AFL deal leaves league behind
THE NRL has been gang tackled in the dash for dollars across women’s sport, with a new AFLW pay deal exposing how far rugby league has been left behind.
An investigation into women’s pay in Australian domestic sport has confirmed cricket as the most lucrative pathway for female team sport athletes, with netball also leading the charge.
Pressure is mounting on the NRL to drastically increase its investment in the women’s professional game with the average wage for an NRLW player just $10,000 compared to AFLW players who earn on average, $47,407 under a new deal announced this week.
The NRL’s spend of less than $2 million on female contracts is dwarfed by the AFL, which spends $25.6 million now it’s expanded to a full 18team competition.
What is most exasperating for women’s league players about languishing in last place on the pay rankings, is that television ratings are impressive and junior participation numbers surging.
League is one of the fastest growing women’s sports at the grassroots – with participation rates directly linked to the advent of the NRLW climbing at about 18 per cent year on year, a faster rate even to Australian Rules growth at 17.3 per cent.
The NRLW produced better TV ratings than the comparative juggernaut that is the Women’s Big Bash League across the Foxtel Group.
Yet female cricketers are the highest paid, with an average wage of $86,456, just ahead of Super Netball ($75,167), while league stars struggle to hold down jobs as they are forced to combine work with pursuing their sporting dream on a minimum wage of $8000.
Todd Greenberg, the former NRL boss now head of the Australian Cricketers’ Association, says women’s sport has become a fierce battleground, and financial investment is the only way to win the war.
“I hear this debate in other sports about you’ve got to be able to find the commercial terms before you start paying the females and I think that needs to be flipped around,” Greenberg said.
Millie Boyle and Tamika Upton became the NRLW’s first six-figure players by signing $100,000 deals with Newcastle to pioneer a mechanism which allows clubs two marquee signings, with only $16,000 counted in the salary cap. In AFL, up to 40 women could pull $100,000 deals under a new pay deal next season.
League’s minimum wage of $8000 is the lowest among major codes. Women earn almost half of WNBL ($15,000) and football ($16,334) while AFLW ($39,184), Super Netball ($43,000) and cricket ($49,051) pay four times as much to their lowest contracted players.