Call for AFL to open its accounts

Community leaders and charity executives have called on the AFL to open its financial accounts to public scrutiny.
The calls follow a University of South Australia (UniSA) that revealed the AFL had received up to $600 million worth of benefits from public funding in the past decade and almost $500,000 a year in direct subsidies.
The research, by the UniSA's Centre for Regulation and Marketing Analysis, also stated that the AFL had an unrivalled lack of transparency in its financial affairs.
The report's authors, John Wilson and Richard Pomfret, said the accounts of the major Australian professional team sports were non-transparent, stating "given the industry's profitability, it is surprising that it receives public subsidies.
"The overall outcome has been spending in the hundreds of millions of public dollars to the benefit of a profitable industry."
The biggest Governmental subsidies of the sport have been for ground upgrades, but there is also almost $500,000 a year in taxpayer funding, including $194,000 for the Australian Institute of Sport's AFL program and $216,000 for the sport's development.
The authors added "the idea that professional sports are a profitable industry, whose size and composition should be determined by demand and for which public subsidies are unnecessary, has not entered the public debate.
"The political economy of sports subsidies appears to reflect politicians' beliefs that many sports fans are potential single-issue voters happy to see tax dollars spent to support professional team sports."
Dr Rhonda Galbally, Chief Executive of community sector resource directory Our Community, commented on the Ourcommunity.com website that the AFL should be more open about its finances, stating "the lack of accountability and transparency are not good. It gets back to basic governance and it ought to be public."
Galbally added that the AFL should be commended for its inclusive social programs.
An AFL spokesman said "Australian football is a non-profit community industry where the revenue generated at the elite level is ploughed back into all levels of the game, including community facilities and programs.
"The AFL, like all major community organisations, publicly releases its accounts as we are all required to do."

http://www.ourcommunity.com.au/