Etihad Stadium strikes new deal with AFL

The AFL's Melbourne-based clubs will each reap more than $1 million extra per season from venue deals after a breakthrough between the league and Etihad Stadium.

The AFL and the stadium announced a new contract on Wednesday worth an extra $5.5 million per season over a 15-year period, ending months of bitter wrangling.

That amounts to more than $100,000 extra per club for each home game, the same gain the AFL extracted from the MCC in a similar deal governing MCG games three weeks ago.

That means clubs playing their 11 home games in Melbourne will pick up at least an extra $1.1 million each year.

"This is $1.1 million that's net income," AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou said.

"Traditionally football clubs might have to, in some cases, spend $10 million to generate $1 million net.

"It gives them an opportunity to reduce some of their debt, if that's what they want to do, or invest in their football department, which is what a lot of the clubs have told us they want to do, to be able to compete."

The news is particularly welcome for poorer Victorian clubs, who have long complained that unfair stadium deals made it harder for them to provide players with resources in line with richer rivals.

North Melbourne chief executive Eugene Arocca labelled it a "fantastic result" and Western Bulldogs president David Smorgon a "momentous" achievement.

Smorgon said it had been "the most significant and important issue facing the AFL industry".

"The Victorian clubs in particular are going to be the beneficiaries of this," he said.

"That will help reduce the gap that was appearing, based on stadium returns, between non-Victorian clubs and Victorian clubs ... particularly for smaller clubs."

In return for the extra cash, Etihad Stadium had the minimum number of matches to be played at the venue increased by 130 over the 15-year timeframe.

The introduction of new clubs in the Gold Coast in 2011 and western Sydney in 2012 will give the AFL more games to allocate.

The AFL gains ownership of the stadium at the end of the 15-year period, through the terms of the agreement under which it was built.

The stadium's operators have also been promised greater flexibility to stage non-football events, such as music concerts and matches involving other sporting codes.

That means three scheduled AC/DC concerts next February will go ahead, after the AFL had threatened to assert their contractual right to play pre-season games then instead.

Demetriou said the deal received the unanimous support of clubs when it was outlined on Monday, along with other AFL plans to improve the financial footing of poorer clubs.

They include overhauling the league's gate equalisation policy, under which a proportion of gate takings from each match are pooled and redistributed.

Demetriou said the gate levy was an "old, inherited, archaic system" set to be changed for 2011.

He said rich clubs agreed that if poorer clubs were able to spend comparable amounts on their football department, the increased evenness of the competition would create more enticing matches for fans, meaning greater revenue for the entire competition.