Australia’s largest sporting organisation, the woke Australian Football League, is looking to expand into India and target the more than 1 million Indians now living Down Under.
AFL CEO Andrew Dillon and Head of Strategy Walter Lee left Melbourne for Mumbai on Sunday on a trip which we will see them meet with Indian sports commissioners and business leaders as they seek to grow Indian interest in the game.
The week-long journey will include discussions with corporate chiefs around broadcasting AFL games in India and involve a visit to the 2026 AFL India national championships in Ranchi.
The trip is part of a longer-term vision by the league to expand its international presence and to “make footy global”, with India viewed as key emerging market due to its “massive population…and increasing appetite for global sports”, the AFL said.
View this post on Instagram
The league is explicitly aiming to grow the game at a grassroots level, with the sports code seeking to build on the more than 20,000 people who already play AFL in India.
“Within India we’ve got teams playing out of 11 states at the moment. We want to get that up to 20 states so that Australian Rules Football will be recognised as a national sport in India”, Mr Dillon said.
The trip is also part of a broader plan by the league to increase the popularity of AFL football within Australia’s rapidly expanding Indian community.
The AFL said “growing its Indian market [is] a priority”, with the league last year establishing an India-related “Desi content handle”, collaborating with Indian social media influencers, and broadcasting games in Hindi in both the men’s and women’s competitions.
Among the initiatives planned by the league are to broadcast men’s and women’s AFL games in Hindi again this year and to potentially play a professional AFL game in India at some stage in the future.
“Nearly one million people in Australia were born in India, so it’s really important for the AFL as we continue to grow that we engage with the Indian diaspora”, Mr Dillon said.
The AFL’s recent outreach efforts toward the Indian community occur alongside an explicit cultural diversity action plan adopted by the league that includes a “cultural heritage series” of games and that aims at ensuring that the sport “authentically reflects Australia’s rich cultural diversity”.
“With nearly 31% of Australians born overseas, Australia is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world, and our game should reflect and celebrate this richness” Mr Dillon said at the launch of the plan last year.
But AFL great Brad Hardie expressed concerns about the plan on 6PR radio on Australia Day, saying the trip was “all about the money” and “we’ve tried this before” with New Zealand and China.
“I’m all for growing the game, but there is only one reason and one reason only that this is happening, it’s money,” he said.
“The thing that irks me about it is when Andrew Dillon came into the chair as the CEO of the game, several times came out of his mouth ‘I’m all for engaging with the community and the growth of grassroots football’ – bull tish, all they’ve done is line their own pockets with the wages, they’ve done anything but.”
The league has also launched other multicultural and left-wing initiatives in recent years, including the establishment of an Islamic AFL academy, a now-annual LGBT Pride Round involving the Sydney Swans, and the creation of the women’s AFL league (AFLW) in 2017.
Header image: Left, Mr Dillon in Mumbai (supplied). Right, Indian cricketer Virat Kohli promoting the AFL last year (AFL Desi).
