A few thoughts...
The AFL isn't going to spend $300m on a new stadium. They might facilitate a deal and provide long term occupancy guarantees for someone else to build a 30,000 seat venue (which won't cost anywhere near $300m anyway) but no sporting competition in Australia has either the available cash or the political support of their own stakeholders to fund a project of that size for one club.
The QLD government deal requiring games for any new AFL team to be played at the Gabba until 2015 is meaningless. It is the government's deal to rip up for the right price. The AFL are prepared to pay that price. The government will examine any proposal from the point of the view of the economy. Major sporting teams equal dollars into the local economy. If enforcement of the Gabba deal is the difference between the Gabba being left with only 11 AFL games each year, and the Gabba being left with 11 but Carrara getting another 11, then the agreement is history.
The AFL isn't going to expand to 17 teams. The Kangaroos will either be forced to move to the Gold Coast for season 2010; have their special prop-up funding withdrawn after 2009, go broke and their existing identity and player list sold off to new owners (Southport) on the Gold Coast for season 2011; or have their special funding withdrawn, be allowed to die and then replaced by a new consortium playing as a new identity (ie. Sharks) on the Gold Coast for season 2011.
The AFL are prepared to prop up a franchise on the Gold Coast and cover any effect it has on the Lions virtually indefinitely. From the vantage point at AFL HQ there is little difference between money pissed away propping up teams in Melbourne that will never again be self sufficient than there is spending that same money developing a fan base in new markets which eventually will become self sufficient - even if it does take 30. It is not a black hole. There is a pay off many years down the track but it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars in the meantime. The AFL are prepared to cop that cost for where it places them in 50 years.
No amount of wishful thinking on the part of RL or RL fans is going to prevent this from happening and once it does happen, it isn't going away after just a few years. Yes we will beat them hands down in our own markets the same way the Storm get beaten in Melbourne. But none the less the new team will carve a niche in the market over time that will eventually become profitable for the AFL at some sort of expense to RL and other sports.
The team will be successful. Not just on the field due to special concessions at the expense of other AFL teams, but also off it. That off field success might take 20 or 30 years and in the meantime the club will suffer massive losses, but the AFL doesn't care about the short term problems. It is taking a long term view and is prepared to continue to support the club as long as it takes. Given the AFL's history of supporting basket cases on the frontier until they reach a level of success and sustainability I'm amazed at the immature bravado and ridicule from some people here.
I, as a RL fan, am in no way worried or concerned by the AFL's push. I wish them luck and hope it works out for them. But RL's destiny is in its own hands, not the AFL's. We have the fortune of the naturally better game to sell. If our game keeps its own house in order and continues to expand into new markets of its own to cover any loses suffered from rival sports moving into our markets then we have nothing to fear. If on the other hand we become merely reactive, insular and conservative, only ever worried about what the other guy is up to then we don't deserve to be the top code - either across the country or in our traditional markets.
Leigh
