Gather Round Is Locked In — But the Details Still Need Work

South Australia has secured the AFL’s Gather Round through to 2029, and for anyone who has watched the event grow from an interesting experiment into a genuine fixture on the national football calendar, that announcement deserves more than a passing nod. But anyone tempted to file this under ‘done and dusted’ should probably read the fine print — because the question of where these games will actually be played remains, rather conspicuously, unanswered.

Let’s take stock of what we do know, what we don’t, and why both of those things matter to South Australian football fans and, frankly, to the competition at large.

A Three-Year Extension That Makes Good Strategic Sense

The core deal is straightforward enough: a three-year partnership extension that keeps Gather Round in SA until 2029. It will retain the now-familiar parade component — which has proven a genuine crowd-pleaser and gives the event a carnival atmosphere that distinguishes it from an ordinary round of football — and a so-called ‘feature match’ component that positions at least one game as the marquee attraction of the weekend.

From the AFL Commission’s perspective, locking this in early is sensible portfolio management. Gather Round has become one of those rare innovations in recent AFL history that worked more or less as advertised. It delivered eyeballs, it delivered foot traffic into Adelaide’s hospitality sector, and it gave the competition a genuine mid-season moment of celebration at a time when the ladder is still shaking itself out. The Commission would have been taking an unnecessary risk by letting the arrangement drift into annual renegotiation territory.

For the South Australian government and its tourism and events stakeholders, this is an equally logical investment. The economic argument for hosting a round of this nature — multiple games, a concentrated burst of interstate visitors, extensive broadcast coverage — is not difficult to construct. The numbers from previous editions have been broadly positive, and three more years of the same is a defensible use of public and partnership funding.

The Venue Question Is the Real Story Here

Here is where measured enthusiasm gives way to genuine curiosity. The announcement confirmed a three-year deal but offered no clarity whatsoever on venues. That is not a trivial omission.

Adelaide Oval, as Crows and Power fans alike well know, is one of the finest sporting venues in the country. Full stop. The precinct has transformed North Adelaide’s relationship with the riverbank and the oval itself remains a genuine showpiece. If Gather Round continues to make Adelaide Oval its home base, that is an entirely defensible position. The ground holds up brilliantly on television and the atmosphere on a well-attended night is hard to match anywhere in the country.

But Gather Round’s point of difference — or at least part of it — has been the use of secondary venues. Norwood Oval, Thebarton Oval and others have featured in previous editions, and there is a reasonable argument that this dispersal of games into the broader SA football community is part of what gives the event its distinctive character. It is not just another big-city footy weekend; it is an attempt to embed the national competition into the fabric of South Australian sporting life.

The absence of any venue announcement at this stage suggests the conversations are ongoing, and probably complicated. Questions around ground standards, broadcast capability, crowd capacity and commercial arrangements don’t resolve themselves overnight. The AFL and its SA partners have time before 2026, but the clock is ticking and fans — players and clubs too, for that matter — will want clarity sooner rather than later.

What It Means for Adelaide and Port Adelaide

From a purely parochial standpoint — and I make no apology for briefly adopting one — Gather Round has become something of a home away from home for the Crows, even when they are technically the ‘away’ team for fixture purposes. The energy in Adelaide during Gather Round weekend is unlike anything in a standard home-and-away round, and that energy extends to the Crows’ supporter base regardless of who is playing on any given day.

Port Adelaide, to their considerable credit, have leaned into the event enthusiastically as well. The shared investment both SA clubs have in making Gather Round a success is not incidental — it is part of why the weekend works. When both clubs and both supporter bases treat the event as something worth celebrating, it creates a more compelling product for everyone watching.

The practical question for both clubs going forward is how the fixture allocation shakes out. Which games do the Crows and Power host, and under what conditions? Do they continue to receive home games during the round, or does the broader Gather Round logic effectively neutralise home advantage? These are details that matter enormously when you are trying to construct a season that maximises your chances of making September.

The Parade: Don’t Underestimate the Soft Power

I want to make a brief case for the parade, because it tends to get dismissed as a bit of colourful pageantry when it is actually doing something more important. The AFL, more so than most major sporting leagues, has wrestled for decades with the question of how to maintain genuine connection with fans in a media environment that is fracturing rapidly. The parade is one of the few mechanisms that gets supporters, players and clubs into the same physical space in an unstructured, accessible way.

It sounds simple, because it is. But simple things that work are worth keeping. The fact that the parade has been explicitly retained as part of the Gather Round structure is a small but meaningful detail, and worth acknowledging as such.

Governance and Accountability: The Questions Worth Asking

Taking a slightly broader view, it is worth asking what transparency looks like around deals of this kind. The public — and AFL members, and club stakeholders — deserve some sense of what the financial arrangements actually involve. How much public funding flows into hosting Gather Round? What are the performance benchmarks that justify renewing the arrangement? What are the mechanisms for review if the event underperforms against those benchmarks?

None of this is a criticism of the deal itself, which on its face looks reasonable and mutually beneficial. It is simply a reflection of the fact that major events of this nature involve significant public investment and that transparency in how that investment is managed is a reasonable expectation. The AFL Commission has, in recent years, become somewhat more forthcoming about commercial arrangements than it once was. Continuing in that direction would be welcome.

Looking Ahead to 2026 and Beyond

The immediate practical task is resolving the venue situation. Whoever is doing that work — and it presumably involves the AFL, the SA government, Adelaide Oval management, and various local council and community football stakeholders — should be moving with some urgency. The 2026 edition is not that far away in event-planning terms, and the logistical complexity of running a multi-venue, multi-game weekend means lead times matter.

Beyond the logistics, the broader opportunity is to think carefully about how Gather Round evolves. Three more years is enough time to genuinely bed down a format, build on what has worked and quietly retire what hasn’t. The feature match concept, for instance, has potential to become a more deliberate marquee moment — think a genuinely premium scheduling decision, not just whatever game happens to slot in at the right time on Saturday night.

South Australian footy fans have waited a long time for the national competition to take them seriously as a market beyond just Port Adelaide and the Crows. Gather Round, whatever its imperfections, is the most tangible expression yet of that recognition. Locking it in until 2029 is the right call. Now let’s see the venue plan.