Dont forget, when you sell games interstate, you still need to provide your fans with 11 game meberships, so what happens is 4 away games get Designated as home games for membership purposes but the true home team gets compensated for lost revenue.
I would think that compensation would come from Carlton's membership income.

Spot on Buzzaaah. Point in case Carl v Hawks TD earlier this year. It was a designated "free" entry away game for Hawk members. Hawthorn re-imbursed Carlton x amount of $$$. Would not have a clue how much we got back.

if we sold one game against freo or port and played anywere with a half mill carrot being dangled then i would be happy.


obviously being a canberra resident i would be over the moon for us to play here even if only a nab cup game.

this season we are playing 5 interstate games, so selling a home game you would think would still limit us to 5 interstate games (although i wouldn't put anything past the AFL).

yesterday we hosted Essendon* in front of just 32,000 odd people, i dont even think that is the break even point at the 'G.

last season against freo we had just 16,076 show up, and against port a few weeks latter 16,371 watched us play.

assuming good weather canberra would get between 12 to 14500 (which is basically the capacity) turn up (and being a small ground the break even would be very low).

especially if it's the only AFL game there for the year. now port have played in canberra several times including the first game for premership points played there (think whinnie abraham's screamer). lots of neutral supporters show up to these games as it's Canberra's only chance to see some AFL action. doesn't really matter too much who is playing you almost always get 10,000 people. i'm sure carlton would pull a decent crowd.

also it's a bit of extra exposure to another region, the club could potentially sign a few more interstate members up (with a bit of effort). you would probably even get footy fans from the coast coming to canberra for the game from as far north and sydney and as south as merimbula (trust me the die hards will come, i was one).

the last Manuka game i went too (roos v port 05) i must have seen a dozern people in Carlton gear. big deal you might think but it doesn show we have some support here and that like i said neutral supporters do turn up.

a guy i work with is a blues supporter but a kangaroos 5 game member (see neutral's do show interest), i'm considering buying him a blue membership for him just to try and guilt trip him into joinng up next season.

we are also 'helping' our relationship with the AFL if we put our hands up for Canberra. i could see the Canberra Carlton Supporters Club http://www.canberracarltonblues.com/ working with the club to hold some sort of a function.

Carlton v Port or Freo in Canberra would be great and we could request to play them only once so we dont have the return leg later in the season, hopefully still limiting interstate games. also we could organise with the AFL for a melbourne away game to be considered a home game for members much like the hawks had against us in round 4. so melborune based members dont loose out in any way, as instead of having to play freo at subi or port at ammi we just play them once and it's at in canberra with an extra half mill going in the coffers.

seems a viable option at a glance

carl v freo at maunka is no worse that freo v carl at subi.
organise woth the afl that if we did this that we would not get more than 5 interstate games a year and it could work without really robbing vic based supporters of games. it would only rob SA and WA people of a game perhaps

Which state outside of Victoria has the biggest non-member Carlton supporter base?
If we decide to play home games interstate we should play wherever that is Id've thought.

Fair point, however you also have to weigh in the profiltability of the matches, and the fact that for the last 15-20 years, Carlton have been actively encouraging SA/WA markets and deliberately and systematically ignoring Sydney, which in previous years was probably a JE way of "punishing" the AFL for not letting us buy out the Swans and schedule every away match at the SCG.

That's very good GWS. But we could move to Nottinghamshire and we wouldn't need to change our name at all.

I've said before SA (Adelaide Oval) would be a big market to break into. A footy mad state with only 2 clubs with a combined membership of approx 80,000 members. With our SA connections and the big possibility of landing Gibbs, there's money in SA if we have to play interstate IMO.