Preliminary Final Venue?

[Danzar]

It appears to be only for the Victorian teams in semi 2? I haven't read anywhere that the Freo/Port members get the same benefit for semi 1. Is that right?

Correct for Port Erica. Port would never have received the discount because it could only have applied to top four teams - you got the discount if your team lost week 1. The discount wouldn't have been available for members of teams in Round 1 elimination.

We were offered it being a top four team, which means Freo must have had the same deal, and so on. It's just a balancing act to maximise spread of numbers across all three weeks I reckon.

[barry]

The way youve got to look at it, is this , the prelim, is the biggest game of footy you can witness in sydney.

[Danzar]

The way youve got to look at it, is this , the prelim, is the biggest game of footy you can witness in sydney.

...that sadly, because of a rip off pricing system, is out of reach for most Sydneysiders. Dropping those prices and restructuring the lower end of the price brackets will absolutely guarantee the 60,000 you've been advocating for. It will also widen the game's accessibility and in turn, widen the game's appeal.

[ScottH]

The way youve got to look at it, is this , the prelim, is the biggest game of footy you can witness in sydney.

And the best game with a true loyal crowd for both teams, given that the GF is not as it only has limited numbers of supporters per team.

[Dave]

On the ANZ debate. When I played local Football in the 2000s, the tickets to go to the Swans games at ANZ were the easiest tickets to come across in living memory. Our head coach used to say at the end of training:

"I have 30 tickets to ANZ, who wants to go".

Has this practice been tightened up? Maybe someone involved in local Sydney Football can confirm if this still happens.

This happens with my son's club for Giants games now.

[Matt80]

If we get it 75% full with the ridiculous preliminary final prices of the afl, it would be an outstanding achievement. Anything over 50k will be a really good crowd if you ask me, given the prices.

The pricing is just ridiculous - especially when a competing product in the nrl will have a game on elsewhere with tickets probably less than half the price (of course at only week 2 of their finals, not week 3).

The afl has to seriously reconsider its pricing for sydney finals if it wants to get the casual fans in that are needed to get a really big crowd on friday week.

I know people are calling for ANZ ticket pricing to be slashed, but there is financial information that ANZ Stadium, The Swans and the AFL know, that we don?t know.

More money might be made by maintaining Premium Pricing, getting 35,000 people and operating the Stadium at half capacity.
When you have huge parts of the Stadium not operating, you don?t need to pay event staff, catering staff and security guards to operate those sections. This may save significant costs and allow more money to be made.

If you halved the ticketing pricing and doubled the crowd, you would have the same ticketing revenue, but you would have to operate the stadium at full capacity and pay all the extra staff.

The AFL knows what makes money. If 35,000 people at Premium Pricing, at a half operating Stadium if the most effective profit model than we as a Swans Community should be supportive of this model.

There may be some brand damage by not hooking in more people to the excitement of AFL by slashing prices.

I would love to hear the views of Reggi and Barry to my above proposition.

[mcs]

I know people are calling for ANZ ticket pricing to be slashed, but there is financial information that ANZ Stadium, The Swans and the AFL know, that we don?t know.

More money might be made by maintaining Premium Pricing, getting 35,000 people and operating the Stadium at half capacity.
When you have huge parts of the Stadium not operating, you don?t need to pay event staff, catering staff and security guards to operate those sections. This may save significant costs and allow more money to be made.

If you halved the ticketing pricing and doubled the crowd, you would have the same ticketing revenue, but you would have to operate the stadium at full capacity and pay all the extra staff.

The AFL knows what makes money. If 35,000 people at Premium Pricing, at a half operating Stadium if the most effective profit model than we as a Swans Community should be supportive of this model.

There may be some brand damage by not hooking in more people to the excitement of AFL by slashing prices.

I would love to hear the views of Reggi and Barry to my above proposition.

It is clear that the AFL is using their monopoly power within this situation to eek out every dollar and clearly are setting prices at a level that they think maximises profits - like any monopolist with unlimited (or at least percieved unlimited) market power would do. I have no doubt there is significant truth in the approach you are saying. You have to remember where the $$$ from finals tickets go - it doesn't go to the Swans but to the AFL (unlike regular season matches).

Its a shame that is the approach the AFL is taking. Instead of pricing aggressively, and trying to get the casual fans in to watch the biggest (and generally the higher quality matches) of the season, it is only worried about lining its pockets as much as possible. Now I know revenue in finals is a key part of their overall model - but they also have a responsibility to try and grow the game, especially in the expansion markets where AFL is not the be all and end all of winter sport.

I don't think we should be supportive of such a model, as I don't think it is truly in the best interests of the game - which is what the AFL should really be focusing on.

Is the AFL solely a multimillion dollar business that is focused on making as much money as it can, or is it focused on growing and serving the game as it should?

My take is it should be tilted towards the second factor and not the first as it currently it.

The whole irony of the situation is that if the AFL aggressively set prices for finals, it is far more likely that the 'casual' fans that will get the big crowds will come along, watch some great footy, and in time become hooked on the sport - thus becoming members of the Swans (or in time the Giants), and in time, like us current Members, become more receptive to paying higher prices for tickets in finals. It will take time, but it will pay dividends.

Despite the extreme captalist view that 'More profit is automatically good', football should be about more than solely the bottom line. Its not like the AFL is exactly on struggle street and needing every single $ it can find.

[Conor_Dillon]

360 and Footy Classified last night both reporting that the prelim will definitely be at ANZ stadium and that an announcement on that is expected within the next couple of days.

