Virgin Australia’s AFL Sponsorship in Play

By Andrew Curran.

Virgin Australia is at risk of losing its high-profile contract to ferry Australian Football League (AFL) players and officials around the country after the league issued a fresh tender for an official airline partner amid reports rival airline Qantas is keen to snare the business.

The AFL is the biggest and richest sporting league in Australia and Virgin Australia has held a series of five-year contracts to fly players, officials, and support staff since 2011. As a result, its lounges and terminals see a lot of AFL traffic, especially before and after game days. Now, the 2026 - 2031 contract is in play.

The current contract, in place since 2021, has resulted in the AFL booking around 16,000 seats each season. The AFL contract is worth around AUD10 million (USD6.5 million) annually to Virgin Australia and is one of Australia’s largest sporting sponsorships. But the real value is the publicity and optics it brings the airline. As a result, Virgin Australia has fought hard to keep the business.

The airline also promotes its association with the AFL to paying passengers, especially on big game days. In May, Virgin Australia added 65,000 additional seats in and out of Adelaide over the Gather Round week – an event where all 18 clubs play their home-and-away games in a single city and its surrounding region. Additionally, on big weekends, when demand for flights is high, Virgin Australia and Qantas both enjoy an added revenue boost by hiking fares.

Marking the contract’s renewal in 2021, Virgin Australia released some 2019 data revealing the economic impact of AFL-related travel. Citing market research company IER, the airline said the total interstate and intra-state travel by teams and support staff that year was only AUD4.9 million (USD3.2 million). However, the total travel and accommodation spending by spectators and other supporters was approximately AUD346.1 million (USD224.7 million). Over half that expenditure was on travel and much of that was trousered by Virgin Australia.

The AFL and AFL Women’s are now the Virgin Australia’s the only significant sporting sponsorships. The airline’s naming rights sponsorship for the V8 Supercars Championship ended in 2020 after the airline went into administration. 

Qantas had a long-standing (30-year) sponsorship arrangement with the Wallabies, Australia’s national rugby union team. However, the airline called time on that in 2020. Qantas currently sponsors Football Australia (soccer) and Cricket Australia.

Typically, sporting sponsorship deals either involve contra (free) flights or payments in cash. Qantas’s sponsorship of the Wallabies involved free business class flights and saved that sporting code millions of dollars every year.

The airline would have been financially better off scratching the sponsorship (as it eventually did) and selling those seats to paying passengers. But the Wallabies wore the Qantas logo on their jerseys and the sponsorship generated a significant halo effect for the carrier. The problem is the dollar value of that halo effect can be hard to quantify.

The AFL tender differs slightly. It calls for short-haul economy-class domestic hops rather than long-haul premium cabin flights, but it needs far more seats across the season. Aero South Pacific understands Qantas is keen to snatch the contract from Virgin Australia. It already chases the weekend game spectator market, adding flights to host cities when big AFL games are on. Over the years, Qantas has earned a reputation for chasing Virgin Australia’s corporate accounts and contracts.

For its part, Virgin Australia is fighting to retain the AFL contract. Aside from offering exclusive sporting sponsorship rights, Aero South Pacific is told the airline is offering the sponsorship at cost or close to cost.

Photo: Virgin Australia.