Demand for tickets sees inaugural AFLW match between Essendon and Hawthorn moved to Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium

The first ever AFLW clash between Essendon and Hawthorn has been shifted to Melbourne’s 53,000-capacity Marvel Stadium after tickets for the original venue sold out within 24 hours.

The AFL advised that “unprecedented ticketing demands” for the match between the two expansion clubs resulted in the move from Port Melbourne’s 12,000-capacity ETU Stadium to the far larger Docklands venue.

With the Bombers and Hawks to join Port Adelaide and Sydney in making their AFLW debuts this season in the expanded 18 team competition, the round one clash between the traditional rivals on 27th August attracted particular interest and a campaign to ‘Move it to Marvel’.

The club-led pressure paid off after the initial allocation of tickets were quickly snapped up - reportedly inside just two hours of going on sale - with the AFL confirming the venue change late yesterday.

With a record number of AFLW memberships sold and high attendance rates following the end of last season, the venue change is reflective of the growing interest in the expanding women’s competition, which is heading into its seventh campaign.

Advising that the code had no choice but to make the move given the demand for tickets, AFL General Manager - Clubs, Finance and Broadcasting, Travis Auld stated “quite simply the fans of both clubs, and supporters of women’s footy in general, showed why we needed to move to a bigger venue by selling out the game so quickly.”

AFL’s General Manager of Women’s Football, Nicole Livingstone added “we know the appetite for AFLW is huge, but the strength of sales across all nine round one matches and having an inaugural game sell out in a day is amazing.

“To see two teams - and traditionally archrivals, no less - debut to a packed Marvel Stadium is the stuff dreams are made of.”

The AFL said it will monitor future ticket sales for games at ETU Stadium, with the league open to further venue changes if ticket sales warranted a bigger venue.

Livingstone told the AFLW website “we’re continuing to work with ETU or Port Melbourne Oval. It’s a great oval and facility, obviously it has broadcast lights as well there, but we want to make sure we’re doing the right thing for AFLW.

“We do have matches scheduled there between rounds two and four, so there are more matches there. We’d like to be able to utilise North Port Oval as well, but we’ll continue to monitor ticket sales. We want to make the most of AFLW, it’s a new time for us.”

Image: Marvel Stadium.