What the AFLPA Should Learn from the Damar Hamlin Situation

I wasn’t sure about this article. It felt to me kind of like talking to an alcoholic about quitting drinking (or gun control in the United States). Some say that the midst of, yet another brutal hangover is the best time to stage an intervention, others say the person needs to be clear headed. Then I saw this PR tweet from NFL Network employee Ian Rapoport:

Give. Me. A. Fucking. Break.

For those not familiar, Damar Hamlin was at the centre of one of the scariest, saddest scenes that I have ever witnessed during Monday Night Football last week. After a routine collision with Bengals receiver Tee Higgins, he stood up momentarily before passing out and dropping backwards. Commentary revealed that he required CPR and a defibrillator, and medical professionals were able to restart his heart. He left in an ambulance, while the shock and fear for his life was palpable on his teammates’ and opponents’ faces.

When he arrived at hospital, he was deemed to be in a critical condition. It was later found that he suffered a cardiac arrest on the field. He has since made a - borderline miraculous - recovery and is now breathing on his own and speaking.

This particular situation is exacerbated, and the tweet above made even more egregious, by the fact that Hamlin is a second-year player. NFL players become “vested” after three or more credited seasons. Vested means that after they retire, they receive 5 years of medical coverage.

NFL insurance for all players lasts for, at most, 5 years. As a non-vested player, Hamlin would be financially responsible for his own recovery costs.

Not sure what you know about the American medical system, but it’s pretty pricey.

In the aftermath of Hamlin’s cardiac arrest, I started thinking about AFL players. What if this had happened on an AFL field? What would happen? The collision is one that could easily happen in our game, how would footy look after the affected player?

I’ve written about this before, but AFL footballers are wildly underpaid. The broad strokes are that footballers essentially get about 28% of league revenue - up to $6.574 billion. Thereafter they get 11.2% of any additional revenue exceeding the $6.574 billion threshold.

To put that in perspective, NFL and NBA players get about half of league revenue. The UFC usually shares around 15-20% of an event’s revenue with the fighters. AFL is closer to the UFC, which has actively and openly forbidden fighters from unionising, than they are to other collectively bargained leagues like NBA or NFL.

Now, I know that there are real differences between the playing fields in the NFL and NBA and the AFL, most notably private ownership in the two American leagues as opposed to the centralised control that the AFL wields over footy.

But theoretically, that fact should make an issue like post-playing insurance, as well as player pay, more accessible. However, as it currently stands - pursuant to 19(c) of the 2017-2022 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) - players receive individual entitlements from the Defined Contribution Benefit “on a staggered basis depending on length of service”.

In other words, the longer you play, the better we’ll cover you.

Sounds fine in theory. I might argue that if you’re in a car crash every week for 3 years for $150,000, the least the league could do is cover my health insurance for life, but I can see the business reasoning for this approach if I take my humanity cap off.

No need to look after them anymore, they’re not playing.

Thankfully, 19(d) says that the AFL and AFLPA will look to “maximise” the benefits that players get.

That’s a relief.

The actual numbers are unclear and not defined in the CBA, but the CBA does define the quantum of the player retirement account. For this most recent CBA, the AFL has pledged $15m per annum to the retirement account, with that number capable of being goosed by any additional revenue the AFL can muster after the executive pays themselves their salaries and hefty bonuses.

First year players who retired after 2017 received $10,560 and players who played 10 years or longer received $21,120. It is not nothing, but it is also not enough given what we now know about the head and body trauma that AFL players endure for our entertainment.

Not only do they not make as much money as they deserve during their playing career, but they also are not adequately looked after when they eventually retire after a lifetime’s worth of Toradol shots and sleeping pills.

So, why are AFL players so underpaid? There are myriad reasons, but in my view the biggest issue is that the AFLPA is simply not an adversary in the way that the NBPA or NFLPA is because it was established, and continues to be funded by, the AFL.

The AFL defanged it at birth.

A second point is that most AFL players are privately educated. In 2019, only 30% of the league’s players went to state schools. AFL footballers have, by and large, come from financially comfortable families, mostly from one of 11 Victorian APS schools. Is it possible that the money just doesn’t matter that much?

I am purely speculating, but it does seem to make sense that the money matters more for athletes from highly impoverished areas in the United States as opposed to athletes from Victoria’s leafy inner eastern suburbs.

Even accounting for the disadvantaged kids given athletic scholarships, the fact is a large portion of the AFL player fraternity comes from relatively well-off families.

Whatever the reasons, the fact is that the AFL profits absurdly off the blood and sweat of its players and the players are not in on the game. They are more closely aligned in terms of revenue with the UFC than any relatively comparable collectively bargained sport in the world.

This is a sad reality and one that should be addressed in the upcoming CBA negotiations. Players should be getting 35% of league revenue at least. When the league cries poor, tell them to take it out of their end.

My last plea is to be wary when the media starts talking about these CBA negotiations. The CBA is up this year so negotiations will soon ramp up. The league has all of the leverage, and they know it. They sponsor most of the media around the league.

Essentially every footy show is on Fox Footy or Channel 7, companies that are bankrolled in part by the money that the AFL brings in.

When they want a message to get out, they can. Consider who is delivering the message. Consider who benefits from getting the message in public.