The AFL is under pressure to boost its pay offer to players for the inaugural national women's season in 2017 after the spectacular television ratings success of Saturday night's all-star game
But the league maintains it is on track to eventually make players full professionals.
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Top ratings for women's AFL
Interest in women's AFL surges as the inaugural all-star game receives bumper ratings.
Broadcaster Channel Seven's broadcast of the women's exhibition match between Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs at Whitten Oval drew the best ratings of any Saturday night game this year after the network agreed to broadcast the game nationally on 7mate.
The AFL said the game's peak national audience was 1.05 million viewers while the average combined national audience was 746,000 making it the second biggest women's sporting show this year (not including the Rio Olympics), with only the Australian Open women's tennis final topping it.
Melbourne viewers averaged 387,000, comfortably ahead of the next best Saturday game this season which was St Kilda and Geelong's clash on 347,000 and the Dreamtime at the 'G game which averaged 331,000 viewers
A crowd of 6,365 turned out for the game at the smaller Whitten Oval, the 16-a-side rule making for a free-flowing spectacle in which power forward Moana Hope starred for the Bulldogs.
These figures add to the AFLPA's case for a bigger pay packet after the union rejected the AFL's latest offer for the seven-game plus finals competition next year.
The initial offer was believed to be around $5000 for regular players, $10,000 for priority signings and top draft picks and around $25,000 for marquee players.
AFL general manager of game and development Simon Lethlean declared the game a success but cautioned against expectations jumping too high for the first season considering Saturday night's game involved the best players in the country and fell during the AFL pre-finals bye.
"It was a stunning success with all the good players playing well and unbelievable TV ratings," Lethlean said on Sunday.
But Lethlean didn't step back from the AFL's line of needing to create a competition that could be sustained into the future.
He also intimated the league wasn't sure the competition would draw big ratings once they divide their best players among the eight teams.
"We haven't settled on the salaries yet and we've had discussions about what they should be," Lethlean said.
"We are confident we have benchmarked this for a startup competition based on women's domestic sport in Australia - we'll work from that position.
"The thing for us is that we want this to be a fully professional league, next year it's part time and eight matches but our job is to make this professional for the women as fast we can.
"We encourage sponsors and broadcasters to get on board and the faster we can get there the better."
Hope, who will play for Collingwood as a marquee signing, said players weren't talking about their pay.
"Personally I'm just blessed to pull on an AFL jersey," Hope said. "The pay is exciting but right now I get to play AFL. There are generations of girls coming through who are going to be able to fulfil their dreams and in years to come I'm sure that will be addressed.
"When we are around each other all we are talking about is football and what we are going to do on the field.
"It's not really a talking point between players at the moment, we are all very excited about the competition and we are all really blessed with what the AFL has done to allow us to do that."
AFL players' association chief executive Paul Marsh said his union was still negotiating with the AFL.
"At this point we are some distance apart," Marsh said. "Having just reached agreement with the AFL on the ambassador contract for the marquee players, we are confident that a fair and reasonable outcome will be achieved.
"These athletes have worked incredibly hard to get to this level and we strongly believe they should be provided with the same opportunities to thrive in the game as the men do."
Lethlean admitted the first season would see the league make some errors as they built the new competition but he doesn't think they have set their expectations too low.
No other women's competitions have had the commercial reach of the AFL backing them, nor had individual clubs like Collingwood, Adelaide and Fremantle fielding teams.
"We haven't really set any benchmarks yet, all we want to do is maximise the reach of the game next year," Lethlean said.
"At the moment we are maximising the spread of our talent with the eight clubs, last night was the best of the best, it was like an all star game and we will spread that talent across eight teams.
"The more games we get broadcast next year and the more games we play in family friendly environments like Saturday night the better - it's a great platform to start from and we will see how it goes.
"It's a long build this, we want to start it off well next year sustainably and viably."
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