I thought the APL was the clubs? With each member (including Canberra Women's) have a piece of the pie?
Someone will explain it better than me.
But basically an independant body that runs the game, with it's own CEO, and other staff. It's the APL that receives the money from Paramount, and then decides on how much is allocated to the clubs. The APL also makes other business decisions for the league (often bad to date) like KeepUp, Silver Lake, GF hosting etc etc
There are 8 directors on the APL Board of which 5-6 are the chairmen or vice chairmen at various A League clubs. So not all the clubs, but the Nix's Rob Morrison is there.
https://aplfootball.com.au/our-business/board/
Read the Simon Hill article. Listen to the recent Adam Peacock series on what's currently wrong with football in Australia, and what the answers could be to turn it around