[Jewels]

I know people are calling for ANZ ticket pricing to be slashed, but there is financial information that ANZ Stadium, The Swans and the AFL know, that we don?t know.

More money might be made by maintaining Premium Pricing, getting 35,000 people and operating the Stadium at half capacity.
When you have huge parts of the Stadium not operating, you don?t need to pay event staff, catering staff and security guards to operate those sections. This may save significant costs and allow more money to be made.

If you halved the ticketing pricing and doubled the crowd, you would have the same ticketing revenue, but you would have to operate the stadium at full capacity and pay all the extra staff.

The AFL knows what makes money. If 35,000 people at Premium Pricing, at a half operating Stadium if the most effective profit model than we as a Swans Community should be supportive of this model.

There may be some brand damage by not hooking in more people to the excitement of AFL by slashing prices.

I would love to hear the views of Reggi and Barry to my above proposition.

I think you are pretty much spot on here Matt but I don't think anybody is saying they should halve the ticket prices or anything that extreme, just reduce them by somewhere between10/20% to make them more attractive to the casual fan and I firmly believe that level 6 tix should be no more than $40.
This pricing structure would, in my opinion anyway, get bums on seats AND cover the stadium running costs.

[goods78]

More money might be made by maintaining Premium Pricing, getting 35,000 people and operating the Stadium at half capacity.
When you have huge parts of the Stadium not operating, you don?t need to pay event staff, catering staff and security guards to operate those sections. This may save significant costs and allow more money to be made.

I don't think that revenue from a ANZ PF is the driving force.....the AFL will try and gorge as much cash from a packed MCG as possible, and it does not want fans moaning about $20 tickets at ANZ v MCG. The AFL will try and keep a flexible band of prices, but I am guessing they will be pegged to MCG tickets prices.

[dimelb]

It is clear that the AFL is using their monopoly power within this situation to eek out every dollar and clearly are setting prices at a level that they think maximises profits - like any monopolist with unlimited (or at least percieved unlimited) market power would do. I have no doubt there is significant truth in the approach you are saying. You have to remember where the $$$ from finals tickets go - it doesn't go to the Swans but to the AFL (unlike regular season matches).

Its a shame that is the approach the AFL is taking. Instead of pricing aggressively, and trying to get the casual fans in to watch the biggest (and generally the higher quality matches) of the season, it is only worried about lining its pockets as much as possible. Now I know revenue in finals is a key part of their overall model - but they also have a responsibility to try and grow the game, especially in the expansion markets where AFL is not the be all and end all of winter sport.

I don't think we should be supportive of such a model, as I don't think it is truly in the best interests of the game - which is what the AFL should really be focusing on.

Is the AFL solely a multimillion dollar business that is focused on making as much money as it can, or is it focused on growing and serving the game as it should?

My take is it should be tilted towards the second factor and not the first as it currently it.

The whole irony of the situation is that if the AFL aggressively set prices for finals, it is far more likely that the 'casual' fans that will get the big crowds will come along, watch some great footy, and in time become hooked on the sport - thus becoming members of the Swans (or in time the Giants), and in time, like us current Members, become more receptive to paying higher prices for tickets in finals. It will take time, but it will pay dividends.

Despite the extreme captalist view that 'More profit is automatically good', football should be about more than solely the bottom line. Its not like the AFL is exactly on struggle street and needing every single $ it can find.

Pretty much as I see it too.

The irony is that the AFL is spending heaps on an advertising campaign (and they are very appealing ads) on footifying the nation. At ANZ, when they have a golden (I use the term deliberately) opportunity to spread the word, they reach for the dollar instead. A further irony is that if they thought medium term instead of short term they would actually achieve their goal sooner and the money would come with it. Terrible short term opportunistic thinking and bad business planning.

[Ampersand]

Yeah I think the AFL is seriously underestimating the number is casual "fair weather" fans (which, in my opinion, is a totally fine status - not everyone needs to be completely obsessed with the Swans) and especially families for whom even a regular season game is an expensive exercise.

The solution to getting those people along, as everyone has mentioned, is cheap Level 6 tickets.

[Kallias]

I know people are calling for ANZ ticket pricing to be slashed, but there is financial information that ANZ Stadium, The Swans and the AFL know, that we don?t know.

More money might be made by maintaining Premium Pricing, getting 35,000 people and operating the Stadium at half capacity.
When you have huge parts of the Stadium not operating, you don?t need to pay event staff, catering staff and security guards to operate those sections. This may save significant costs and allow more money to be made.

If you halved the ticketing pricing and doubled the crowd, you would have the same ticketing revenue, but you would have to operate the stadium at full capacity and pay all the extra staff.

The AFL knows what makes money. If 35,000 people at Premium Pricing, at a half operating Stadium if the most effective profit model than we as a Swans Community should be supportive of this model.

But double the crowd size means double the amount of food and beverages they sell - surely that would cover the costs of hiring extra staff, given the outrageous prices of everything out at ANZ.

[Jewels]

But double the crowd size means double the amount of food and beverages they sell - surely that would cover the costs of hiring extra staff, given the outrageous prices of everything out at ANZ.

No it doesn't, the food and beverage outlets are on a contract basis so whilst it might be a gold mine to the contract holder, it would mean zero to the stadiums bottom line.

[Mel_C]

Does anyone know whether the ticket prices for each category are the same for every ground? For instance for the Preliminary finals are the prices between the MCG and ANZ similar?

I found it interesting that there were 6,000 tickets left for the Freo Port game. You would think it would be a sell out... (could still be). I wonder if the prices for them were too expensive.