The AFL has apologised to an Adelaide-based graphic designer after his work was replicated in promotions for the league's upcoming Multicultural Round.

Tyson Beck has produced art for some of the world's biggest sporting leagues including the NBA and NFL.

His personal portfolio of work is available to view online, and Mr Beck believed this was where his piece was taken from.

The original piece called Face of Cleveland, of NBA star LeBron James, was a personal piece of artwork created in May and was not commissioned by the league.

The artwork has since been replicated for the AFL's marketing of its Multicultural Round.

A spokesman for the AFL said the plagiarism by an agency it hired for the campaign was completely unacceptable.

Mr Beck, who has declined compensation, said his work was used as a template from the beginning of the design process.

"With the profession that I do, a lot of times my work is taken as inspiration, which is completely fine in most cases, but on further looking at it when I put my design next to the design that the AFL had made, it passed the line of being used as inspiration," he said.

"It was more plagiarism, it was definitely like a replication."

AFL, agency 'upfront and honest' about creative process

Upon finding his work had been copied, Mr Beck sent an email and tweet to the AFL who responded the following morning.

"Having dealt with large sporting leagues or companies that have completely taken my work or plagiarised it, usually the response isn't any good," he said.

"They just ignore, but the AFL was completely different.

"The head of media at the AFL contacted me and sincerely apologised for what had happened.

"I was made aware that there were issues surrounding, you know, the similarities between my work and their work and the contact I spoke with at the AFL was quite surprised that the creative campaign actually went ahead and did get approved, knowing the issues around the similarities."

Mr Beck said both the AFL and the agency had been upfront and honest about their creative process and sincere in their apologies.

"They've [the agency] also contacted me and openly admitted their wrongs and also let me know they did use my work, storyboarding it and everything about this piece was surrounded by my work and they were definitely up front and honest about it," he said.

"Obviously they were trying to use it as inspiration for their campaign, but there was no area where they put their own twist to it."

Mr Beck said he did not raise the issue with the AFL for compensation, but rather to raise awareness of the plagiarism.