AFL have instigated a number of financial strategies to ensure it's weaker clubs don't die. They have a ticket tax on the big clubs, they have an additional grants scheme to give weaker clubs more money. They have shown no intention of letting any team die, quite the opposite. I have yet to hear a reason we can't eventually have a 20-22 team comp with each team playing the others once. With a 3-400mill a year income the game could afford it. There will always be rich and poor clubs, there will always be strong and weak clubs. All comps have this, culling teams won't change it.
I will explain it this way, lets say that it is 30 years from now, the competition (either of the two) has expanded to a 22 team comp, but Adelaide/Canberra were left out of the expansion process. Now lets say that times are very different, interest in the game has increased a lot in Adelaide/ACT through lots of hard work, now the public are crying out for their own team and there is a certainty that if there was a team in Adelaide/ACT that they would have more members (paying customers) then some of the teams based in Sydney/Melbourne, the NRL/AFL realize that every year that they don't have a team in Adelaide/ACT they are losing money. Now they have a choice, they can't just expand to Canberra/Adelaide because the competition would be to large, so they have to do something drastic, they can do one of two things, either they can make conferences or they can rearrange some of the weaker clubs from an over serviced market, they will go with the cheaper and easier of the two, which is to coerce a weaker club in a over serviced market to relocate.
So you see it is not about trying to make all clubs strong clubs, that is impossible, its about the league (the NRL or AFL) making money.
I have heard that the GWS Giants will be the ACT Giants if things continue to go bad for the club.
That would make their death certain, we don't like Sydney's sloppy seconds at the best of times, but if a sports team from Sydney wearing orange not blue and gold or green came to town and tried to call Canberra their permanent home they would be hated and quite literally run out of town.
But in saying that it could work if they were completely re branded, colours, name, logo and mascot, but they wouldn't be the Giants then would they.
