Questions we aren’t asking: why does the AFL deserve a tax free status?
The tax-free status that the AFL continues to hide behind is the consequence of an outdated law past nearly a century ago. Quietly, they exist in a paradox where this status is argued to be justified by the service they provide to society. This occurs alongside an untaxed revenue stream that draws its profit from industries that are harmful to the taxpayer. The same taxpayer who’s interests they claim to be representing.
There is no denying that football occupies an immortal position in Australian culture. A game conceived in our own backyard; it has long been romanticised as the confluence of all the most admirable aspects of our national character. Mateship, sacrifice, community and selflessness, these are the synonyms which the advertising campaigns have sought to reinforce to the public. Since 2015, this idea of ‘by the people, for the people’ has been particularly accentuated.
This strategy conforms to the commercialised nature of the world where businesses, such as the AFL, allocate significant proportions of their budget to advertising. Advertising which allows them to project a certain narrative which will ultimately empower them to build on their 50 million-dollar profit recorded in 2018.
Without doubt this advertising reveals a desire to control public perception as a way to disguise other actions which could appear un-ethical or contradictory to the consumer.
Because, when the CUB manufactured beer goggles are removed, this narrative of selflessness and community is undermined by a strategy that seems characterised by greed, a decidedly un-Australian value.
This greed has grown to the extent where the AFL hides behind a law passed in 1936 in order to wriggle out of their obligation to pay their fair share of tax.
Created in an age where the VFL was semi-professional (with players working other jobs full-time), parliament declared football to be a ‘community service’ working for the wider health of society. Now, before I am drowned in a sea of Auskick footballs ‘proving’ the AFL’s benevolence, I would ask the reader to consider whether this is still true in light of some of the AFL’s other ‘investments.’
A casual look at the corporate sponsors for the AFL will find that three of the four top partners are from the alcohol, betting and fast food industries. Directly endorsing, most prominently through match day advertising, habits destructive to the people of ‘Australia’s Game’ (part of the 2015 slogan).
For a quick buck the AFL has prostituted itself to gambling company BetEasy for a deal which sees them paid ten million dollars a year. This is in spite of the AFL’s crucial role in fuelling Australia’s gambling addiction with 409,000 people betting on games during the 2016 season. Independently of this, the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation reports that 39% of those diagnosed with a gambling problem have a mental illness. By weaponizing a sport people love to reach ever higher profit margins, how many homes are left shattered by the AFL’s endorsement of having a flutter?
Further, ignoring their responsibility to help curb Australia’s toxic drinking culture, the AFL flexes its century old association with Carlton United Breweries. A relationship that sees our screens regularly plastered with advertisements that suggest footy isn’t footy without an alcoholic beverage of some sort in your hand.
Considering this, it is difficult to convincingly argue that the AFL deserves its tax-break on the basis that it primarily exists to serve the community.
These partnerships with the traditional enemies of Australian’s, gambling and alcohol, indicate an organisation that has sacrificed its principles on the altar of ‘good business.’ Perhaps, if the AFL wasn’t being given a free ride by the people they are directly hurting, their behaviour would be somewhat permissible. Unfortunately, they seem to have carved a position for themselves whereby they are able to take with the right AND the left without giving anything back.
As such, the AFL must make a choice; either they uphold their duty to act as a service that exclusively promotes behaviours that benefit and service the community, by not accepting sponsorship from individuals that harm the vulnerable in society. Or, they relinquish their tax-free status, maintaining the sponsorship partners that they currently hold. One of these responses is the right thing to do, the other, is the more likely response for any self-respecting, cash hungry business.
Irrespective of their decision, what cannot continue is this contradiction that the AFL have been allowed to exist in.
