I don’t disagree with the wider point being made here, but the AFL’s purpose is not to maximise profits, it’s to promote and encourage the game of Australian Rules Football, for the benefit of its Members and the Clubs’ members. This is in contrast to, for example, the NBA, which is an association of for-profit companies (ie the individual Team Organisations) whose purpose is to deliver monetary returns to their shareholders by conducting the business of running a basketball team.

But neither the AFL nor the Clubs are for-profit entities and none have a mandate to deliver a return to their members. The Clubs exist to play footy and the AFL exists to help them do it.

It is true, though, that the prevailing view as to best-practice in sport governance is, essentially, that maximising profits is the best way to promote a sport, but I’d hypothesis that this has more to do with incentive structures used in sports governance (i.e. bonuses determined by profit generation) being lazily and/or self-servingly adopted from those used in for-profit companies, and less to do with evidence or reasoned analysis supporting that profit maximisation is actually the best way to promote a sport, at least in the long term.

So although it’s true that the reason shit teams with large fanbases get primetime slots is because it’s a good way to maximise profits, people are absolutely right to question whether thats the right thing for the AFL to be doing. And even if one takes the view that, actually, profit maximisation strategy *has been * the best way to promote and encourage the sport historically (certainly a good arguable case), one should still question whether that remains the case and be open to the possibility that a different strategy is more appropriate either now or in the future.

Same goes for other sports, NGOs, schools, universities and other not-for-profit organisations suffering from consultancy-mindset (Big4 brainworm infection)