WHEN COVID-19 hit the AFL industry, its financial impact was unknown.

Games, crowds, members and sponsors were all up in the air, with the potential damage tough to even fathom.

For the Melbourne Football Club, the estimated impact was $8 million.  

But through the support of its most faithful, the club has found a way to navigate its way through the most unprecedented of times.

“It’s been a hugely tough year,” CEO of Gary Pert said on The Talking Points.

“In many ways, you don’t know the financial impact until you see the season roll out and it’s certainly had some major changes along the way.

“When the pandemic was announced, all of a sudden, we weren’t going to have crowds at games.

“We were thinking that a lot of our sponsors would be in difficult circumstances themselves, in their own industries, and we might have some of our sponsors cancel out.

“From a membership point of view, where we were budgeting to maybe have a lot of membership cancellations.

“But it’s been an amazing rallying of the club during the year. I’ve been so proud of how the club’s dealt with it, but all our stakeholders and all our members and supporters have been so critically important.”

It is this support that has essentially saved the Demons in season 2020.

Now, Melbourne finds itself in one of the strongest positions in the league, projecting a financial loss of around $3 million – significantly less than first thought.

And while there have been many contributing factors to this, including committed sponsors and successful contract negotiations with state governments, the Melbourne members have played a hugely important role.

“The fans and members should sit back and really give themselves a pat on the back,” Pert said.

“I think we’re still the number one club for the least amount of membership cancellations.

“The members, in many ways, will never know how important that was for the club. If we had had a million dollars’ worth of cancellations, we were in trouble.

“Three million dollars is still a lot of money, and it’ll take us two or three years to recover from, but in a lot of ways, the entire club has helped minimise that.”

While the Dees have managed to reduce the pandemic’s damage, they have also been able to remain an ‘unassisted’ club, resisting financial assistance from the AFL.

And for the CEO, this was crucial.

“I’ve made it very clear to everyone at the club, including the players, how important the fans have been to put us in a position where we won’t be requiring a loan from the AFL and the banks,” Pert said.

“We wanted to do everything possible for that not to be the case.

“If we take a loan from the AFL and the banks, there will be obligations, there will be commitments that we’d have to agree to as part of taking that money, that no doubt would compromise our ability to make the decisions that we want to make.

“That would apply until you pay that money back, so it was so important that we were unassisted.”

Pert shares more off-field news in episode 10 of The Talking Points below.