AFL CHIEF executive Andrew Demetriou has backed a push from Victorian clubs to secure the profitable stadium deals enjoyed by their interstate counterparts.

Speaking during a break from a two-day conference on the future of Australian Football, Demetriou agreed that the clubs had a legitimate grievance to take to the state government.

Club presidents are hoping that Victorian sports minister James Merlino can encourage stadium heads to improve the deals offered.

"We can't have a situation where 10 Victorian clubs are getting 4.5 million people to the football yet the return to them is significantly less than what's happening in other parts of Australia; it doesn't make any sense," Demetriou said on Thursday, having met with clubs to discuss the issue on Wednesday.

"I think they probably directed their anger more toward the Melbourne Cricket Club and not the government from the discussions that I was involved in yesterday. Hopefully there can be some dialogue and some common sense can prevail.

"We saw it [at the meeting]. It was very visible, the genuine frustration [of the clubs] that they were not sharing an upside of what is happening at our venues.

"It's the clubs that are generating the economy and I think all they want is to have a fair hearing to make sure that they see some upside in the economy that they're generating."

Even Geelong president Frank Costa, whose club has an arrangement with Skilled Stadium that is believed to earn them around $650,000 per game, has joined the chorus of those tied to home games at the MCG and Telstra Dome.

"We've got a situation where the clubs that put on the game, the clubs with all of the tremendous membership all around Victoria … those 10 Victorian clubs that total something like 350-odd thousand members – they're making the game, they're bringing the crowds through, they're getting record crowds at the MCG and Telstra Dome, they're well above their budgets – and yet certain clubs who have got very poor stadium deals are actually losing money," he told Melbourne radio station SEN.

"The anomaly is … from our point-of-view down at Geelong, how lucky we are, we've got one stadium and [don't] need the support of the MCG or the Telstra Dome like the other clubs do.

"On a crowd of 23 or 24,000, we make a very healthy return."

Western Bulldogs president David Smorgon told Thursday's The Age that, "These deals are the single most important factor hurting the clubs".