prior to the round 18 match between
Hawthorn and
Gold Coast. Restrictions on venue capacity had been implemented to combat the spread of COVID-19. The 2020 season was disrupted by the
COVID-19 pandemic, which was formally declared a pandemic by the
World Health Organization on 11 March 2020, eight days prior to the scheduled start of the premiership season. Restrictions imposed by the different state governments related to social distancing, lockdowns of non-essential services which lasted for three months across the country, and border controls for interstate and international travel, all had significant effects on the completion of the 2020 season.
Fixture Prior to the commencement of the season, anticipating that the season would be forced to cease at the peak of the virus, the AFL shortened the fixture from 22 matches per team to 17, with each team playing each other once and serving one bye. The season then commenced on 19 March as originally scheduled; but as restrictions, followed by periods of formal quarantine, were introduced on interstate travel, the season was suspended after Round 1. The season was suspended for more than two months. On 15 May, as most states began easing restrictions, the league's plan to resume the season was announced: clubs began non-contact training from 18 May, and full contact training from 25 May ahead of resuming competitive matches from 11 June, When games were postponed or rescheduled at short notice, other games within the same round were often also rescheduled to ensure the primetime television slots were filled.
Club medical restrictions During the peak of the hiatus, players were allowed to train only within the strict limits of the government restrictions on public gatherings; at the height of the pandemic in April and May, when gatherings larger than two were restricted, players could train only in pairs. When the league returned to training and playing, it was done with strict, enforceable protocols and monitoring in place to ensure that the clubs would not suffer a virus outbreak, and that any virus cases could be contained with minimal impact to the wider competition. There were many breaches during the season, resulting in fines for the players and clubs involved, or suspensions in the most egregious cases: • 's
Sydney Stack and
Callum Coleman-Jones (ten matches each), for being involved in a fight outside a
Surfers Paradise kebab shop in the early hours of 4 September. • 's
Elijah Taylor (rest of season, which amounted to six home-and-away matches), for bringing his girlfriend into the club's
Perth quarantine hotel. • assistant coach
Ben Hart (six training weeks), for allowing training groups to be too close to each other on a quarantine camp in early May. • 's
Steele Sidebottom (four matches) and
Lynden Dunn (one match), for travelling in an
Uber and visiting more than one unauthorised house, the night concluding with Sidebottom being driven home by police. • 's
Peter Ladhams (three matches) and
Dan Houston (two matches), for inviting non-authorised residents to their house. • 's
Charlie Spargo (two matches) and
Kysaiah Pickett (one match), for travelling via an
Uber to an unauthorised house for a gathering. • 's
Ollie Wines (one week), for inviting a non-authorised resident to his house. • 's
Brandon Zerk-Thatcher (one week), for breaching living arrangement protocols. Throughout the season, AFL-listed players were not permitted to participate in the state league competitions (the
VFL,
SANFL,
WAFL and
NEAFL) due to the greater risk of external threats in the semi-professional state league environment; this meant there was no formal competitive
reserves football for players who were not selected in the seniors. (The NEAFL and VFL ended up cancelling their seasons altogether). Clubs based in the same state were permitted to arrange
ad hoc scratch matches for their unselected players against each other and in empty stadiums to enable some match practice; these could be stand-alone games or curtain raisers to senior games.
Quarantine hubs and club relocation Interstate travel restrictions and quarantine periods were a significant impediment to the completion of the season after the resumption, with many state border crossings subject to mandatory 14-day quarantine periods. Western Australia and Tasmania had the tightest restrictions, requiring quarantine for all entries throughout the entire season; South Australia had similar restrictions which were loosened after Round 5. Border crossings around the rest of the country were freer; but, as second waves of virus cases occurred in Victoria (after Round 5) and New South Wales (after Round 10), quarantines were imposed on travellers leaving those states. This precluded a conventional interstate home-and-away fixture, and meant that Queensland – which maintained few virus cases and had the most favourable quarantine arrangements – became critical to the completion of the season. The border restrictions were managed by requiring several clubs to relocate outside their states; or, to set-up in weeks-long quarantine hubs, in which clubs travelled at the same time to a restricted state for an extended three- or four-week trip, quarantined there and played several games against other teams in the hub. Players' immediate families were permitted to join them at the league's expense, but were subject to the same lifestyle restrictions and virus testing regime as the players. The relocation of all ten Victorian clubs occurred after Round 5. , , , , and moved to south-east Queensland; and , , and moved to New South Wales. The relocation of the six New South Wales based clubs (, and the four Victorian clubs) to Queensland then occurred after Round 8. These relocations lasted until the end of the season. From that point on, three three-week quarantine hubs were staged in Perth, to allow matches to be played there despite season-long quarantine requirements. Each time, two interstate clubs travelled at once from Queensland, and played each other while in quarantine, then the two Perth clubs while out of quarantine. These hubs were: • Rounds 7–9: and • Rounds 9–12: and (including a bye) • Rounds 12–14: and and later returned to a Queensland hub for the final four rounds of the home-and-away season. Teams could also travel from Queensland to the Northern Territory, where three games were played. However, season-long Tasmanian border restrictions to all states resulted in no AFL matches being played in the state for the first time since 2000. Border restrictions ultimately also precluded the playing of any finals in Victoria or New South Wales – including the Grand Final – and limited finals in Western Australia to the first week only, since the bye week after Round 18 allowed time to quarantine. For the first three weeks of finals, clubs unable to play in their home states were given the option to nominate a preferred home ground from the Gabba, Metricon Stadium and Adelaide Oval for home finals. The hub arrangements resulted in many other fixturing anomalies. Among the most notable occurred in Round 6, when all nine games were played in New South Wales and Queensland,
traditionally rugby league territory. Whole rounds were played with no matches in Melbourne, which had only previously occurred in
Round 8, 1952 (the promotional National Day Round). Clubs hosted several fixtured home games at interstate venues, and hub stadiums were sometimes used for multiple games on the same day – the first time this had happened in senior VFL/AFL football since a double-header in
Round 19, 1986. The desire to compress the schedule meant that the seven-game Round 10 and six-game Round 15 were played entirely on weekdays, the first time this had happened outside of rounds played on a public holiday.
