MrMOB
Senior List
70% WILL DO, MR JACKSON
A fellow AFL member had a brief but illuminating conversation with Wayne Jackson coming out of the VFL Grand Final last weekend. He was dumbfounded when Jackson said bitterly, "The problem with you people is you all want to go to the Grand Final".
Er, well yes Wayne.
Wasn't that the cornerstone of your marketing of AFL Membership for years?
Isn't that why we happily paid a joining fee and then waited patiently on the restricted list for our turn to come?
And in any case Wayne is actually wrong: ALL of us don't want to go to the Grand Final. Each year, about 70% of us do. The others might be ill, away on holidays or business, just too upset the Pies didn't make it again, or a host of other reasons. In my case last year, my wife and I were awaiting the birth of our first child.
Until the AFL began siphoning away seats in the AFL Members Reserve, ensuring there were sufficient seats in the reserve for about 70% of the Full Membership worked just fine. Some years, even a few Restricted Members got a chance to fill up the remaining seats.
We don't mind sharing our reserve with AFL guests such as Hall of Fame and Life Members, or the kids who play in the Little League at half-time. But we draw the line at queue-jumping corporate carpetbaggers like the Medallion Club, who have taken up to 5000 of our seats!
And it's especially galling when we see that hundreds of these Medallion Club tickets are now on offer in the classifieds and online auction sites for huge sums. Unlike ordinary AFL Membership these tickets might be fully transferable, but if that's not scalping I don't know what is.
A fellow AFL member had a brief but illuminating conversation with Wayne Jackson coming out of the VFL Grand Final last weekend. He was dumbfounded when Jackson said bitterly, "The problem with you people is you all want to go to the Grand Final".
Er, well yes Wayne.
Wasn't that the cornerstone of your marketing of AFL Membership for years?
Isn't that why we happily paid a joining fee and then waited patiently on the restricted list for our turn to come?
And in any case Wayne is actually wrong: ALL of us don't want to go to the Grand Final. Each year, about 70% of us do. The others might be ill, away on holidays or business, just too upset the Pies didn't make it again, or a host of other reasons. In my case last year, my wife and I were awaiting the birth of our first child.
Until the AFL began siphoning away seats in the AFL Members Reserve, ensuring there were sufficient seats in the reserve for about 70% of the Full Membership worked just fine. Some years, even a few Restricted Members got a chance to fill up the remaining seats.
We don't mind sharing our reserve with AFL guests such as Hall of Fame and Life Members, or the kids who play in the Little League at half-time. But we draw the line at queue-jumping corporate carpetbaggers like the Medallion Club, who have taken up to 5000 of our seats!
And it's especially galling when we see that hundreds of these Medallion Club tickets are now on offer in the classifieds and online auction sites for huge sums. Unlike ordinary AFL Membership these tickets might be fully transferable, but if that's not scalping I don't know what is.
