North Melbourne president James Brayshaw wants a lot more for his AFL club from playing in Hobart than the $1 million per season the deal will net them.

The first match for AFL premiership points in the Tasmanian capital is on Sunday, when the Kangaroos meet Greater Western Sydney.

While hardly a glamour fixture, it is expected to draw a crowd close to Blundstone Arena’s 15,500 capacity and make at least $500,000 for the Kangaroos.

Compared to a combined net profit of $600,000 from North’s 11 home games at Etihad Stadium last season, the financial attraction of their deal to play six matches in Hobart over three years is obvious.

But Brayshaw said that cash injection was nowhere near as significant as the potential long-term benefits.

“It makes sense in a pure bottom-line argument,” the Kangaroos boss told reporters on Tuesday.

“But I’ve always been really careful to say that isn’t the driver for what we’re doing.

“The driver for what we’re doing is we need to grow.”

Brayshaw, who became president in late 2007 after the ‘Roos rejected an AFL plan to relocate to Gold Coast, said the most important thing he had learnt during that time was the strong link between the size of a club’s supporter base and success.

The obvious problem for the Kangaroos is their fan base of about 250,000 is dwarfed by the likes of Collingwood, with 800,000.

Compounding the challenge, Brayshaw cited an influential 2001 AFL report which suggested that while, over the course of the league’s history, the total fan base continued to grow, almost every club’s piece of the pie remained roughly the same in relative terms.

That makes bridging the gap in Melbourne a near-impossibility, hence North’s desire to capture new frontiers, such as Hobart, and their push to also play games in the regional Victorian city of Ballarat.

“What we’ve got to do is find a way to engage a whole new group of people to become North Melbourne supporters,” Brayshaw said.

Between 1999 and 2008, the Kangaroos tried Sydney, Canberra and Gold Coast as second homes, none with much success.

But Brayshaw believes Hobart will be different, because the region’s population of 250,000 craves the sport, whereas other areas have had it thrust upon them.

“I’ve never seen a place that is more crazy about the game of AFL footy than Tasmania, north and south. They are rusted-on AFL fans,” he said.

Asked whether they wanted to eventually play more than two games per season in Hobart, Brayshaw said the club would wait to see how well the initial three-year arrangement worked.