Tasmania granted 19th AFL team licence after club presidents’ unanimous support
Tasmania will be granted the 19th AFL team licence after being unanimously endorsed by the existing 18 clubs. The presidents reportedly took less than 20 minutes on Tuesday to reach complete agreement over the decision to add a Tasmanian team to the competition.
The AFL commission met on Tuesday evening to complete the final step of ratifying the licence after which outgoing chief executive Gillon McLachlan released a short statement saying: “See you in Tassie tomorrow.”
McLachlan is expected to make the official announcement in Hobart on Wednesday.Andrew Dillon, who was unveiled as the AFL’s new CEO on Monday, said the Tasmanian team would be a priority for him and McLachlan, who will stay for a transition period until October.
“It’s a really exciting time and there’s some key decisions probably to be had in the next potentially day or coming days and coming weeks about Tasmania,” Dillon said on Monday. “But all the building blocks are in place and we’re really looking forward.”
Dillon said the league was buoyed up by Saturday’s announcement of federal government funding for a new waterfront stadium in Hobart. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, pledged $240m for a stadium at Macquarie Point, but was confronted by protesters arguing for the money to be spent on health and housing.
Tasmania will be the first expansion team since Greater Western Sydney were awarded a licence in 2010 and entered the AFL in 2012. With the new Hobart stadium to be the expansion club’s home, attention would next turn to the logistics around the team entering the league, along with its proposed name and colours.
Dillon has indicated Tasmanians will be involved in choosing their team’s nickname. Tigers is out of the question but Devils would be an obvious choice, and is the name of other football clubs in the state. But there are suggestions the AFL would have to negotiate with Warner Bros which owns a trademark over its Looney Tunes character.
The AFL has committed $360m over a decade towards a team, including $90m in game development and $33m for player talent academies. It is expected the side would enter the league in 2027 and play at Hobart’s Blundstone Arena and the University of Tasmania Stadium in Launceston before the new stadium is finished in 2028-29. The team would play four matches a season at UTAS Stadium, which will be upgraded.
Tasmania has long pushed for entry into the national competition. It has produced four AFL Hall of Fame legends in Darrel Baldock, Peter Hudson, Ian Stewart and Royce Hart, as well as more recent stars including Matthew Richardson and Jack Riewoldt.
The state government, which spearheaded the bid, will contribute $12m a year over 12 years towards a team, plus $60m for a high-performance centre. It will chip in $375m for the new $715m 23,000-seat roofed stadium at Macquarie Point, which opponents have labelled a waste of money amid a housing and health crisis.