Richmond CEO outlines the “big” figure clubs stand to lose due to empty stadiums

Richmond CEO Brendon Gale says the club stands to lose over $1m every time the club plays a marquee fixture behind closed doors at the MCG.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a ban of non-essential mass gatherings of over 500 people on Friday, forcing the AFL to shut all stadiums for round one.

While over 80,000 fans are usually expected for Richmond’s season-opener against Carlton, no one will be allowed into the MCG on Thursday night as the league follows other major leagues both in Australia and around the world in banning fans from attending games in an attempt to curb the outbreak of the pandemic.

Gale said while it was tough to predict just how much money the club would lose by the end of the epidemic; he gave an insight in the “big number” which both Richmond and the other 17 games would have to absorb due to the health crisis.

“It’s hard (to predict) an average - it does really depend on club to club. It’s an impossible exercise because we don’t know the impact of this at this stage,” he said on SEN.

“We don’t know how long we’ll be playing games without crowds. Simple maths, if you look at our game on Thursday night we’d probably expect a crowd of around 90,000.

“A crowd of high 80s, 90,000, would probably return a gate of $1.2 to $1.4 million. That’s one game.

“You extrapolate that and it’s a big number.”