FOOTBALL is big business these days, we are often told, but in purely business terms, September makes little sense.
Round 20 is here and the race for the finals is frenzied. Six teams battle desperately to sneak a spot in the lower reaches of the eight, while a couple above them could yet slip into the melee.
"We just want to play finals footy" is a year-round mantra for clubs, players and chief executives, but while everybody strives for a place in the post-season, there may be little benefit for the bottom line.
Asked this week about the economic value of making the final eight, few club executives pulled any punches. "Bugger all" one chief executive said. "Unless you win the grand final, it's not worth much, if anything."
Prizemoney has been raised by the AFL this year, but for the team sneaking into eighth, it is still only $65,000 — barely enough to defray the cost of travel and running a football club for an extra week.
In previous years, the AFL paid a weekly allowance to clubs involved in finals to cover such costs. Prizemoney was minimal — often less for winning the flag than for a pre-season competition win. This year is different.
The old allowance has been scrapped and prizemoney boosted, but a big part of that goes to the players, under their collective bargaining agreement.
Last year's prizemoney plus the allowance totalled $1.72 million. This year — with just prizemoney and no allowance — $2.89 million is up for grabs.
Scrape into eighth and you'll be rewarded with an away final against a top-ranked side, the likelihood of an early exit and no high draft pick to excite next year's potential members. There are also extra costs.
Many clubs have between a quarter and a third of their list on performance incentive contracts, says a club executive, and extra payments often are triggered by making finals. "I know clubs that have been in finals and haven't made one dollar," he said. "It all gets eaten up."
Winning the flag is another story. "You might, if everything goes well, generate an extra million from merchandise, greater membership the next year and more corporate support," the source says. "It depends how long since you've won a flag and how many supporters you have."
That assessment tallies with official figures from the AFL, which show a flag win can bring up to $1.5 million extra revenue.
Those with big support bases are better-placed to take advantage of a premiership but clubs are getting better at cashing in on success since North Melbourne won two flags in the 1990s and struggled to convert on-field dominance into off-field riches.
During the season, clubs get revenue from gate receipts and corporate boxes but in finals, all of this money flows directly to the AFL and is redistributed to all 16 clubs the following year.
"You make the finals, there is not really a major benefit," said St Kilda chief executive Archie Fraser. "Certainly, it can help membership the following year. There's a bit of merchandise and sponsors are happy but the real opportunity is when you make the grand final or win it. There's not a huge increase otherwise."
Even a preliminary final brought little extra reward, Fraser said. Last year, the club finished eighth, the year before it was third: the difference for the bottom line was negligible.
"Finals is an intangible benefit, not a tangible benefit. It gives confidence to your existing members and helps add new members next year."
Under this year's prizemoney system, a losing preliminary finalist gets $300,000 — half of which goes to the players.
With finals footy comes a rush on merchandise. Two-thirds of the profit from replica uniform sales goes to the club but for other souvenirs such as key chains and stubby holders, all profit goes to the AFL.
While this provides a small boost for those who go deep into September, clubs agree most sales are reserved for the winner. The biggest-selling sports DVD of last year was a program shown in its entirety beforehand on free-to-air television.
The West Coast grand final victory sold 20,000 copies in the week after the match alone.
The AFL says a club winning the premiership would expect to raise several hundred thousand dollars from merchandise in the days following a grand final.
It's a similar story with memorabilia. Grand final clubs now routinely sell signed game-day jumpers for about $2500 each. In some cases, players will wear multiple jumpers before and during the game to increase sales.
Perhaps no club is more qualified to talk about the financial cost of missing finals than last year's ninth-place finisher, Richmond.
But football manager Greg Miller says a club's trajectory is more important than where it finishes on the ladder.
"If you're a club on the rise, scraping in is a bonus," he said. "If you've come down from higher up, it's a negative. It all depends on selling hope to potential members, but apart from that, the dollar value of finals is very marginal."
The Tigers missed out on September by finishing ninth last year, he pointed out, but sold plenty of memberships because they had improved.
There might be little at stake financially but you won't be able to detect that when finals contenders Fremantle and St Kilda collide at Telstra Dome today.
For all the talk about football being a business, the main business of football clubs is still winning. The business of business is still a distant second.
