The future of the AFL

For those that love the benefit of hindsight, this is a blog post from the future. In July 2050, Australia‘s Footieroos (formerly known as the Socceroos) are crowned the FIFA Men’s World Cup winners for the first time, following in the footsteps of 2-time winners and current holders, the Matildas.

This article looks at why football (or soccer as it is currently called) became Australia’s dominant sport.

It pinpoints its success to when the AFL’s decline began with the Tasmanian Devils stadium fiasco, a costly expansion project that left Tasmania in financial ruin. At the same time the AFL’s overreach and mismanagement became evident, football’s popularity surged. The AFL’s viewership and fan engagement dwindled, the league fractured, relegating it to a niche sport.

This story from the future serves as a cautionary tale about unchecked ambition, the importance of sustainable growth, and community engagement in sports.

Australia’s Football Revolution: How We Became a World Force by 2050

2050: A New Sporting Era
Australia stands proudly as a global powerhouse in the world of football. The country, now home to over 40 million people, has achieved something once considered improbable: champions of both the Women’s and Men’s FIFA World Cups at the same time. The Aussies have become a sporting juggernaut, a beacon for nations trying to understand how a relatively small country can dominate on the world stage. The United States and China, two of football’s most powerful countries, look to Australia not only for inspiration but for answers to why a country with just 40 million people can punch so far above its weight.

It all started with the grassroots, the humble, unassuming foundation that changed everything.

The Power of Grassroots Participation

In 2050, Australia’s football success is often attributed to a singular, simple truth: kids start kicking a ball from birth. Unlike the past, where AFL and Rugby League were the dominant forces in Australian sport, football took root in the soil of Australian culture early on. By 2025, football had overtaken all other sports in participation numbers. Every child, whether in the suburbs of Sydney, the regional towns of Victoria, or the coastal communities of Queensland, had access to football, from MiniRoos programs for toddlers to youth leagues that extend through to the elite level.

The transformation didn’t happen overnight. It started with a shift in focus at the community level. In the early 2020s, ‘soccer’ started receiving more funding, more media attention, and crucially, more support from local councils. By 2030, schools across Australia had embraced the sport as a core part of their curriculum. More kids were playing football, and their ambitions began to align with the success they saw in international competitions like the FIFA Women’s World Cup and World Cup qualifiers.

The Matildas‘ rise to prominence in the 2020s was nothing short of a catalyst. Their success, their visibility, and the infectious enthusiasm of young girls across the nation propelled the sport to the forefront. Then came the men’s team, then called the Socceroos, who, through a mixture of grassroots development, foreign-based professionals, and improved local training, managed to climb the ranks on the global stage. By 2040, Australia had become a top-tier nation in both men’s and women’s football, something that once felt impossible.

From Surprising Success to Dominance

What made this all the more remarkable was how quickly it happened. In the space of just a few decades, football had evolved from a minority sport into the country’s most popular, not just in terms of participation, but in fan support, sponsorship, and global prestige. The A-League Men and A-League Women were now recognised as elite competitions, consistently attracting top talent from around the world, while Australian players were sought after in international leagues for their skill, passion, and discipline.

In 2045, when Australia’s women’s team lifted the FIFA Women’s World Cup trophy in a heart-pounding final against Brazil, it marked the culmination of years of careful nurturing of talent, facilities, and youth programs. It wasn’t just a victory for the team, it was the crowning achievement of a sporting revolution. Their defence of the title last year showed how strong women‘s football is in this country.

The Footieroos’ victory in the recent 2050 World Cup (held in Afghanistan) was a moment of national pride that cemented Australia’s status as a sporting superpower. The team had not just won, they had inspired millions. Young boys and girls from every corner of Australia saw themselves on the world stage. Football wasn’t just something played for fun anymore; it was a genuine career aspiration, a sport where Australian players could compete at the highest level.

The Old Guard: AFL and Rugby League’s Struggle for Relevance

While football soared to new heights, Australia’s traditional sports, AFL and Rugby League, held on, but only by the skin of their teeth. Once powerful forces in Australian sport, they now exist in the niche corners of the country, supported by the die-hard fans who refuse to let go of their beloved teams and codes. These sports still draw meagre crowds in regional areas, but the mainstream has shifted decisively to football.

