Beyond the GF – Why the MCG Contract doesn’t pass the Stink Test

[kickazz]

Tldr. I don't have a problem, there is no possibility that anyone else could.

lol sums it up perfectly.

I loved the other one where he said he wasn't entitled! bwahahaha

 

[Demonic Ascent]

So what'd you reckon, have something like:

22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36 MCG
23, 31 AO
25, 33 SCG
27, 35 GABBA
29, 37 OPTUS

Lock them in and don't move the venue no matter who's playing.

As long as you get near capacity, that's the main thing. They have to reserve a certain amount of tickets for fans/members I believe, so it'd be a matter of how many they can sell.

Probably more like

22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59 MCG

It's hard to see beyond that at this stage, but I'd say it's a good chance to continue in the same fashion.

 

[Dan26]

Simple question... How much does it usually cost you (with everything factored in)? to go... obviously within a ballpark

It's not about me. Pretend I'm someone from Perth making the same argument. Argue the words, not the person sating those words.

 

[Coolangatta]

Probably more like

22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59 MCG

It's hard to see beyond that at this stage, but I'd say it's a good chance to continue in the same fashion.

Sadly, that's the reality.

Even if other footy states ticked all the boxes - market, facilities, had 100k+ capacity, the Vic's aren't giving up that contract.

They might as well extend the contract for another 1000 years. I think there'll be a 30 odd year extension before 2059 at this rate.

 

[FreoFan85]

It's not about me. Pretend I'm someone from Perth making the same argument. Argue the words, not the person sating those words.

No its not about you directly, just using you as someone that has been fortunate enough to attend 29 times. So how much does it cost you from start to finish. The amount is not going to change significantly from everyone else in a similar predicament.

 

[Dan26]

No its not about you directly, just using you as someone that has been fortunate enough to attend 29 times. So how much does it cost you from start to finish. The amount is not going to change significantly from everyone else in a similar predicament.

Membership is around $600 a year, probably another $200 on top of that with booking fees during the year which cost more for the other finals. Grand Final ticket used to be free (not free but part of the membership), but now they make us pay an extra $200 for a ticket.

 

[Papa G]

Membership is around $600 a year, probably another $200 on top of that with booking fees during the year which cost more for the other finals. Grand Final ticket used to be free (not free but part of the membership), but now they make us pay an extra $200 for a ticket.

Don't forget the return train ticket from Werribee. That's $10.

 

[Dan26]

Don't forget the return train ticket from Werribee. That's $10.

Mate it's a killer for a tight-ass like me.

 

[Papa G]

You make a good point about some things, but this line of reasoning still confuses me. Doesn't the AFL promote the Showdown and Derby in SA and WA? They promote them in Vic. As do Ch7.

One of the big deal "Blockbusters" is North on Good Friday. Collingwood vs Carlton has no AFL "status. Which do you reckon gets the bigger crowd?

Besides, who goes to a game because the AFL say it's a "Blockbuster"? Seriously. Who decides their going to a game because they saw an ad?

Showdowns/Derbies are never stand alone games on Public holidays. They aren't FTA across the nation. The AFL actively promote the gimmick/event, ANZAC Day, Dreamtime, Easter Monday, Queens Birthday. These are all promoted weeks out as big games. They only involve the Big Vic teams,(Melbourne the VFL era Historical anomaly), they only involve the MCG. The rest of the quota is filled with these teams on Friday Nights.

Remember when Eddie lost his shit and demanded to be compensated when the AFL had the temerity to schedule a Collingwood v Carlton game was scheduled on a Sunday Twilight spot and got a poor crowd? Remember that? These mandated "Blockbusters" are given the absolute perfect conditions to help the 6 big Vic clubs gain financial advantage, something not offered to the rest. This deal facilitates and perpetuates it. A skews the fixture. It skews the opportunities. It favours a third of the comp over the rest.

