AFL women’s TV ratings pressure pay talks
The AFL could soon be under pressure to increase the pay of female footballers for the inaugural women’s season in 2017, after record-breaking television ratings on Saturday night.
The exhibition match between Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs at Whitten Oval received the best ratings of any Saturday night game this season.
Broadcaster Channel Seven drew a peak national audience of 1.05 million viewers.
The average this season has been 746,000.
And while in Melbourne, it drew 387,000 compared to the next-best Saturday match between St Kilda and Geelong of 347,000.
The Dreamtime at the ‘G game, a marquee event, averaged 331,000 viewers.
Initially, women footballers have been offered around $5000 a season for regular players, $10,000 for top draft picks and $25,000 for high-profile players.
The AFL and AFL Players’ Association are still negotiating the standard playing contract, with AFLPA chief Paul Marsh recently saying “we are some distance apart”.
Many pundits have criticised the league for forcing female players to pay for their own health insurance.
“We haven’t settled on the salaries yet,” AFL’s general manager of game and development Simon Lethlean said on Sunday.
“We want this to be a fully professional league. Next year it’s part time and eight matches, but our job is to make this professional for the women as fast we can.”
Moana Hope, who booted six goals on Saturday night and has already joined Collingwood as a marquee signing, insisted players were not talking about wages.
AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan has defended the league’s initial pay offer to female footballers saying the women’s league is beginning from a “standing start”.
“It says that our supporters, AFL followers have as big an appetite to watch good standard women’s football as they do the men’s,” McLachlan said.
The figures come just months before the launch of a national women’s league that will begin early next year with eight competing clubs.
“We’ve seen the potential. It will get challenged further when we go to eight teams and set up a national league.”
“But we know that after Saturday night that if we play to that standard then people will watch and the feedback has been incredible.”
But the league boss would not be drawn on increasing the prospective pay for the players.
Under the current offer from the league, an entire club’s list will be restricted to a $200,000 salary cap — over $100,000 less than the average wage of a single male AFL player.
“We don’t have a broadcast deal, we don’t have a sponsorship deal, at the moment we don’t have any commerciality around the league,” McLachlan said.
“We’ve got to start up, a complete start up, so we’re investing millions of dollars next year in establishing a league.”
“I’m just blessed to pull on an AFL jersey.”
Moana Hope
“The pay is exciting but right now I get to play AFL. There are generations of girls coming through who are going to be able to fulfil their dreams and in years to come I’m sure that [pay] will be addressed.
“When we are around each other all we are talking about is football [not pay].”
— with AAP
