Dutchy wrote:1980 Tassie Medalist wrote:As i said with 8 games guaranteed a week watch the AFL step back and reduce the competitive balance fund to the Melbourne base clubs as it lets survival of the fittest determine who will survive.
Does anyone here actually understand the CBF?

alright get rid of it BUT let us play Collingwood, Essendon, Richmond & Carlton all twice a year like they all get the advantage of doing EVERY year - then flows through to gate receipts, the CBF gives us a monetary rewards for not having these advantages of the draw....
Yes I am aware of why the CBF fund is in place. Your reason is perfectly correct but it also exists is to ensure 8 games a week for TV. The AFL can not afford to have one of its current clubs to fall over ATM.
Hence why to increase market sare and the long term development of teh code (as it did in 1986) it wants a team on teh gold coast, it will happen. Like in 1986 the VFL/AFL preference is for a Melbourne club to relocate. Fitzroy said no it struggled for another 10 years with income streams significantly below that of the other clubs and then did what the AFL wanted it to do 10 years earlier.
It is no con to have a 17th team on the Gold Coast, the AFL don't want to be left behind in a market (SE QLD) that within 10 years will have the same population as Melbourne itself. The AFL have a very good track record of getting what they want with respect to the location of their franchises, and they want one on the Gold Coast. Within five yars they'll have one.
For your sake as a Passionate NMFC fan I would like your club to survive but football economics (and lets face facts modern professional sport is run on economics not passion) dictate it will not survive in its current form in the AFL.
What is your annual T/O Dutchy??? $35 Mill like Hawthorn and Collingwood??? With the 10 million investiment fund you would be lucky to get another $2 Mill return on it in a year (to go into revenue). A new major sponsor will be lucky to kick in an additional $1/2 mill on top of what Primus did. You already calim North Melbourne have the highest %age of member:supporter ratio (I dips me lid to you) so the potential for income growth there is limited compared to other clubs.
Your one saving opportunity is that Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs don't read the signs and you go past them in the finacial desperation stakes