The AFL is holding firm on its call to pay Snoop Dogg up to $5 million to perform as the headliner in the Grand Final entertainment, despite concerns he will be booed.
That comes despite calls from many footy fans to dump the American rapper, amid claims of hypocrisy of the league’s sanction of Izak Rankine’s homophobic slur given some of Snoop’s recent comments.
Snoop used the same slur Rankine did in lyrics decades ago but, more importantly, in a recent podcast interview made controversial comments about same-sex couples.
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Among other concerning comments about masculinity, Snoop referenced the Toy Story spinoff movie Lightyear, in which two women had a baby together.
“They putting it everywhere,” he confusingly said of same-sex relationships, claiming his grandson asked “Papa Snoop, how’d she have a baby with a woman?”
“I’m like oh s***, I didn’t come in for this s***, I just came to watch the goddamn movie.
“So that’s like this, f*** me. I’m scared to go to the movies now, like y’all throwing me in the middle of s*** that I don’t have an answer for.”
Those comments emerged after AFL CEO Andrew Dillon defended the league’s choice of artist, saying: “We cannot vouch for every lyric, in every song, ever written or performed by any artist who has or will appear on our stage, Australian or international.”
On Tuesday night’s edition of Midweek Tackle, Herald Sun footy writer Jon Ralph explained Snoop was “going nowhere”, after speaking with veteran performer Mike Brady – of Up There Cazaly fame – about the AFL’s plans.
Snoop Dogg at the BET Awards 2025 held at the Peacock Theater on June 09, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Christopher Polk/Billboard via Getty Images)Source: Getty Images
Brady declared he was concerned about Snoop being booed and how that would make the Grand Final look.
“There was rampant and intense speculation that potentially, this was an AFL administration that might have a mood for change, but they will continue with that multi-million dollar commitment, up to $5 million,” Ralph said on Fox Footy.
“The problem as Mike Brady says, and he’s done 20 of these grand finals, is this could go so pear-shaped so quickly. He knows the MCG crowd more than anyone else.
“He’s really worried, and he will be there much earlier than Snoop in the pre match ceremony. He just worries there will be rampant booing because of the homophobic comments on that recent podcast.
“He thinks that the AFL might force him into the family friendly style lyrics, and Snoop will just might do whatever the hell he wants to do. Here’s Brady: ‘it’s quite possible there will be booing around the crowd. It would be a disaster, we’d look like country bumpkins. I really hope there is not an adverse reaction from the crowd’.
“Brady says love is love, he wants to distance himself from those podcast comments; they were only last week, not the lyrics of 30 years ago.”
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Meanwhile Angry Anderson, who was part of one of the most infamous Grand Final acts of all-time – 1991, in a Batmobile, at Waverley Park – was quoted as saying: “Look, he’s an incredible artist. I don’t know too much about him, other than the fact that he smokes a lot of pot.”
Ralph continued: “I think their (the AFL’s) view is that if you’re going to hire a massive entertainer, they’re going to probably have skeletons in their closet.
“You know, I just looked it up. Gene Simmons, the KISS front man, we saw them a couple of years back, said to have bedded 5000 groupies. Robbie Williams talked about his heroin addiction and had lyrics about cocaine. So we understand all those issues.
“This podcast was last week, and that’s the issue, only hours after the AFL chief executive and Andrew Dillon defended him as a philanthropist and a grandfather, we saw it again.”