the west and Aussie rules became more popular that rugby (ironically in the late 19th century WA played rugby union and Queensland played Aussie rules before they practically ‘switched codes’ by the 20th). The local league in Perth which become known as the West Australian Football League (WAFL) was strong in terms of players and spectators along with leagues in the gold fields, the wheatbelt and other regions in the state.
In state games, the VFL was dominant, but occasionally, the WAFL used to beat the VFL and so did SA and Tasmania but it was rare. However, when State of origin football was introduced in the 1970s and the VFL based Western Australians could play for WA, WA more often than not, won. We saw the great players like Ross Glendinning, Syd Jackson, Graham Moss, Barry Cable Mike Fitzpatrick and others back in WA colours along with local champions like Stephen Michael of South Fremantle.
The confidence of the WA brand of football was further advanced with the admission of the West Coast Eagles entering the VFL (later AFL) in 1987. Once they found their feet, they became a virtually a state team dominant in early 1990s have won 4 premierships despite regular coast to coast travel across the Nullarbor Plain. West Coast had all of WA to itself until Fremantle entered the AFL in 1995 providing a neat north of the river south of the river divide. This almost immediately created the famous Western ‘derby’ games, like Liverpool and Everton, Rangers and Celtic, AC Milan vs Inter Milan, and even the old WAFL rivalry between East and South Fremantle in the port city.
Many think the Eagles-Dockers rivalry, provides a stable equilibrium. So why have a third team?
First, WA is booming economically and growing in terms of population. The AFL needs a wealthy club to offset the new expansion clubs, especially with Tasmania joining the AFL in 2028.
Second, WA is a state of footy fanatics with excess demand for memberships especially at West Coast which has a long waiting list. As the economist Ryan Buckland (who writes about football with as much passion as a West Australian economist writes about state shares of GST) the West is ‘footy starved’ from a per capita point of view. Writing in 2020, when Tasmania was campaigning for the 19th licence, Buckland pointed out:
“Believe it or not, Western Australians are among the most footy-starved in the country. Our State has 16 per cent of Australia’s total football-playing adult population according to Sports Australia, but just 11 per cent of the top league’s games are played here.
The interest from punters is there too. Average crowds for games at Optus Stadium have exceeded 46,000 in the first two years of its operations, a figure which would put “AFL football played in Western Australia” above all-but America’s NFL and Germany’s Bundesliga in terms of average attendance globally.”
Third, Perth has excellent infrastructure, especially a world class facility in Optus stadium that is underutilized and could easily accommodate another team, and hence more ‘derbies’. It would also even up the burden of travel, with Victorian teams having to fly west more and Perth teams getting more games at home.
Finally, in terms of TV, the WA Time zone works perfectly for Friday night double headers on both the east and west coast, which would add to the broadcast rights negotiated by the AFL with the TV networks.
So, the case for a WA3 team stacks up pretty well but where would it be based? The area mentioned most often is Joondalup in the northern suburbs of Perth where WAFL side West Perth has relocated. It’s a growing area and already boasts excellent facilities. The other boom area is Mandurah south of Perth where Peel Thunder are based. There’s also been some mentions of Bunbury in the South West and Geraldton, although Joondalup or Mandurah seem most likely with clubs training at their home base and sharing Optus stadium with West Coast and Fremantle.
So, what’s the catch. Most sceptics of the WA3 team ask: Where’s the need? Where’s the demand? How does it add to the growth of the sport nationally? It could be that ‘supply create its own demand’ and once the team is established it will grow support but the detractors say the Eagles and the Dockers are in a good equilibrium and another team would hurt Fremantle in particular.
One thing for sure, it’s very hard to add another composite side to a crowded market. Look at the South Queensland Crushers when introduced into a Broncos-dominated Brisbane. This was why, Port Adelaide a famous football club founded in 1870 well before many of the VFL clubs, was a better model than the Crushers. Fremantle did come in as a composite side (instead of one of the clubs East Fremantle and South Fremantle) but with a distinct geographical area. That’s why SA3 would be Norwood, a historical SANFL Club, not another composite side like the Adelaide Crows.
Ultimately, it’s questionable whether a WA3 side adds much to the game, and whether Western Australians actually want it. The AFL may instead go for a new frontier in Darwin, a new club in a mixed code town and region like the ACT and Southern NSW, or go for a traditional club like Norwood. WA may want to consider putting up an established WAFL club, (say West Perth given their Joondalup base) or a regionally based team, rather than another composite side. WA could also negotiate with the AFL to give the new club some social licence to develop the game in Northern Australia as well as in the West.
References: For Australian population by state and territory, see: https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/national-state-and-territory-population/latest-release#states-and-territories
This article was originally published on the Footyology website at: https://footyology.com.au/winning-the-west-would-a-third-wa-team-work/
Professor Tim Harcourt is Chief Economist at the UTS Centre for Sport, Business & Society (CSBS) and host of Footynomics – The Economics of Sport. He specialises in Australia’s economic engagement with the Global Economy particularly Asia, Latin America and Emerging Markets. Tim has worked in both public policy and research roles in International Trade, Labour Markets, Climate Innovation and the Economics of Sport.
Tim also hosts Footynomics – The Economics of Sport
www.footynomics.com.au
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