MCG welcomes crowd of more than 100,000 fans for AFL grand final

The AFL Grand Final has again attracted a six figure with 100,013 fans packing the MCG yesterday afternoon to watch the Brisbane Lions emphatic triumph over the Sydney Swans,

Despite featuring two interstate teams, the match was a sell-out days before the first bounce, although the eventual attendance was slightly smaller compared to last year's figure of 100,024. That figure - the current official capacity of the MCG - had been its largest crowd in 50 years.

One of a small number of venues around the world with a capacity over 100,000, the variance in grand final numbers depends on attendance by members of the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC), which operates the venue.

For the AFL grand final, the MCC’s full members are allocated around 23,000 tickets and, with as many as 15,500 pre-purchased and reserved, there is also a walk-up component of around 6,000 unreserved and 1,000 standing room spaces.

However, if full members are not going to fill the entire allotment, MCC puts the call out to restricted members who wouldn’t normally be able to buy grand final tickets.

Explaining this, MCC General Manager, Josh Eltringham told Guardian Australia “we’ve got a lot of history, historical data on attendance rates and show rates and the arrival pattern, so we make a call usually around mid-morning if we’re going to open it up to restricted members.”

This level of responsiveness is a gesture to MCC restricted members, who pay up to $681 each year and are usually waiting decades to be given full membership.

Eltringham noted “for us, it’s important that we maximise that, and we can keep drip feeding people in until we’re comfortable with our own capacity.

“It’s a challenge, but it’s a good challenge to have.”

Some fans reported seeing empty seats at the sold out grand final last year, raising the question of whether patrons who have bought tickets but do not attend are included in the official tally.

The AFL has increased the number of tickets that go to club members from 34,000 to 35,000 this season, in a move that addresses a core complaint from long-suffering fans of competing clubs: that there just aren’t enough tickets available.

However, Brian Walsh, the AFL’s Manager of Corporate Affairs, said there will never be enough tickets to satisfy every fan, noting “it’s a problem every year ... we could sell 400,000 tickets on Saturday and probably still have demand.”

The total attendance at the MCG for major events in 2024, including NRL’s State of Origin, a football friendly and three Taylor Swift concerts, now sits at 3,579,641.

The record MCG crowd for a sporting event stands at 121,696 for the 1970 VFL Grand Final between Carlton and Collingwood, while its biggest ever attendance stands at 143,750 for a Billy Graham evangelistic crusade event in 1959.

It also holds the highest recorded crowd for a cricket match (93,013 at the 2015 World Cup Final), the largest crowd for a single day of Test cricket (91,112) and the record crowd for a domestic cricket match (80,883).

The MCG’s capacity features seating for 95,000 spectators with the remainder being standing room.

The capacity of the venue appears likely to increase in future years, with the Shane Warne Stand to potentially be rebuilt boosting capacity to 105,000.

Images: The Brisbane Lions celebrate their 2024 Premiership. Credi: AFL Photos.