 

[FreoFan85]

Membership is around $600 a year, probably another $200 on top of that with booking fees during the year which cost more for the other finals. Grand Final ticket used to be free (not free but part of the membership), but now they make us pay an extra $200 for a ticket.

Cool so approximately $800 a year (obviously give and take). And again not using you specifically, but just someone like you as an example if yo multiply that out by 29 it equals to about $23,000. I presume you don't purchase a club membership on top of that as you get 40 games to Marvel or the MCG.

If i was in the predicament to go by myself factoring the same conditions:
$800 (exactly the same as yours)
$600 (fremantle club membership) So that i can actually attend normal games of footy of which you would have yours included.
$800 Accommodation for two nights (you can't arrive on Saturday morning in time for the game)
$600 flights (this is being really reasonable as well)

= $2800 (which i still think is under what it costs, but i'm not spending any extra tim
x 29 = $81,200
This does not factor in all the other costs associated with having to take a Friday off etc

For that I would get to go to 28 less games a year. Yet pay close to 4 times the price.

This is for one ticket, multiply it out for a family of 5. You can see it fast becomes unaffordable.

The sharing of the Grand Final dramatically changes this. Now i'm not saying we need to go every time, but it would be nice to get somewhere between attending Once and 29 times in my life.

 

[Dan26]

Cool so approximately $800 a year (obviously give and take). And again not using you specifically, but just someone like you as an example if yo multiply that out by 29 it equals to about $23,000. I presume you don't purchase a club membership on top of that as you get 40 games to Marvel or the MCG.

If i was in the predicament to go by myself factoring the same conditions:
$800 (exactly the same as yours)
$600 (fremantle club membership) So that i can actually attend normal games of footy of which you would have yours included.
$800 Accommodation for two nights (you can't arrive on Saturday morning in time for the game)
$600 flights (this is being really reasonable as well)

= $2800 (which i still think is under what it costs, but i'm not spending any extra tim
x 29 = $81,200
This does not factor in all the other costs associated with having to take a Friday off etc

For that I would get to go to 28 less games a year. Yet pay close to 4 times the price.

This is for one ticket, multiply it out for a family of 5. You can see it fast becomes unaffordable.

The sharing of the Grand Final dramatically changes this. Now i'm not saying we need to go every time, but it would be nice to get somewhere between attending Once and 29 times in my life.

I think you can get an AFL membership which allows you to go to home games of your team if you don't live in Melbourne, so your club membership would effectively be your AFL membership in that case.

Look, I'm not actually against rotating the GF in principle. They do it with the Superbowl, of course.

The difference is, the Superbowl can be held at 32 different venues all of which hold around 70,000+.

In Australia, we have one stadium which holds almost twice the capacity of all other stadiums. The MCG is simply the logical venue.

I really like Optus Stadium. I went there once in 2018 and it was fantastic. I think they will do a great job at hosting the Grand Final.

 

[FreoFan85]

I think you can get an AFL membership which allows you to go to home games of your team if you don't live in Melbourne, so your club membership would effectively be your AFL membership in that case.

Look, I'm not actually against rotating the GF in principle. They do it with the Superbowl, of course.

The difference is, the Superbowl can be held at 32 different venues all of which hold around 70,000+.

In Australia, we have one stadium which holds almost twice the capacity of all other stadiums. The MCG is simply the logical venue.

I really like Optus Stadium. I went there once in 2018 and it was fantastic. I think they will do a great job at hosting the Grand Final.

I investigated the afl website and i believe it is only for Melbourne. We need to buy club memberships which don't give us access, probably due to the fact that they own Marvel and obviously have ties with the MCG.

If the game is a good quality spectacle, it won't matter if there is 40k, 50k or 100k. It will be loud, exciting, etc etc Don't get me wrong we don't want a Grand final where only a few thousand could attend. At the end of the day the Grand Final Richmond Vs GWS would have been ordinary had there been 200k

At the moment we have largely (obviously not the exact same) the same 100k attending year on year. So if would be nice to share it around.

