AFL 2024 Brownlow Medal Winner Betting – Odds, Tips & Predictions

The Brownlow Medal race was flipped on its head following Round 17, when the man who had been leading the betting all season long, Isaac Heeney, was handed a one-match suspension for an accidental strike to the scone of Jimmy Webster. Yes, the ‘fairest’ component of the Brownlow Medal is an outdated and probably irrelevant one, and yes, Heeney clearly didn’t mean to hit Webster in the face. I find it all as silly as you do, trust me, but the reality is that he may now end Brownlow Medal night in front in the voting but with a big cross next to his name, rendering second place the winner. Of course, though he was the favourite, it looms as a tight race and there are plenty of other candidates who may finish ahead of him anyway, with the quartet of Patrick Cripps, Nick Daicos, Marcus Bontempelli and Zach Merrett chief among them. Below, we take a look at each of their chances, and those of a few others as we enter the last couple of months of the season. 

With Heeney officially out of the running, we have a new Brownlow Medal favourite, and his name is Patrick Cripps. Really the only person in with a legitimate chance of winning the award who has already won it, Cripps is, as he has for so long, leading his team’s midfield from the front, and with the Blues establishing themselves as a genuine Premiership threat and winning a lot more games than they are losing, expect their team overall to be accumulating plenty of votes this year. A lot of those will likely go to their captain. He has always been a strong vote-getter, having picked up 20+ four times in his career, with his huge frame and insatiable appetite for the contest making him one of the pre-eminent contested ball winners in the game for many years. This season has been no different, and a dominant run of form from Rounds 16-18 – just before Heeney got suspended – has seen him catapult into favouritism. He followed up a 41-possession effort against the Cats with 40 against the Tigers, and rounded out a potential trifecta of Best on Ground performances with 33 touches and two goals against the Giants in Round 18. Cripps regularly puts himself in the mix to pick up votes, and with a number of standout games already throughout the course of the year he could easily be picking up a second Charlie come season’s end. 

Bet on Patrick Cripps to win the Brownlow Medal at $3.40 with BoomBet

Were it not for the fact that he didn’t pick up a vote in the last six games of the 2023 season – three of those because he didn’t play in them due to injury – Nick Daicos would likely have been a Brownlow Medal winner in just his second season in the league. Alas, it was not to be, but it’s very possible that he will end up with one by the end of his third. Earlier in the season his odds ballooned out a bit, but he always looked like overs and if you’d taken the advice of this column a few months ago, you would be sitting pretty right now with a bet on him to win at around $16. He’s unsurprisingly been smashed in since then, with his form picking up significantly as the season has worn on. He will likely still pick up a number of votes in the first few weeks of the year, but from about Round 9 onwards he has been particularly good – he picked up 32 or more touches in five consecutive games starting from then, had at least 29 in all but one of his next eight games beginning from then, and kicked multiple goals in three of those. Daicos uses the ball as well as anyone, and this year has added a string to his bow which was previously the only criticism of his game – his inside ability. He has shown that he is more than capable of winning the contested ball, finding space where there seemingly is none, and hitting targets by both hands and foot under duress. Daicos will be one of the best players in the league for many years to come and may well end his career with numerous Brownlows around his neck, and it would be no surprise if this year, he picks up his first. 

Bet on Nick Daicos to win the Brownlow Medal at $4.60 with PlayUp

Marcus Bontempelli has been one of the best, if not the best, players in the league for many years, and for whatever reason he is being recognised as such by much of the wider AFL public a lot more than usual this season. Perhaps it’s just the fact that he has so consistently been so damn good – whatever it is, he is continuing on his merry way as the Bulldogs’ best player and perhaps the league’s best player this year, and will likely put himself right in the Brownlow Medal mix as a result. Bontempelli has polled heavily in two of the last three seasons, with 33 votes in 2021 and 29 votes last year, both of which saw him fall just short of winning it. In both of those seasons he has been a real three-votes kind of guy – not surprising given his penchant for kicking multiple goals from the midfield while picking up 30-odd very valuable touches. In 2021, 27 of his 33 votes came from nine BOGs, while last year 18 of his 29 came from six of them. Already this season, he has likely picked up plenty of three-vote games once again. Three times in his first 18 games he had 32+ touches and kicked two goals, while on four other occasions he kicked three of them. The Bulldogs have been a little up and down this season, as they usually are, but they have won more than enough games for Bont to pick up plenty of votes, and importantly, most of his dominant performances have been in those wins. Bontempelli has a good claim to be favourite for this award, and a couple of spots down the list he looks like some pretty decent value.

