As an AFL headline, it was one of the more impressive as Gillon McLachlan moved towards the conclusion of his 11-year stewardship of Australian rules football: A whopping and legacy-sealing $4.5 billion seven-year broadcast rights deal worth an extra $70 million annually to the game until the end of 2031.

McLachlan and his team had managed to stick with what they knew in the game’s media partner for the best part of more than three-quarters of a century, Channel Seven, along with its long-time pay TV partner Foxtel and Telstra, rejecting a $6 billion, 10-year offer from Paramount Plus.

Channel Seven abandoned Saturday free-to-air AFL footy.Credit: Artwork: Matt Willis

The players would be richer, the clubs would be safer and AFLW and all the game’s markets would be developed and expanded. And the fans would never be better off.

The McLachlan announcement came at the start of the 2022 finals series, but the deal did not kick in until he was long gone at the start of 2025 season. Nor did the hidden nasties: Notably the fact that the AFL had chosen for the first time to charge its supporters to watch the football on its most traditional day, and to place every game on a Saturday behind a paywall.

Former AFL chief executive and now Tabcorp CEO, Gillon McLachlan.Credit: Eamon Gallagher

Not one non-Victorian club of the six contacted by this masthead is happy with the new deal. At least four are deeply concerned about the changes the new deal has forced upon the fixture and the loss of audiences on a Saturday. Generally the clubs based in Sydney and southern Queensland believe the removal of Saturday night football from Channel Seven has handed the NRL a costly free kick.

Media and club bosses unwilling to be quoted on numbers for fear of antagonising head office say that the loss of the free-to-air Saturday night game has cost the AFL conservatively 400,000 viewers each week – even allowing for the boosted Fox Footy rating and the estimated uplift in subscriptions of 100,000.

While it is true that Seven is more than making up the numbers with Thursday night football across each round and with the new and semi-regular Sunday night games, the decision to turn its back on a regular Saturday night free-to-air audience smacks of an own goal by the competition.

Rugby league supremo Peter V’Landys.Credit: Kate Geraghty

The AFL was the last bastion of Saturday night free-to-air footy and the only code in Australia to boast the fixture. The NRL and its significantly smaller match attendances is the current winner because its supporters have long been used to paying for the Saturday night game.

Incredibly, most clubs agreed the hidden costs of the rich new deal had not become clear to them until this season. Club chiefs say they will raise the issue when they next meet with head office as a group in Melbourne in early June, but all agree the AFL prioritised money over those struggling........

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