Australian Football League players have "offered to exclude all money made by the league at Etihad Stadium" until '23 as a "key plank in their pay demands," according to Michael Warner of the Sydney DAILY TELEGRAPH. But the gesture made last month "has not broken the deadlock with no new talks scheduled" between the AFL Players' Association and AFL CEOs. The salaries standoff will be a "major topic" at the final AFL Commission meeting of the year in Melbourne on Tuesday. One club CEO said, "We need to get it done -- it's becoming a serious priority for the industry." It emerged that "the game's 800 players had removed all AFL-generated revenues at Etihad Stadium from their contentious pitch for a fixed percentage of industry revenues." Supporter bequests, "pokies riches" and government grants were also excluded from the six-year pay proposal presented to the league by the AFLPA at the start of November. The AFL paid A$200M ($149.7M) to secure "early ownership" of Etihad Stadium in October. The league "plans to pay off the stadium debt quickly, and the players say they will not claim any monies used to extinguish the loan." The players' "Docklands concession does not include revenues or gate takings made by the AFL’s tenant clubs at Etihad Stadium" -- St. Kilda, Carlton, Essendon, North Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs. But money generated from rock concerts, like last weekend's Coldplay shows, and other sporting events like Big Bash cricket matches, will be excluded (DAILY TELEGRAPH, 12/12).
