The AFL and its players union insist the league has struck the right balance between extending the AFLW season and ensuring the competition's sustainability.
In the first joint collective bargaining agreement covering both the men's and women's players, the AFLW season will expand to 12 regular-season rounds by 2025, and potentially 14 during the five-year deal, while players have earned bumper pay rises.
The latter expansion is dependent on achievement of key audience metrics (average attendance of 6000 fans, average broadcast viewers of 100,000), markers reached during the second season as an eight-team competition.
There is no locked-in plan to deliver a 17-game season where all 18 clubs would face each other once, with outgoing AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan stressing the need for "sustainable" growth.
"This was a big push (for 17 games). We'd like to see further growth in the AFLW games. We believe in the competition," AFL Players Association chief executive Paul Marsh said.
"But there's an element here of we have got growth in games. We've had this big discussion around we need to continue to increase the number of people that are watching and coming to the games.
"So we do think the metrics are achievable. We've been there before.
"So the work is to get together with the AFL. The clubs the players and actually really align.
"This deal for the first time gives the players that certainty of five years so we can actually do some of this work."
Melbourne AFLW captain Kate Hore added: "as players we always want to play more games.
"So for sure, that's something that we were striving for, but I think the important thing is that there's growth."
Marsh said the new deal allowed players to "properly invest in their careers" rather than having to juggle AFLW commitments with other work.
The average AFLW player's pay will immediately increase from $46,000 to $60,000 in 2023, then up to $82,000 by 2027 - a total rise of 77 per cent.
Under the revised CBA, it is estimated that more than 90 of the top AFLW players will be paid more than $100,000 for the 2023 season.
A 12-month pregnancy policy, commencing from six weeks before a player's due date, will also be immediately introduced.
"For me, personally, I'm 28, getting close to the end of my career and to be able to look forward to having that as part of our playing contract's really exciting," Hore said.
"Overall, it's a really historic deal for us and to be able to have a joint CBA with the men's program is amazing."
