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Duff: Staff redundancies must spark serious questions of the AFL's royalty model
Mark Duffield • October 21st, 2025 8:30 pm
WA Football last week made nine employees redundant across a range of areas of its operations.
These redundancies were not based on merit or a lack of it – they were not based on performance or a lack of it. They were not based on a need to overhaul or re-structure the organization because it could run more efficiently.
They were based on a need because of a lack of funding – and that lack of funding raises serious questions about the Royalty model WA footy has in place with its AFL clubs West Coast and Fremantle.
When football shifted to Optus Stadium, the clubs and the AFL and the WAFC as WA footy was then known – had to get their collective heads around the fact that they would not get to keep the whole cake as they did on the WAFC controlled Subiaco Oval.
But the win was in the fact that while there would only be a cut of the cake, the cake was going to be much, much bigger.
In 2018, in the first season at the new stadium, West Coast alone posted an $11 million profit and handed over a $3.9 million royalty to the WAFC.
In 2022 – even though we were just coming out of a pandemic and even though the Eagles were entering a horror stretch of seasons, the clubs between them handed over just shy of $5 million. The Eagles, who were still earning big dough and had built a membership of more than 100,000, handed over more than $2.7 million. Fremantle, who returned to finals for the first time since 2015, handed over $2.25 million.
In the two years since 2022, the total royalty paid by the clubs to WA footy has dropped by $2 million. Last year the Dockers broke a membership record and generated a record $75 million in revenue but handed over just $1.23 million.
The Eagles, in that horror stretch but still maintaining membership and still generating $92 million in revenue, handed over $1.78 million.
That means that two clubs generating $167 million in revenue saw fit to hand less than two per cent of that money to the body running talent development, grass roots and community football for both boys and girls in the state.
This year there are fears that the royalties will dip closer to a minimum of $1.1 million each that the clubs are obliged to pay under their royalty agreements. That would wipe close to another million dollars off the money WA footy has access to.
WA Football, having been in deficit with its budget – decided it had to return to surplus and fearing another significant dip in royalties from the two clubs, felt it had no choice but to cut people’s jobs.
Now we should state that West Coast and Fremantle are the only two AFL clubs that give money to their state systems to help support the footy ecosystem in their state.
We should also state that despite this, the two WA clubs get precious little help from the AFL to increase their financial viability. In 2024, the $16.9 million the Eagles received from the AFL represented the lowest club distribution in the league. The $19 million that Fremantle received was the fourth lowest. Only the Eagles, Hawthorn and Richmond received less.
So what does this all mean? Simply when it comes to any sport, less means less. When the Herald Sun did its 100 draft prospects for 2025 – it had just 10 kids in the 100 from WA. By comparison South Australia had 18 kids in the top 100. Queensland had 11... That’s right, QLD is tipped to produce more draft talent this year than WA. At the top end three Queensland kids are tipped to be inside of the top five. No WA kid is tipped to be in the top 10.
Something is very wrong here. WA Footy owns the licences of the two clubs and under current arrangements cannot extract enough from them to properly fund its community, grass roots and talent development operations. This is something that needs to be talked about and quickly. We need to start with a new royalty arrangement that delivers bang for buck. And we need to ask the AFL why – if the Queensland system has gone past WA – they continue to throw money hand over fist at it.
Remember those 2024 distributions? Gold Coast received $34 million and Brisbane – the premier – received $30 million.