Bet on Marcus Bontempelli to win the Brownlow Medal at $5.50 with PlayUp

I’ll admit it – I have been a doubter of Zach Merrett’s Brownlow chances throughout the course of the season, but it appears I might have been a little stubborn in my assessment. He has always been a good player, but certainly not among the game’s absolute elite, and his relative inability to do a lot of damage on the inside has probably been a major reason why. But in his tenth season in the league, the Essendon captain has taken a huge leap forward. His game is still one focused largely on the outside, but he has developed into perhaps the best ball user in the league, is racking up touches like a man possessed, and has been a major reason for his Bombers’ ascent up the ladder this year. Merrett has been extremely consistent in 2024 – in his first 16 games, he had at least 27 touches on 12 occasions, and the Bombers won all but three of those games. His best performances might not be standouts in the same way that those of players like Bontempelli are, but he still puts himself right in the mix most weeks, and with the Bombers winning a lot more than they have been losing so far this year, that could be a recipe for plenty of votes. Never before has Merrett picked up more than 20 votes in a year and I do still find it tough to see him beating out all of the above names, but he should be polling more votes than he ever has this season and could easily end up very close to the top. 

Bet on Zach Merrett to win the Brownlow Medal at $7.00 with BoomBet

Isaac Heeney certainly wasn’t tipped to be in with any chance of winning the Brownlow Medal entering the 2024 season, but a brilliant start to the year saw him quickly ascend to favouritism, and no one has been able to replace him yet. Always undeniably talent, Heeney has spent his career at half forward and despite earning an All Australian guernsey just two years ago, has not been in the Brownlow mix as a result. But with a few injuries to key players for the Swans, coach John Longmire threw him into the midfield, and as most could probably have predicted, he has excelled. But while it’s no surprise to see him playing well there, the extent to which he has dominated has been impressive. Heeney quickly jumped out to a massive lead in the coaches votes, with close to 30 touches and a goal every week – in fact, in his first 12 games of the season he failed to kick a major just once, booting 19 goals in that time while averaging over 26 touches, more than 12 of those being contested. He is a bull on the inside, an elite ball user both inside and out, and has been the best player on the team that has established itself as far and away the best in the league over the first half of the season. Heeney has never before picked up more than eight Brownlow votes in a season and has just 46 in his nine AFL seasons, but he will be going way beyond those numbers this year. 

Bet on Lachie Neale to win the Brownlow Medal at $12.00 with BoomBet

Errol Gulden was one of the surprise packets of last year’s Brownlow Medal counts and very nearly snatched an unlikely victory, but this year he is not sneaking under anyone’s radar. He has now well and truly established himself as one of the best players in the game, with his extraordinary foot skills combined with an uncanny ability to find the footy making him as dangerous as anybody in the league. One member of the Swans’ three-headed monster – the other two being Heeney and Chad Warner – he has played a major role in their ascent to the top of the ladder this year, and will likely pick up plenty of Brownlow votes as a result. Gulden has probably not had quite as many standout performances as he did last year when he polled 27 votes, but he has still enjoyed plenty of big games, particularly of late – a three-game stretch between Rounds 14 and 16 in which he racked up at least 35 touches a game especially notable. Gulden has had a lot of games in which he has picked up 25-30 touches, and in many of those he has hit the scoreboard. With the Swans winning nearly all of those games he will likely be in the top five or six players on the ground very often, but whether those performances are enough to get him enough votes to win the count is another question – particularly with Heeney no doubt taking plenty from him. In his favour, however, is that this is now his second year on the umpire’s radar, which in the past has generally proven a good indicator of how a player will poll. Often, it takes a year or so for players to get the recognition that they deserve, but with Gulden having already shown his vote-getting ability last year and likely a lot more on the umpire’s radar this year, it would be no surprise to see those borderline games yielding him a few votes. His odds look pretty fair at the moment, but if he can have a big finish to the year it is certainly not outside the realms of possibility that he wins the count.  

Bet on Errol Gulden to win the Brownlow Medal at $17.80 with Playup

After picking up 24 votes last year, Caleb Serong started this season like a house on fire with a ridiculous 46 possessions in in his first game and 35 in the next, so expect to see him right at the top of the leaderboard early in the count. Whether he stays there remains to be seen, but he, similar to a player like Neale or Merrett, is consistently among the top accumulators on the ground and generally among the best six or seven out there. Particularly important for players like that is that their team wins a lot of games; players like Bontempelli, who put in such standout performances, can pick up votes win or lose, but for someone like Serong who is regularly around the 30-possession mark and isn’t as overtly damaging as some others on this list, his ability to pick up votes is more heavily influenced by whether his team wins, as well as whether there are other real standout players on the ground. Serong has put in a couple of really big games which will almost certainly yield him votes this season, and with at least 25 touches in all but one of his first 16 games of the season he will be in the mix most weeks, particularly with Fremantle either winning or losing competitively nearly every game. Serong is not the best player in the AFL but he is pretty damn good, and is the kind of player who could easily sneak under the radar into the top three. He would certainly be a surprise winner, but write him off at your own peril. 

