Fans were left outraged on Wednesday after News Corp ran a story about the food and drink price hikes at the MCG.
Amid cost-of-living pressures, fans weren’t pleased to learn that the cost of a pie and beer could cost nearly $20 in 2024.
Hot chips are up from $5.50 to $6.20, meat pies are now $6.20 instead of $5.50, bottled water and soft drinks are up 70c while both schooners and pints of Carlton Draught have been bumped up by $1 each.
Those prices were initially lifted in October ahead of the 2023/24 cricket season and MCC CEO Stuart Fox says that the venue has simply had to respond to increased labour and overall inflation.
“Yeah, it's a difficult one,” Fox told SEN Breakfast.
“We put our prices up in October last year, so we haven't just done it.
“You know, the last two years have been extremely difficult with inflation, the cost of food and beverage has increased everywhere you go and so has labour.
“We've had to respond to that.”
After lifting prices this season, Fox says the MCC will hope to hold prices for multiple years.
While the venue doesn’t want to hurt the fan experience, the increases are considered necessary by the MCC as the cost of running the MCG on game days increases.
“I'm hoping we can hold prices for multiple years now, we've done that in the past,” Fox said.
“But we've got obviously critical contracts in place. We'll do a review this year to just see how we can hold prices into the future.
“It's just been awfully difficult when suppliers continue to put costs up and increase their prices as well as the labour costs. We need to respond to that.
“We're conscious that we don't want to hurt the fans, but that said, we've got a business to run and it's not cheap to run the MCG, I can assure you.”
The first game of the 2024 AFL season at the MCG takes place on Thursday night with Carlton and Richmond meeting in a Round 1 clash.
