Award Ceremony
The award ceremony has become increasingly elaborate, with footballers and their partners gradually becoming more fashion-conscious. This aspect of the night has become widely reported by gossip columns. The ceremony is currently held at Crown Casino, Melbourne on the Monday five days prior to the AFL Grand Final. In years past, prospective grand final players have attended the ceremony in person. However non-Victorian grand finalists have typically refused to attend the ceremony in Melbourne due to the inconvenience of travel in such an important week. A live video link to Brownlow functions in their home city is done instead.
The event itself consists of the votes for each match being read out in succession by the CEO of the AFL, currently Andrew Demetriou, interspersed with a retrospective look at highlights from each round of the season and commentary from the broadcast network's usual football commentary team.
The integrity of the award is upheld by the tight security and secrecy surrounding the votes. Once the umpires make their decision, the votes are locked away and transported by armoured security vehicles. No one except the three umpires knows exactly who has been voted for, and as different umpires vote on different games, no one can be sure of who will win. Unlike most award ceremonies, the votes are not tallied or even opened until they are actually announced on the night, so the drama is maintained until late on the actual night, when the result sometimes comes down to the final round of votes.
From 1959 until 1974 radio stations including 3UZ, 3KZ and 3AW broadcast the vote counts. SEN 1116 now covers the count. Direct television telecasts began in 1970 at the Dallas Brooks Hall and have occurred every year since.
Some bookmakers offer betting on the winner of the Brownlow Medal. A number of well-publicised "plunges" on unlikely winners has led to increasingly elaborate security measures to ensure the Brownlow votes are kept secret until the vote count.
Read more about this topic: Brownlow Medal
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