Bet on Caleb Serong to win the Brownlow Medal at $17.00 with BoomBet

After Serong there is a big drop off in the betting to the next name, with Butters at double the odds of his Fremantle opponent to win the award. Like Serong, Butters had his first big year from a Brownlow perspective last year, racking up a huge 27 votes after managing just six in his previous four years in the league. This year, however, he has not been quite as consistent nor has his team been as good, so it will likely take a big finish to the season for him to end up with as many votes as he did in 2023. That certainly is not to say Butters hasn’t been good – he is a freakishly talented player and probably the best in what is a wildly talented Port Adelaide midfield. And he has enjoyed plenty of potential vote-getting games, picking up 31 touches or more in seven of his first 16 games. But unlike players like Serong, he has not put himself in the vote-getting mix every week, and in many of his down games he is no chance of picking up a vote. At the time of writing, Butters will almost certainly be quite a few votes in arrears of the leader, but he is also the type of player who is more than capable of putting together multiple big games in succession – last year, for example, he was best on ground three times in four weeks around this time of year and picked up a vote in the fourth of those games, too. A run like that could certainly put him in contention, but for the time being his longer odds are pretty justified.

Bet on Zak Butters to win the Brownlow Medal at $34.00 with BoomBet

Noah Anderson doesn’t get the fanfare of virtually every other player on this list, but the Suns midfielder has gradually developed into a legitimate star of the game. He has improved year upon year, something both his raw numbers and his Brownlow votes point to. In his first year in the league, he didn’t poll any; in his second he managed 8, then 14, and last year 22, and that trajectory would suggest he is more than capable of putting himself in the mix at least for a top five finish this year. Anderson rarely has a game, always finding plenty of the footy and using it well, and this year he has added another string to his bow by hitting the scoreboard with more regularity than he ever has before. He has already pencilled in a number of games in which votes, and quite possibly three of them, are likely; his 42-possession, two-goal effort against the Cats in Round 11 a standout, while he has also had 33 or more and hit the scoreboard four other times in his first 13 games. Importantly, all but one of those big games have been in wins when Suns players are likely to be among the bulk of the votes, so there is every chance that he will pick up plenty of them within a fairly short span of games. Anderson certainly doesn’t loom as likely a Brownlow prospect as many of the names above, but if he were in Melbourne he would be getting a lot more fanfare than he does being up on the Gold Coast. While there is good reason that Anderson is a little bit of an outsider in this market, he is a smoky that is worth looking into, and could easily spring a surprise on Brownlow night. 

Bet on Chad Warner to win the Brownlow Medal at $34.00 with BoomBet

Like Serong, Sam Walsh didn’t take long to establish himself as a contender on Brownlow Medal night, picking up 30 votes in just his third year in the league after being drafted with the number one pick in 2018. He has failed to replicate that effort in the two years since, picking up just 14 and then 5 votes in 2022 and 2023 respectively, but he looks set to return to the top handful of vote-getters this year. After an injury interrupted pre-season, Walsh would have been forgiven for starting the season slow, but he hit the ground running in his first game for the season in Round 6 with 34 touches and hasn’t looked back. Through his first nine games of the season Walsh averaged 30.56 touches per game, and in seven of those games had at least 31. On a Carlton team bursting with starpower he will have plenty of teammates potentially taking votes off him, but in nearly every one of their wins and plenty of their losses he will put himself in the mix. The five games that he missed at the start of the season, however, put him at a clear disadvantage and if he misses many more for the rest of the year he will be virtually out of the race, but halfway through the season he could easily be right up there in votes per game, and if he stays fit for the rest of the season he could put himself in with a chance. 

Bet on Tom Green to win the Brownlow Medal at $41.00 with BoomBet

There are plenty of players with good claim to the Brownlow Medal this year, and it could easily take more than 30 votes to get the chocolates in 2024. Nick Daicos is going to be very hard to beat and has been our pick for a large portion of the year, and still looks like a decent pick at this stage, as does Marcus Bontempelli, who has put together a large number of dominant performances all year. But the one name which presents perhaps the best value of all is Lachie Neale. A fantastic player no doubt, there may be some who don’t think he is good enough to join the extremely exclusive three-Brownlow-Medals club, but he is a proven vote-getter and has enjoyed a sneakily very good season this year. He has had a number of massive games which have been becoming more regular as the season wears on, and is arguably playing better than he was when he won the Brownlow in the past – certainly than the second time he won it. Neale always puts himself in the mix for votes and has polled in the past even with relatively average games by his standards, so the 35-touch efforts which have been pretty regular this year will have him right in the mix. At decent odds, he could be very good value, and might not stay as long as he currently is for long. 

Most Brownlow Medals by player

• 3 – Haydn Bunton Sr. (Fitzroy), Dick Reynolds (Essendon), Bob Skilton (South Melbourne), Ian Stewart (St Kilda/Richmond)

Most Brownlow Medals by club

• 14 – Sydney Swans/South Melbourne (1940, 1949, 1955, 1959, 1963, 1968, 1970, 1977, 1981, 1986, 1988, 1995, 2003, 2006)

Most Brownlow Medal votes in a season

• 3–2–1 voting system: 36 – Dustin Martin (Richmond, 2017), Ollie Wines (Port Adelaide, 2021)
• All voting systems: 59 – Graham Teasdale (South Melbourne, 1977)

Most Brownlow Medal votes in an entire career

• 262 – Gary Ablett Jr. (Geelong/Gold Coast)

More Brownlow Medal votes than AFL/VFL matches

•  Haydn Bunton, Sr.
• Nat Fyfe