MELBOURNE CEO Peter Jackson believes the move to discontinue its relationship with the gaming industry will help reshape the club on and off the field.

“This footy club’s got a great opportunity over the next five to 25 years to set itself up, which its never had before,” Jackson told SEN’s Crunch Time on Saturday.

“We’re heading hopefully to a pretty good football team over the next few years, but we’ve also got some good capital assets that will allow us to invest and reshape what the football club looks like.

“I think this will allow the club to stand alone as an independent organisation for the next 25 years or so.”

While gaming provides significant funds for AFL clubs, Jackson said Melbourne has other areas to focus on.

“I think [gaming] is an industry football clubs should be distracted [away from]. Our core business is winning games of footy and we don’t want our management resources, our executive effort diluted in that business.”

The decision to end the club’s gaming partnership wasn’t solely a community based decision, but it was an issue taken on-board.

“Footy clubs are owned by the community … so we’ve got to be aware of what community sentiment is,” Jackson said.

“It also was a business analysis. We started this process 18 months ago of looking at where we were, and where we were in gaming and asked ourselves if it was something we wanted to be in. We thought not.”