The AFL, which once dominated Australia’s sporting conversation, now finds itself in a fight for relevance, clinging to the strongholds of rural Victoria and South Australia. In many ways, it’s a shell of its former self, having lost its grip on the nation’s imagination. While still cherished by fans, the sport has struggled to make inroads with younger generations, who see football as the future.

Rugby League, too, finds itself in a similar situation. Once king in New South Wales and Queensland, the sport now faces a shrinking fan base and a lack of youth engagement. Where once rugby league ruled the airwaves, football now dominates, with NRL clubs struggling to fill stadiums that were once packed to the rafters.

Both AFL and Rugby League are still played at the elite level, but they have been relegated to cultural nostalgia. They persist, but they do so as shadow sports, forever outpaced by the seismic rise of football in the hearts and minds of the Australian public.

The Football Legacy

Looking back from 2050, the story of Australia’s rise to football greatness is one of perseverance, vision, and the power of community-based sport. It wasn’t just about a golden generation of players; it was about creating the infrastructure and the culture that could sustain the sport for generations to come.

What football gave Australia was more than just world titles. It gave the country a unified purpose, a shared identity. Young Australians, no longer bound by the legacy of the AFL or Rugby League, could look at the football fields around them and know that their sport had become part of their cultural fabric. Kids kicked balls on streets, in parks, in backyards; the game was part of their DNA.

As Australia continues to rise as a global force in football, other countries look to this transformation and ask: How did you do it? The answer is simple: Australia embraced football as a way of life, ensuring that no child ever had to wonder what it felt like to dream big, to play for something greater, and to become part of a global phenomenon.

In 2050, Australia’s football legacy isn’t just about titles, it’s about a country that dared to believe in the impossible. And, in doing so, changed the face of sport forever.

What Went Wrong for the AFL? The Humiliating Fall of a Sporting Empire

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the rot set in for the AFL, but many argue that it started with a costly, disastrous decision: the forced construction of a stadium “folly” in Hobart for the now-defunct Tasmanian Devils. What was supposed to be a major expansion of the AFL into Tasmania ended up becoming the catalyst for its downfall, a $2 billion stadium that left the state in financial ruin and the league in a public relations disaster.

The Tasmanian Devils and the White Elephant Stadium

In the early 2020s, the AFL’s vision for national expansion was aggressive. The league pushed hard for Tasmania to have its own AFL team, the Tasmanian Devils, despite widespread concerns that the state simply didn’t have the population or financial capacity to support a team at that level. The Hobart stadium was to be the crown jewel of the expansion, a state-of-the-art facility that would bring top-tier football to Tasmania and supposedly boost the local economy.

But things went awry from the start.

The stadium’s construction ballooned to an eye-watering $2 billion, far surpassing initial estimates. This massive cost was funded largely by state taxpayers, a decision that would come back to haunt the state. The AFL pushed the state government relentlessly, knowing that a team in Tasmania would boost the league’s national reach. However, the economic viability of such a project was a flawed assumption from the beginning.

The Collapse of the Tasmanian Devils

The Tasmanian Devils never stood a chance. The team struggled both on the field and at the box office. Despite being hyped as a new flagship for the AFL’s expansion, they failed to attract the necessary fan base, and the stadium quickly became a white elephant. After just a few seasons, the team was wound down, and the stadium was left sitting derelict, a monument to the AFL’s overreach and poor judgment. It is currently used as an emergency housing shelter, albeit with a very leaky roof.

In the aftermath, the state was left with a financial mess. The massive debt from the stadium construction weighed heavily on the Tasmanian economy, and the bailout by the federal government only deepened the humiliation. The Lib-Lab Coalition government took a major hit to its credibility and public trust. What was meant to be a triumph for the AFL turned into a cautionary tale of hubris and mismanagement. The privately funded 30,000 seat rectangular stadium, next door to the basketball arena, soon filled up every weekend. Mac Point, with no easy access, is unloved and left to rot.

