There are no plans to consider changing the ticket allocation for the AFL Grand Final despite the issues faced by fans on Sunday and Monday.
With demands for member tickets stretched by Collingwood’s presence in this year's decider, several issues emerged from Magpies members in the ballot on Ticketek. Over 30 Priority 1 members weren’t allocated a seat while credit card and demand concerns also led to the outrage.
Ticketek has since stated the ballot ran as planned and all issues are believed to have been resolved. Collingwood CEO Craig Kelly took the opportunity on Monday to call on the AFL to improve his members’ ticket allocation from 17,000 to 20,000.
But departing AFL chief Gillon McLachlan revealed to SEN’s Whateley he's told Kelly there are no suitable options for change.
“All of the issues of yesterday I don’t think were because of that (Ticketek)… yesterday was around some decisions like balloting, there were some glitches around accessing credit cards and 10 times demand on what’s available, and the last piece is impossible to solve despite everyone’s views,” he explained.
“I said this to Craig yesterday, ‘I know, I know you are a passionate Collingwood person wanting to look after your members and that is exactly how you should be, but we can’t solve it when we’ve got a venue for 100,000 and you’ve got 106,000, we can’t solve that’.”
McLachlan also moved to defend the ticket allocation that sees club members make up just over a third of the crowd.
MCC members will make up between 16-26 per cent of the crowd and AFL members 13-18 per cent, while all 18 clubs receive a ticket allocation. AFL entitlements/contractual obligations also take a share.
The outgoing CEO insists only nine per cent of Saturday’s crowd will be AFL-sold corporates.
“We’ve got from 20,000 to 34,000 club members… I think... Collingwood people in different clubs (AFL members and MCC), I think they’re proper paying people who should go,” McLachlan continued.
“When you get down to it there are 9,000 tickets that get sold corporately for a lot of money… 9,000 out of 100,000, everyone else for me is linked back to the club or proper people who aren’t technically members of Collingwood but are members of football.
“There is an ecosystem that broadly works…”
The AFL is confident a maximum crowd of 100,024 will watch Saturday’s game from within the MCG, a figure that would make it back-to-back sellouts.