Tasmania has waited for more than three decades to join the AFL, but the taskforce wants to shift the goal posts after past failures that include the last push in 2008 from the state government.

Godfrey heads up a group full of business acumen and wherewithal along with Tasmanian AFL figures Brendon Bolton and Nick Riewoldt.

"We do have some football smarts, but this is not being driven football smart, heart-on-the-sleeve stuff," he said.

"This time it will be driven by economics and business rationale, and things that will better the state as opposed to what will be a drag on it for decades if we do it wrong."

The Virgin Australia boss is gunning the state's largest two cities to win the right to home a new AFL side and even host more of the games.

While emphasising a new club has to represent the entire state, Launceston has every year bar spikes in 2015 and 2016 upstaged Hobart's poorer attendance figures.

UTAS Stadium has averaged 15,443 since the first of 72 AFL matches appeared in 2001, whereas Bellerive has managed just 12,269 per game in 21 games since 2012.

"How it's going to work is that we'll do this team where economically it stacks up best, whether or not that's Launceston," Godfrey said.

"We'll play games there, but if people don't want to go to games in a particular place, why would you put it there? Having said all of that, the early analysis is that you are going to have to start with matches equally in both the north and the south.

"It makes perfect sense to do so because you have stadiums of limited size."

UTAS Stadium and Bellerive should ensure "a chunk of money can be saved".

The AFL also left the terms of reference wide open to the taskforce in regard to how a Tasmanian team would be a structured, including the break-up of home games.

"We'll start up with a 50-50 split and then I'd say if Launceston keeps pulling bigger crowds, you might change that," Godfrey said.

"It will be a bit of motivation, wouldn't it?" I think it is pretty simple then: if you want football games, you have to support the games."

The state's capital city has long been accepted to be the obvious choice to base a Tasmanian team for training and living purposes.

Godfrey said that was far from a fait accompli under the findings of the taskforce.

"I think the smarter thing to do on where the team bases itself is leave that to economic forces to determine," he said, "along with a really heavy weighting on player retention and desirability."

Just two months into a six-month process, Godfrey rubbished claims the state is out of its depth to sustain an AFL club, whose running costs exceed $50 million per year.

He pointed to successes at both ends of the scale: AFL traditionalist Geelong that dates back to 1859 and NRL newcomer North Queensland that began in 1995.

Both clubs play out of cities of less than 200,000 people.

"That sort of knocks it on the head that. There is a number of vested interests that believe we are too small. I think that's wrong, but we need to prove it," he said.

Godfrey said proving to the AFL the bottom line will be "black and not red" will get the state over the line.

"I know there's a degree of cynicism in the state - I get that as an outsider - between Tassie and the AFL," he said.

"I do have to say, the AFL and Gil [McLachlan], have been extraordinarily helpful in this process of opening doors and providing insight.

"I actually phoned Gil up the day before I considered the role because I wanted to make sure I was going to have our voice heard.

"I told him I'm not doing this if the doors are going to be shut, shutters pulled down and we have to make stuff up."