High bar? The new Hobart stadium has the lowest capacity of any primary stadium in the AFL. It's worse when you consider the four games in the lower-capacity Launceston (e.g. compared to merely 1-3 games in secondary venues for other teams). It's literally the lowest bar there is.

Hawthorn and North's training bases and revenue-generation premium seating, player sponsors, Grand Final access ticketing membership etc. are on the basis of the facilities in Melbourne and not Tasmania, it really isn't that hard to understand at all e.g. membership.nmfc.com.au/membership/p...

They also sold off Sydney to private owners which isn't in the AFL's philosophy and I'm not even sure what the relevancy of comparing to a time where the league wasn't fully professional is anyway. If Tasmania doesn't want to win 0 games a season, they need about $35 million p/y of their own revenue

... which might be relevant for Tasmania's entry conditions if it were still 1987

They're fine for it for no more than a couple of games a year. The people and businesses that pay four, five figures a year still need corporate facilities and premium seating to exist for the majority of games. What's hard to understand about that?

None of those are the primary home stadium and where you host five figure plus sponsors, premium members, Gold reserved seat members etc that make an AFL team's operations possible (and nobody is pretending that GWS isn't operating at a loss). It costs tens of millions to run a team p/y!

A roofed stadium was presented to the AFL by Tasmania before the AFL had otherwise received an application for a team and had to consider stadium concerns one way or another Jessica

Hey Shamit, I'm a 10+ years Melbourne based very passionate Pels fan, who has flown over to New Orleans on numerous occasions just to watch the team. When they came out to Melbourne I basically didn't bother going or getting tickets, because essentially of this reason - I dislike the team now