 

[Shaq attack]

I've personally really enjoyed that the Grand Final has moved the last couple years. It was great is Brissy last year and will be excellent in Perth this year. Also, the novelty of being able to see 2 teams play that you otherwise wouldn't ever get to i.e. Sydney Derby in Tassie is great as well.

 

[melanChronic]

Absolutely has Eddie's fingerprints all over it. I remember him loudly boasting in one of his shitty stage-managed Footy Classified "discussions" about the fact that he was in the room and helped orchestrate this ridiculous deal.

In fact, it looks like a classic McGuire-McLaughlin double act. The same two blokes who have repeatedly colluded to try and strong-arm Port into a contract that prevents them ever again wearing the prison bars.

Look at the similarities:

- Both come from a position of aggressively protecting a status quo that the league has inherited from its Victorian roots
- Both feature an extremely long time period that makes no sense for one party to agree to
- Both take a myopic view of history and tradition that only considers one set of fans and shits on the faces of another
- Both have clear negative long-term financial consequences in exchange for a short-term sugar hit

These ridiculous "contracts" that McGuire likes to brandish are just childish attempts by a bully trying to secure his legacy by chaining the future of the game to his own pigheaded view of it. The sad thing is that the AFL is still such a boy's club that allows him to get away with it.

I do hope that once all these dinosaur power brokers that still have a VFL glory day mindset die out, we can finally move on to setting the AFL up as a proper national league. But campaigners like McGuire know their grip will slowly slip and are trying to shore things up now while there is still a Victorian majority.

 

[PenfoldsFan]

Absolutely has Eddie's fingerprints all over it. I remember him loudly boasting in one of his shitty stage-managed Footy Classified "discussions" about the fact that he was in the room and helped orchestrate this ridiculous deal.

It was on the Footy Show before it got canned that he announced the extension, ****ing hilarious now that since then the following 2 GF's have/will be played away from the G and even funnier that the smug prick isnt allowed to attend this years.

 

[LoungeLizard]

Absolutely has Eddie's fingerprints all over it. I remember him loudly boasting in one of his shitty stage-managed Footy Classified "discussions" about the fact that he was in the room and helped orchestrate this ridiculous deal.

In fact, it looks like a classic McGuire-McLaughlin double act. The same two blokes who have repeatedly colluded to try and strong-arm Port into a contract that prevents them ever again wearing the prison bars.

Look at the similarities:

- Both come from a position of aggressively protecting a status quo that the league has inherited from its Victorian roots
- Both feature an extremely long time period that makes no sense for one party to agree to
- Both take a myopic view of history and tradition that only considers one set of fans and shits on the faces of another
- Both have clear negative long-term financial consequences in exchange for a short-term sugar hit

These ridiculous "contracts" that McGuire likes to brandish are just childish attempts by a bully trying to secure his legacy by chaining the future of the game to his own pigheaded view of it. The sad thing is that the AFL is still such a boy's club that allows him to get away with it.

I do hope that once all these dinosaur power brokers that still have a VFL glory day mindset die out, we can finally move on to setting the AFL up as a proper national league. But campaigners like McGuire know their grip will slowly slip and are trying to shore things up now while there is still a Victorian majority.

Nice melt, you forget though, McGuire and McLaughlin had nothing to do with the colours of Port Power.

 

[greatwhiteshark]

Cool so approximately $800 a year (obviously give and take). And again not using you specifically, but just someone like you as an example if yo multiply that out by 29 it equals to about $23,000. I presume you don't purchase a club membership on top of that as you get 40 games to Marvel or the MCG.

If i was in the predicament to go by myself factoring the same conditions:
$800 (exactly the same as yours)
$600 (fremantle club membership) So that i can actually attend normal games of footy of which you would have yours included.
$800 Accommodation for two nights (you can't arrive on Saturday morning in time for the game)
$600 flights (this is being really reasonable as well)

= $2800 (which i still think is under what it costs, but i'm not spending any extra tim
x 29 = $81,200
This does not factor in all the other costs associated with having to take a Friday off etc

For that I would get to go to 28 less games a year. Yet pay close to 4 times the price.