Crowds Government restrictions on gatherings meant that, starting in Round 1, crowds were locked out of senior VFL/AFL matches for the first time in the code's history. State governments gradually allowed crowds, often small and restricted in size, into games, starting immediately from the resumption in Round 2 in South Australia and New South Wales, from Round 3 in Queensland, and from football's resumption in Round 7 in Western Australia. The sizes of allowable crowds changed as the season progressed, with early season Queensland and New South Wales crowds limited to only a few hundred, while half-full crowds were allowed in the largely virus-free Western Australia from Round 7. Starting in Round 2, after the resumption of the season, broadcasters experimented with adding
artificial crowd noise to lend a more normal feel to their telecasts to overcome the lack of genuine crowds in stadiums. The total attendance for 2020 was 1,033,037, only 13.74% of 2019's unaffected 7,517,677 total. The average attendance of 6,377 per game was 17.56% of the 2019 season's average of 36,317.
Rule changes Throughout the season, matches were played for a shortened length of 16 minutes plus
time on per quarter, instead of 20 minutes plus time on. This was originally done at the start of the season, in the hope that playing shorter games could facilitate more frequent games than weekly, maximising the games which could be played before the anticipated suspension of the season; but this did not eventuate, since the season was suspended after only one round. It was then retained after the resumption to lighten the load on players to take account for the compromised training schedule; and, to allow make-up games to be more easily scheduled between rounds when matches were postponed or refixtured. As a direct result of this, it was a very low-scoring season, and several records or long-standing marks in low scoring were set during the season.
Financials When the season was suspended, the league and clubs were faced with an acute cash-flow shortage, as the gate and broadcast revenues which had been budgeted for stopped immediately; clubs deriving revenues from gaming and other public venues also saw those revenues drop when public gatherings were restricted. The league and clubs all stood down or severely reduced hours for huge percentages of their staff during the suspension; furthermore, the AFL agreed with both the AFLPA and ALFUA to enact significant play cuts for the players and umpires for the season, amounting to 50% of their wage from the point of the suspension until the end of the season, and increasing to 70% for any period of suspension which extends beyond the end of May. The league successfully obtained a $500–600 million line of credit with the
National Australia Bank and
ANZ Bank, leveraged against its ownership of
Marvel Stadium, to cover its and its clubs' cash shortfalls during the suspension. Resuming the season and playing the shortened 17-game season in full, even without crowds, was important to ensure the league still took in most of its television revenue. Prior to the resumption, the league renegotiated its $417-million-per-year broadcast deals with the
Seven Network and
Foxtel, ultimately resulting in a total television revenue reduction of approximately $150 million over 2020–2022. On top of this, the cost of running the Queensland hubs, including medical costs for ongoing COVID-19 testing, resulted in a $60 million expense for the league. The overall financial losses for the league in the 2020 season, compared with the budgeted results prior to the pandemic, were less than but in the order of $100 million – a substantially better result than the $1 billion loss which was feared as a worst-case scenario when the season was originally suspended.
Other effects Among the other direct impacts of the pandemic were: • The
Dreamtime at the 'G match between and was not played at the
Melbourne Cricket Ground per its name, but instead at
TIO Stadium in
Darwin. • and did not play a match at
Jiangwan Stadium in
Shanghai,
China, as scheduled as part of the original Round 11 – this decision was made prior to the season while the virus was still mostly prevalent only within China and prior to its spread in Australia, but would eventually have been mandated by restrictions on international travel. • The two-Test
international rules football series against Ireland, planned to have been played in Ireland in November, was cancelled. ==Pre-season==