AFL Women's
Current season, competition or edition: 2017 AFL Women's season
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| Sport | Australian rules football |
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| Founded | 15 September 2016, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia |
| Inaugural season | 2017 |
| CEO | Gillon McLachlan |
| No. of teams | 8 |
| Country | Australia |
| Headquarters | Melbourne, Victoria, Australia |
| TV partner(s) | |
| Sponsor(s) | NAB |
| Related competitions |
Australian Football League |
| Official website | www.womens.afl/ |
AFL Women's (AFLW) is the national professional Australian rules football league for female players. The first season of the league began in February 2017 with eight teams. The league is run by the Australian Football League (AFL) and is contested by a subset of clubs from that competition.
In 2010 the Australian Football League commissioned a report into the state of women's football around the country. Along with findings concerning grassroots and junior football, the report recommended the AFL Commission begin working toward the establishment of a national women's league. While the option of new stand-alone clubs was considered, a model utilising the resources and branding of existing AFL clubs was to be the preferred model for the planned league.
The first on-field step towards the competition took place in 2013, when the AFL announced an exhibition match to be played between women's teams representing Melbourne and Western Bulldogs later that year.
On 15 May 2013, the first women's draft was held, establishing the playing lists for the two clubs in the forthcoming exhibition match. The match was played on 29 June 2013 and marked the first time two women's sides had competed under the banners of AFL clubs. The exhibition series was repeated with one game between the clubs in 2014 and two in 2015, the last of which, played on 16 August 2015, was broadcast on free-to-air television and attracted strong ratings.
The success of these series prompted the AFL to accelerate its plans for a nationwide women's competition, announcing a preferred start date of 2017. Prior to this, the league had announced only aspirational plans to have the women's competition established by the end of the 2010s. The already-planned 2016 exhibition series was expanded at this time, with a total of ten matches to be played in venues across the country and featuring a range of new temporary representative teams.
Details about the branding of the league were released in the second half of 2016. The AFL announced that the league would be named "AFL Women's" on 15 September 2016, with the logo being unveiled on 19 September 2016. The logo is a stylised rendition of an Australian rules football ground goal square and goal posts, drawn from a perspective which shows a "W". On 10 October 2016, the National Australia Bank was named as the league's naming rights sponsor.
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