The release of the fixture for the season ahead starkly brings into focus the sometimes competing agendas within one AFL organisation, let alone to those of its 17 rivals.

A fixture that has the bean counters within a club rubbing their hands together with glee - one filled with prime-time match slots against powerful opponents - might make the football department wince at the extent of the task ahead.

Conversely, a favourable draw in terms of quality of opponents to be played twice, road trips and scheduling might have a club's coaching group celebrating, while the money men gnash their teeth at the lack of quality exposure and fewer revenue opportunities.

Which side of the equation is preferable? It's a little like football's version of the chicken or egg question.

Friday nights are clearly for the AFL's A-listers, hence Richmond's delight at being handed seven of those playing dates in 2015. The Tigers are certainly going to be hard to miss on the football radar next year in terms of live and televised audiences, and wide exposure for sponsors.

The potential downside is the consequence of not backing up that billing with results. Bad losses under such a spotlight might not just turn away potential future corporate backing and the broadcasters, but bring a more stark focus on just where the Tigers are at given the relative patience of their fan base over the past few years.

And in on-field terms, Richmond will go from what - by my calculations - was in 2014 the fourth best draw to the fifth hardest, playing three 2014 finalists twice, and with two lots of consecutive six-day breaks.

Would a less "glittering" but more manageable draw in the long term end up having the same commercial benefits for a better-credentialed side with more sustained performance levels under its belt? Possibly.

The Western Bulldogs, meanwhile, understandably aren't that thrilled about not having a single Friday night slot on the 2015 calendar, though their underwhelming performance in 2014 wasn't exactly knocking down the fixturers' door.

The Dogs have 11 day games, five in the sometimes "lost in the wash" twilight slots, and play six of their 10 Etihad Stadium home games against interstate teams. It's hard to see the fans hanging from the rafters at a lot of those.

Then again, the Bulldogs have in strictly football terms what I've ranked the second best draw in the competition. They meet just one 2014 finalist (Port Adelaide) twice and three of their five return bouts are against sides that finished in the bottom four.

Given a still-to-be-appointed new coach, the arrival of the much-feted Tom Boyd, and some decent young talent emerging, surely it won't take a huge leap from this season's seven wins for the Bulldogs to reclaim a mantle as a young team going places.

Theirs is a draw that gives them at least a decent chance from which to launch a ladder climb. And from there you'd hope the more sellable match slots would come. That seems a more realistic and steadier path to greater exposure than were they granted some bigger games against better opponents next year and got belted.

But the whole issue of the importance of off-field against on-field has been going on for a long while, the 1990s in particular providing some stark examples of the resources-versus-performance debate.

Collingwood, as for much of its history, retained its popular support and was hardly short of a quid. But the late '90s weren't great times for the Pies - five years in a row without finals and taking out only their second wooden spoon in 1999. Some teams at the top end of the ladder, meanwhile, would have killed for the Magpies' resources and fan base.

Hawthorn in the '90s was coming off an era of unparalleled on-field success, having played in eight grand finals over nine years for five premiership wins. Did it translate into off-field riches? Hardly.

The Hawks' got themselves into enormous financial hot water with some poor contract management and carefree spending and by the mid-1990s were so broke they came within a whisker of merging with Melbourne.

Perversely, that near-extinction saw the beginnings of the colossus the club is again today, the value of a dollar never again taken lightly and the members who'd failed to materialise on the back of such on-field achievements suddenly piling on.

North Melbourne might have been, in on-field terms, the club of the '90s with two flags and seven straight top-four finishes, but for the Roos it was always against a background of off-field struggle, culminating in the near-merger with Fitzroy in 1996.

More than a decade later, the Roos were almost shunted off to the Gold Coast. Their decision to stay has reaped rewards both on and off the field, the government-funded facilities at Arden Street now light years better than they were, and progressive on-field improvement culminating this year in a top-four finish.

Success on both the football and financial fronts is an AFL club's utopia. And perhaps these days they're not quite as independent of one another as they used to be. While no one wants to be a successful team playing in a relative vacuum, overreaching when it comes to status might also end up impacting on on-field credibility.

Does more commercial opportunity inspire a football team to greater achievements, or are the achievements themselves the more sustainable path to greater opportunity? It's a debate the game is yet to resolve definitively, and the release of the AFL draw highlights it more than at any other point in the football year.