This is for one ticket, multiply it out for a family of 5. You can see it fast becomes unaffordable.

The sharing of the Grand Final dramatically changes this. Now i'm not saying we need to go every time, but it would be nice to get somewhere between attending Once and 29 times in my life.

What needs to happen is for Victorians to have no choice but to buy a GF ticket in a package as we have to. Only the allocation given to participate clubs gets you just the ticket. The rest are all in Packages fir us here in WA. Why not in Victoria as well.
So as an example if you just want to attend the GF in Melbourne and you missed out on one of the 16k tickets allocated to your club then you should only be able to get a ticket now in a package. Breakfast, Game ticket, after match function. $1500.00
That’s what happens in WA yet we have to add flights and accommodation. Works out about $3000 plus pending how many days you stay.

 

[The Hobo]

Crowd capacity is irrelevant. We need to follow a model like the NFL where the game gets rotated to different cities. The fact that our league has a deal with the mcg is unprofessional

That's exactly why they made the deal such a long term deal - so that once the uproar went away, they don't have to discuss it again for the next 30 odd years.

Imagine if this came up every 5 years? Eventually they'd have to change it up. This way, it's not up for discussion really.

 

[Heeney2Franklin]

There is no doubt it isn't.

The Grand Final MUST be at the MCG for it to count as a real Grand Final. Last year did not feel like a Grand Final at all, nor will this year. Non-Vics need to remember they are guests in this league.

"Guests" who keep the league afloat just a correction.

 

[PrisonBars4life]

Non-commercial? The MCG can sell 40,000 more tickets than the next biggest AFL quality stadium for the biggest game of the year where they can charge the most.

Laughable that you think the deal is non commercial. It's entirely ******* commercial. If it was Non commercial it'd be played at the home ground even in a 20k stadium.

It's almost like the MCG and AFL are two separate entities and the AFL shouldn't be worried about how much money the MCG is making, rather how much they are.

 

[Choogler]

None of the expansion clubs complained about this when they joined, but I'm content to revert to what we had so that rank-and-file supporters can attend all h&a games again. The other clubs can please themselves. They can even have the 'AFL' label.

Suggest you watch "The Merge" and take particular note of what Ross Oakley says. Might change your opinion of the whole expansion thing when you know that your club and others needed their share of the expansion licence fees just to stay afloat

 

[Ron The Bear]

Suggest you watch "The Merge" and take particular note of what Ross Oakley says. Might change your opinion of the whole expansion thing when you know that your club and others needed their share of the expansion licence fees just to stay afloat

Yes, WC and others paid those entry fees knowing that the GF was always held at the MCG. Hell, they actually joined the VFL.

Oakley and his henchmen left us for dead anyway. **** you Barassi.

 

[Coolangatta]

I'd like a 21-year deal:
11 MCG
3 Optus
3 Adelaide Oval
2 Gabba
2 SCG

10-year interval between Brisbane and Sydney GFs and a 7-year interval between Adelaide and Perth GFs.

Or a 20-year deal and MCG every second year and roughly those intervals with others, so you don't get 3 MCG GFs in a row or 3 without them.

 

[Freomaniac]

why does the process need to have any transparency? does your boss consult you when deciding to move office/factory location?

also, we are not shareholders of the afl. we pay for a membership which allows us to go to games. how they run the business is up to them, and for the most part they are running it well. the afl just needs to point to growing audiences, memberships and revenue to prove that the business decisions they are making are for the good of the business, regardless of whether some people like them or not.

Do you actually think the MCG will host the grand final in 2021 being the current covid cess pit as it is right now?

 

[Freomaniac]

I can give one reason.

TV $$$, big games are worth lots to the AFL when they negotiate.

Yeah Because a hawks vs North game that gets 20,000 at the MCG or Docklands is more exciting than a Port vs crows Showdown that gets 50,000