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NORTH Melbourne will focus almost exclusively on boosting its commercial department as it seeks to close the gap on the competition’s powerhouse clubs, coach Brad Scott says.
Under the AFL’s club funding and equalisation strategy announced on Tuesday, North, together with the Bulldogs, will receive the most special funding – or “disequal” funding as the AFL has dubbed it – over the next three years, $7 million.
Scott told Fox Sports’ AFL Insider that North would use that $7 million primarily to bolster its non-football activities.
“It will go to commercial activities, it will go to growing fan development, it will go to .. grow(ing) memberships,” Scott said.
“So the idea is that the AFL is providing resources for North Melbourne to build its revenue so that at the end of the five-year period that will have (produced) a fully self-sustaining (commercial) model that will then fund the football department.
“But the football department, in itself, won’t change much at all over the next five years. That $7 million won’t go into the footy department.”
North will receive this special funding as part of a new $144 million Club Future Fund established by the AFL under its $1.1 billion equalisation strategy for 2012-16.
Along with the AFL’s other 17 clubs,hoodies customized, North will also receive an “equal” distribution of $3.25 million over the next five years under the Future Fund. It is also likely to share in the $37 million the AFL has set aside for more needs-based special distributions in 2015-16.
The equalisation strategy underlines the current AFL administration’s determination to leave a legacy of 18 viable and competitive clubs. The Future Fund represents a $92 million increase on the monies the League provided in 2007-11 under Annual Special Distribution ($38 million) and club facility funding ($14 million).
In North’s case, it received $1.4 million under the Annual Special Distribution Fund in 2010,italian serie a, but will receive an average $2.3 million dollars in special funding over the next three years – and almost $3 million a year when you include its “equal” payments.
However, the AFL is tying its equalisation funding to specific club divisions and projects – and it is expecting results.
As Scott noted, North’s funding has been tied largely to its commercial department. In formulating the equalisation strategy,online shirt design, the AFL consulted heavily with the clubs to formulate football department (excluding players) and non-football department models that represent the minimum staff numbers a club needs to be competitive.
In 2011, the AFL has set this model at 68 full-time employees – 28 in football (including coaching,tee shirt printing, welfare, list management and conditioning) and 40 in non-football (membership, corporate, marketing, communications, digital, finance and IT).
North fell below the AFL ‘breadline’ in both categories this season, with 26 full-time football staff and just 25 full-time non-football staff.
North’s non-football department is the smallest in the competition, five less than the next most under-staffed commercial departments, at the Western Bulldogs and St Kilda.
Accordingly, the AFL expects North to bolster its commercial staff numbers. Although the model of a 40-staff department is a target and not a requirement, North’s funding is conditional on it strongly targeting membership growth, with a focus on secondary markets in Hobart and Ballarat, and the major growth corridor in Melbourne’s west (which the Bulldogs will also be targeting).
North will also be expected to increase its sales team so it can improve attendances at its home games, while 10 per cent of its special funding will go directly towards reducing its existing debt.
Although the AFL expects North to work harder to drag bigger crowds to its games,los angeles galaxy shop, the League recognises it is disadvantaged by its stadium deal at Etihad Stadium (it currently gets about a 36 per cent share of stadium revenue, which is the equal worst in the competition, along with St Kilda and the Bulldogs) and an annual fixture that rewards the bigger clubs with blockbuster games and the lion’s share of prime-time games.
Scott emphasised that North’s special funding under the equalisation strategy was not a handout, but the AFL’s way of addressing such on-going inequities in the competition.
But he also acknowledged that the AFL expects North to use its funding to narrow the gap between itself and clubs like Collingwood, West Coast and Hawthorn.
“A key part of the equalisation strategy (is) the clubs will be held accountable for that money,” Scott said
“(The AFL is not saying), ‘Here’s $7 million, go do your best with it.’ There will have to be plans placed around that, there will be KPIs put against that, so clubs will have to meet specific objectives for that funding to continue.
“I think that’s the only way to do it, to get clubs standing on their own two feet, generating their own revenue so we can have 18 strong and healthy clubs.”
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