The AFL released its fixture in dribs and drabs last week, but now, finally, the full thing is out.
After taking some time to mull it over, here are three key takeaways from the 2026 AFL fixture.
The AFL is a real estate business
My dad’s side of the family came to this country from Greece in the early 70s.
All the Greeks that came here worked hard and bought land pretty much as soon as they could.
That, combined with free university education from the Whitlam government, was essentially the greatest downstream wealth creation combination of factors in the recent history of this country.
Because of that formative experience, my dad gave me one lesson.
It’s the same lesson that Tony Soprano taught AJ, and the same lesson the AFL has learned and continues to lean into: buy land, because God isn’t making any more of it.
As we learned with Paramount’s public reasons for buying the UFC, there’s value in just being on TV as much as possible.
Owning time on the TV airwaves, with live games and general coverage, is sporting real estate.
This year, with this fixture, the AFL went full boomer and bought even more of it.
Trade radio, for instance, is just about real estate.
Similarly, drip-feeding fixture information was just about real estate.
But then when we get into the season proper, the way the fixture is laid out is plainly to keep the AFL in the news and on the TV as much as possible.
To that end, they’ve kept the Thursday night expansion that everyone hated last season, as well as the other recent “innovations” that occupy more days with games like Good Friday and Opening Round.
Their latest addition to the portfolio is “Wildcard Weekend” that is not a wildcard it’s just a final 10.
The obsession with real estate has led to perverse outcomes like two finals being played in the pre-finals bye or Round 1 being the second weekend of games but why does that matter?
Does your boomer landlord care that the aircon doesn’t work?
It’s just about the real estate.
The AFL is betting on Charlie Curnow
From Opening Round to Round 7, the Swans play in six night games.
They play the opening game of the season during the truly dumb Opening Round then play another two Thursday nights and a Friday night.
This for a team that finished 10th last year with a percentage of 97, 40% worse than the team that finished ninth.
This is a league betting on the Swans’ newly acquired superstar, Charlie Curnow.
That sounds dangerous to me, and there feels like a real risk we’re about to get Essendon’d again (the phenomenon on an average team constantly being on prime time because the league assumed they’d be better).
Curnow was not moving anywhere near the same way last year that he did in years previous.
Even though he’s only going to be 29 when the season starts, this is a man who played 11 games in 2019, none in 2020, and four in 2021 all because of knee injuries.
For a player who is so reliant on movement and explosiveness, I can’t help but feel he might be approaching the cliff.
The league, to say nothing of the Swans, have bet on a man who is on Joel Embiid “it’ll be over before we know it” watch.
The AFL is not interested in an equalised fixture
There’s an obvious way to have an equal fixture in the AFL.
Everyone would play everyone once until round 17 and then either you end the season or, because of the first point in this column, you figure out who to play twice based on ladder position.
If the AFL did that, they wouldn’t need to keep going with the chicanery they have now where they divide the ladder into three sixes and then come up with the double ups based on that, and then you wouldn’t have to be playing under last year’s mode of operation.
But they don’t do that because, frankly, the AFL is not that fazed about equalisation.
They’re Phil Dunphy saying “gotta fix that step” with no real interest in ever fixing the step because why would he?
He has a very attractive wife, nice family, and a big house. What’s one stupid step?
The AFL thinks basically the same.
Given this game rakes in money every year, it seems to me that structural equalisation is just something to get around to later.
At least part of their thinking is that the randomness of the game and the presence of the salary cap will generally even the competition out eventually.
Honestly, even with all the unequal parts of the game’s structure, I generally agree with them.
Outside of Geelong and North Melbourne, clubs ebb and flow.
Some years, like in 2024, you’ll get an incredibly close competition, and others like in 2025, you won’t.
The point is that the game sorts itself out.
My suspicion is that this kind of thinking at least partly comes back to Buddy Franklin signing with Sydney when the league stacked the free agency deck so he would pick GWS, and then massively punished Sydney for operating within the rules.
Then and there, the AFL learned that the clubs and players are going to do what they’re going to do and over time results will eventually equalise.