The Australian Football League has implemented a salary cap on its clubs since 1987, when Brisbane and West Coast were admitted, as part of its equalization policy designed to neutralize the ability of the richest and most successful clubs, Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon (and more recently Hawthorn), to perennially dominate the competition.
The cap was set at A$1.25 million[1] for 1987–1989 as per VFL agreement, with the salary floor set at 90% of the cap or $1.125 million; the salary floor was increased to 92.5% of the cap in 2001, and to 95% of the cap for 2013 onwards due to increased revenues.
The salary cap, known officially as Total Player Payments, was A$13,540,000 for the 2022 season, with a salary floor of $12,863,000.
Both the salary cap and salary floor has increased substantially since the competition was re-branded as the AFL in 1990 to assist in stemming the dominance of newer high-membership clubs such as Adelaide and the West Coast Eagles.
The AFL Players Association negotiates for players with the AFL on the topic of average salary: the current CBA will expire on October 31[when?], with a joint AFL/AFLW CBA to be negotiated from 2023 onwards.[needs update]
In June 2017, the AFL and AFL Players Association agreed to a new CBA deal which resulted in a 20% increase in players salary. The six-year deal, which began in 2017, had the average player wage rise from $309,000 to $371,000 and the player salary cap from $10.37m to $12.45m.
Following cuts to playing roster sizes and football department spending made due to the COVID-19 pandemic, these numbers differed to an extent, with the average AFL player wage in 2022 being $372,225.[2]