A Tasmanian government-backed report has suggested that a new Tasmanian AFL team should have its headquarters in Hobart but play home games in both the capital and Launceston.
The report - commissioned by the Tasmanian government - lays out a detailed business and football case for Tasmania fielding a team in the AFL,and puts forward a hypothetical timeline of the middle of this decade - 2025 - as the earliest that Tasmania could be ready to field a team. AFL boss Gillon McLachlan said this week that Tasmania was unlikely to have a team in the next five years.
The report - the work of a special taskforce and the centrepiece of the most concerted push for a team yet by the Tasmanian government - suggests that the Hobart games could be played at a proposed new boutique stadium on the waterfront,at Macquarie Point.
Sources familiar with some of the report's findings or recommendations said that report presents a detailed case that the Tasmanian team would be economically viable and would not require excessive support from the AFL compared to other clubs.
Sources said the report lays out the costs of fielding a Tasmanian team and how the team would derive revenue from three major sources:normal club operations - such as membership,sponsorship and gate receipts - the AFL and the state government.
In effect,sources said that the report explained how the new team would pick up the $7-8 million in Tasmanian government funds that are,directly and indirectly,going to Hawthorn and North Melbourne for their games - eight in the 2020 home-and-away season - in Launceston and Hobart respectively.
Those clubs'deals expire at the end of 2021,but,as the new Tasmanian premier Peter Gutwein suggested on Thursday,could be renewed for short-term periods from 2022 until"around 2025 once the current contractual arrangements end".
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The proposed new stadium on the waterfront would have a capacity of close to 30,000,with proponents acknowledging that it would require federal government funding. The University of Tasmania stadium in Launceston,where Hawthorn plays home games,has a capacity closer to 20,000.