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The 2017 Victorian Football League season will the 136th season of the Victorian Football Association/Victorian Football League Australian rules football competition. The competition will run from 14 April until 24 September 2017.
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League membership
At the end of the 2016 season, AFL Victoria terminated the licence of the Frankston Football Club due to its financial position, which was no longer considered viable. The club had suffered a severe downturn in the profitability of its pokies licence over the previous few years, and by 2016 the machines were generating a loss for the club. The club terminated the pokies licence in May 2016, but by that time owed more than $1,500,000, both to the state gaming regulators and other creditors. The club went into voluntary administration in August, and the club's VFL licence was terminated the following month, in the week after the VFL Grand Final. The club's immediate existence was saved when creditors, including the gaming regulators, agreed to waive more than 90% of the club's debt, and it came out of administration in late November 2016; and while the club will not make a return to the VFL in 2017, it intends to improve its off-field viability and seek re-entry in the future, from as early as 2018 if it can meet requirements.
There had been an expectation over the previous few years that the Australian Football League's St Kilda Football Club would terminate its reserves affiliation with Sandringham at the end of 2016 and enter a stand-alone reserves team into the VFL. However, after renegotiations during 2016, a new affiliation deal was signed the two clubs to begin in 2017. The new deal changed the nature of the affiliation, expanding St Kilda's involvement in Sandringham's operation: this included removing a stipulation from the previous agreement that no more than 14 St Kilda listed players could play in Sandringham's senior team in any given match. The deal will also result in the club playing three games per year in St Kilda colours from the 2018 season at St Kilda's former home ground Moorabbin Oval.
The Casey Scorpions were renamed the Casey Demons, to co-brand the club with its AFL-affiliate, Melbourne. The club will change its guernsey design to match that of the Melbourne Football Club.
In the second season of the VFL Women's competition, the licence held by the North Geelong Football Club to operate the Geelong Magpies team was transferred to the AFL's Geelong Football Club, who rebranded the team as the Cats; the Knox Falcons left the competition; and, the Box Hill Football Club was granted a licence to enter the competition. The size of the VFL Women's thus remained at ten clubs.