The Australian Football League is providing A$34M ($30.5M) of bank guarantees on "behalf of its clubs, in some cases to enable cash-stricken operations to pay their bills and convince auditors they remain commercially viable," according to Le Grand & Danckert of THE AUSTRALIAN. As Australia's "richest football competition prepares to enter fresh negotiations" on what it hopes will be another A$1B broadcast rights deal, its "underclass of working-poor clubs are increasingly reliant on the goodwill of the AFL and banks to survive." An examination of club finances has found that "the AFL club in the most dire financial position is Brisbane, which remains technically insolvent with a deficiency in net assets" of A$4.7M and a "deficiency in current assets" of A$12.8M. Even one of the "competition's most powerful clubs, Essendon, finds itself drained of cash after having to fork out" nearly A$4M to "cover fines and legal expenses from the supplements scandal" and a further estimated A$1M to pay suspended coach James Hird his entire '14 salary in advance. The AFL guarantees "enable clubs to secure a line of credit at a cheaper interest rate than banks would otherwise offer, if at all, to businesses facing similar financial difficulties" (THE AUSTRALIAN, 2/10).
