It’s because the two administrations had opposing views, the old administration was trying to get it off the ground a few years from now but was investing heavily in the grass roots so there was a stronger pool of players when Gil took over he went for a top down approach started the AFLW straight away half the players were picked from different sports. The AFLW is 5 years in and is only viable because of the AFL. As each year goes by and you are seeing more and more kids get drafted who have played footy all their life the comp should get better
The AFL would be crazy not to invest heavily in AFLW given their financial position. It is a rapidly growing segment that has significant interest and the easiest way to improve it rapidly is to make it more professional.
It really doesn't take much in player payments to provide the ability for players to train and play enough to improve the standard rapidly.
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As for the crowds, do you know how many free tickets they give away? Stupidly large amounts, you can fill a stadium for anything if you give away tickets
Free tickets or not (and I believe tickets aren't free now), the games are popular. People suggesting that it's easy to fill a sporting event if the tickets are free mustn't have been to many NRC games. Whether those were free or not made a negligible difference to the crowds. Likewise things like domestic one day cricket and Sheffield Shield games.
You could hand out tonnes of free tickets to most Super Rugby games and it would only make a marginal difference to the crowds. Not many people give up an evening to do something they're not particularly interested in just because it's free.
I used to work for the AFL and know people that still do work there as well as some high level umpires. They all think the same, AFLW overall was done extremely poorly and has only survived off the wealth of the AFL
This would be the case for every second tier sporting league. The whole point of the exercise is that they can grow AFLW at a much faster rate by investing in it rather than having to wait 150 years for it to grow to the size of the AFL through just its own means.
Women's sport, particularly in formerly male dominated sports are the growth areas. Ultimately this feeds into interest in your main product.
I find it strange how much animosity there is towards women's sport and investment in it. It's a no brainer in terms of the most effective way to grow your overall interest.