The AFL’s Struggle with Expansion and Overreach

But the Tasmania disaster was only one piece of a much larger problem for the AFL. The league had long prided itself on being the premier football code in Australia, but as the years went on, it became increasingly clear that the growth model was unsustainable.

• Expansion into Darwin was initially seen as a success, but the AFL’s attempt to stretch into markets that didn’t have the same cultural attachment to the game was inherently flawed. The Northern Territory and other non-traditional AFL areas had a fanbase that simply wasn’t big enough to support the growing demand for AFL clubs. The increasing reliance on TV contracts and sponsorship deals was meant to counterbalance this, but it didn’t take long before it became evident that the league’s financial model was becoming top-heavy.
  
• Gold Coast and GWS were the AFL’s next big bets. These teams were supposed to bring new life to the competition, expanding the league’s reach into the Gold Coast and Western Sydney. But both teams struggled financially, failing to attract significant crowds, merchandise sales, or sponsorships. As the years wore on, it became clear that these teams would not become the national juggernauts the AFL had hoped for. Instead, Gold Coast and GWS became synonymous with failure, two costly mistakes that drained the league’s resources.

Shrinking Revenue and the Melbourne Teams’ Power Play

As the AFL’s expansion efforts faltered, the league’s core teams, mostly based in Melbourne, grew restless. The financial pie was shrinking, and the Melbourne teams, the traditional powerhouses of the AFL, began to clamour for a bigger share of the dwindling resources. And they could afford nationwide travel.

• The television rights deals, once a huge cash cow for the AFL, started to see diminishing returns. As streaming services disrupted traditional broadcasting and viewership declined, the AFL found itself caught in a tightening grip of shrinking sponsorship and broadcasting revenue.
  
• At the same time, Melbourne’s traditional clubs, which had historically dominated the league, demanded more financial support. The AFL’s attempts to cater to these powerful teams, while trying to support its underperforming expansion clubs, only intensified the pressure. Melbourne’s big four clubs, Richmond, Collingwood, Carlton and Essendon, grew increasingly frustrated with the AFL’s ability to balance growth with financial stability. The cost of expansion had become a liability rather than an asset.

The Inevitable Decline: A Once Unthinkable Scenario

It wasn’t long before the AFL began to realise the problem was much bigger than just a few missteps. The expansion strategy, once the cornerstone of the AFL’s long-term vision, had turned into a financial burden. The collapse of the Tasmanian Devils and the failure of Gold Coast and GWS signalled that the AFL was out of touch with the reality of the Australian sports landscape.

The once-proud league found itself battling against declining fan engagement, rising operational costs, and a fractured competition. Even as the sport’s traditional base remained loyal, new generations of fans showed less interest, particularly when the AFL’s financial model was so closely tied to big-money deals rather than fan engagement or grassroots participation.

The Final Blow: The Collapse of the National Dream

The tipping point came in the late 2030s. By then, the AFL had lost its status as Australia’s dominant code. With the rise of football and the increasing popularity of basketball and e-sports, the AFL’s stranglehold on the national sporting culture had loosened.

By 2040, the AFL had become a shadow of its former self, with only a handful of die-hard supporters keeping the league afloat. Teams that once filled stadiums now played in half-empty arenas, and the once-celebrated Grand Final became a second-tier event that struggled to attract public interest. The rival Australian Rules League, with Melbourne’s “big four” clubs, along with Sydney and Brisbane was set up as a breakaway competition.

The AFL’s demise wasn’t sudden. It was a slow, painful unravelling. But looking back, it all started with that fateful decision to force the construction of a $2 billion stadium in Hobart. From there, it was just a matter of time before the league’s overreach, mismanagement, and failure to adapt caught up with it.

The Lesson Learned

The AFL’s downfall is a stark reminder of the dangers of hubris and unchecked ambition. What began as a proud expansion of the game turned into a massive financial disaster that ultimately broke the state of Tasmania and crippled the league’s future. The AFL’s rise and fall underscore the importance of community engagement, sustainable growth, and a deep understanding of local needs, lessons that other sports leagues would do well to heed as they navigate the changing landscape of global sports.