Chasing six figures: how the MCG squeezes the most out of AFL grand final day

The AFL claims the MCG could be filled four times over on grand final day, but that’s of little help to the team tasked with ensuring the attendance figure actually reaches the magical six figures.

Melbourne’s grand old ground is one of barely a dozen in the world with a capacity over 100,000, and its showpiece event this Saturday is a chance to demonstrate the stadium in all its grandeur.

But the reported attendance figure is only an approximation of how many will actually be in the ground on Saturday. Pushing the official attendance through the 90,000s and into six figures is a key focus for the Melbourne Cricket Club, which operates the venue.

The MCC’s full members are allocated around 23,000 tickets. As many as 15,500 are pre-purchased and reserved, but there is also a walk-up component of around 6,000 unreserved and 1,000 standing room spaces.

But if full members are not going to fill the entire allotment, MCC puts the call out to restricted members who wouldn’t normally be able to buy grand final tickets.

“We’ve got a lot of history, historical data on attendance rates and show rates and the arrival pattern, so we make a call usually around mid-morning if we’re going to open it up to restricted members,” said MCC general manager Josh Eltringham. “Last year we did it for a couple of hundred, and we’ll look to do that again if we think there’s going to be a shortfall, but that’ll be a decision on the morning.”

This level of responsiveness is a gesture to MCC restricted members, who pay up to $681 each year and are usually waiting decades to be given full membership. But the MCC is also keen to ensure every seat in the ground – all 100,024 – is sold.

“For us, it’s important that we maximise that, and we can keep drip feeding people in until we’re comfortable with our own capacity,” Eltringham said. “It’s a challenge, but it’s a good challenge to have.”

View image in fullscreen Sydney Swans and Brisbane Lions members share 35,000 tickets, split evenly in half, for the 2024 AFL grand final Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP

The past five grand finals held at the MCG have cracked the threshold of 100,000 according to the formal attendance figures, which are widely accepted to be the number of sold tickets.

Some fans reported seeing empty seats at the sold out grand final last year, raising the question of whether patrons who have bought tickets but do not attend are included in the official tally. The MCC declined to elaborate on how it counts attendance, but confirmed the ground’s capacity was “reached” last year. With several thousand staff also on site, the number of people at the ground is likely to be significantly more than 100,000.

Members of the two competing clubs share 35,000 tickets, split evenly in half, and around 17,000 go to AFL members, of which those in the gold category get first access.

The remainder – approximately 25,000 – go to what the AFL calls “other stakeholders”, such as clubs, broadcast and corporate partners. There are also premium hospitality experiences sold by the AFL which cost between $420 and $5,995.

The AFL has increased the number of tickets that go to club members from 34,000 to 35,000 this season, in a move that addresses a core complaint from long-suffering fans of competing clubs: that there just aren’t enough tickets available.

Ron Issko, president of the AFL Fans Association, said corporate and premium hospitality tickets allowed people to pay to “jump the queue”, and called for the allocation to club members to be increased to 40,000 to rewards fans “that go week in, week out, rain, hail or shine”.

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Brian Walsh, the AFL’s manager of corporate affairs, said there will never be enough tickets to satisfy every fan.

“It’s a problem every year, we’ve got 100,000 capacity – 100,024 at the ‘G – we could sell 400,000 tickets on Saturday and probably still have demand,” Walsh said.

“We’ve found another thousand tickets this year, we’ve also said to club members that we’ll work with the clubs and work with other stakeholders across our industry to try and find more tickets next year, but we’re never going to have enough tickets to satisfy the members.”

While work is underway to plan the MCG’s next stage of redevelopment and a potential replacement of the Shane Warne Stand, the focus will not be on increasing capacity.

“The Shane Warne Stand was built in 1992 so it’s a little bit aged over there. It’s still a very well functioning, great facility, but in five or 10 years time, it’s going to be five or 10 years older, and at that point, the customer experience can be impacted,” Eltringham said. “So it’s important that in Victoria, we want to be the major event capital of Australia and the world, and we need to have the best facility.”

Renovations to the Shane Warne Stand in 2006 pushed capacity back above 100,000. That year also saw the last grand final with two interstate teams when Sydney and West Coast played in front of 97,431.

Geelong defeated Port Adelaide in the 2007 decider in front of 97,302, before 100,012 watched Hawthorn beat Geelong in 2008: the first time since 1986 that an MCG attendance exceeded 100,000.

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