Camping out for four nights in the CBD or trying your luck in a virtual ballot: How to get an AFL grand final ticket

Few people can claim to have a better track record at obtaining AFL grand final tickets than Chris Walkley, who’s never missed out on being there for the big dance, COVID years excepted, in the past 15 years.

But then few people have worked as hard for access: Walkley camps outside the Ticketek office on Exhibition Street for days at a time to get a position near the front of the queue of AFL members and all but guarantee tickets for his whole family.

This masthead spoke to the diehard Brisbane Lions fan this time last year, when he successfully scored tickets once more, this time to see his Lions win the premiership. This year he followed a now familiar routine – set up his swag at 5am on Thursday before the preliminary final, where he’s remained since, except to go to his work at a school and for the Lions’ preliminary final. This year, that was a win over Collingwood on Saturday night, when friends and family took his place.

Walkley says the 18-hour shifts in line and cold nights in the CBD are worth it to secure a seat and avoid the rigmarole of trying to get tickets online.

“This morning and last night is as cold as it’s been, it’s been horrendous,” Walkley said. “But the swag keeps the wind out. I have a good night’s sleep … I generally get like six or seven pretty good hours.”

Walkley said it is “still better than going online” because he can’t be affected by sluggish internet or technical problems.

A few dozen people behind Walkley in the line is Joseph Merca, a Geelong fan who arrived in the queue at 5am Monday. He’s been doing it for about 35 years, only missing out, like Walkley, during the COVID years when the deciders went interstate, and for the 2017 grand final when Richmond beat Adelaide and Port Adelaide’s maiden premiership against Brisbane in 2004.

He said the atmosphere in line was jovial, with everyone speaking to each other. He also likes knowing he’s “virtually guaranteed” a ticket by being physically at the door of Ticketek.

Other AFL fans, less adept at balancing their schedules or braving cold nights to get tickets instead join virtual queues. Let’s take a look at the process involved for most of those trying to get tickets and some of the hidden costs they’ve incurred along the way.

How much do grand final tickets cost?

The cheapest reserved seat available to club members costs $195, ranging up to the most expensive at $515. On average, those prices are up about 4 per cent on last year.

Who gets the tickets?

The official capacity of the MCG is 100,024. The official stats show the crowd was within a whisker of that mark for last year’s grand final and full to the last person in both 2022 and 2023. Even the two preliminary final crowds at the weekend were pretty close to capacity – the Geelong v Hawthorn game on Friday night drew an eye-popping crowd (99,567).

A little more than a third (35,000) of the seats and standing room spaces available for the grand final will be sold to the members of the competing clubs – 17,500 each. AFL and Melbourne Cricket Club members split a slightly larger sum of tickets, and the balance goes to corporates.

AFL and MCC members spend years on the waiting list before they gain the right to buy grand final tickets. While they offer a wide variety of membership options, it typically costs at least $700 a year to maintain a membership that provides the opportunity of buying a grand final ticket.

How do club members get tickets?

Geelong and the Brisbane Lions will distribute their allocation of 17,500 tickets to members by a ballot – an automated electronic draw conducted by Ticketek this weekend.

Geelong members were informed on Saturday by Ticketek that the ballot was about to be conducted that day and that they needed to have sufficient money in their bank account to pay for the tickets they had requested.

It costs $6 per membership to enter the ballot, so registering is a bit like buying a ticket in a raffle. The only difference is that instead of winning the meat tray at your local pub, in this raffle the prize is the opportunity to buy a grand final ticket. But the ballot is not quite as random as a raffle, and not all memberships are created equal.

Who enters the ballot?

The days of club members sleeping rough outside their local BASS outlet for the chance to buy a grand final ticket are long gone.

For logistical reasons, Ticketek (formerly BASS) invited the eligible members of all four clubs who make the preliminary final to register for the ballot. But only the Cats and Lions members now go in the ballots to get tickets for the grand final – Hawthorn and Collingwood members blew their money as soon as their teams lost their respective preliminary finals.

The four preliminary final clubs all recorded their all-time membership record in 2025. Between them, they have a combined membership base of almost 370,000, a large number of whom were eligible to enter the ballot.

Collingwood and Geelong members registered for the ballot in the days after their teams’ qualifying final wins booked them a preliminary final berth, while fans of the Lions and Hawks got their chance on Wednesday last week.

Does everyone have equal chance in the ballot?

No. While most club members have access to the ballot, each club has thousands of members who’ve paid extra to guarantee themselves the chance to buy a grand final ticket if their team makes the grand final.

Those members who paid extra still had to enter the ballot – and pay to do so – and their tickets will come from their club’s allocation of 17,500.

Most clubs call this guarantee “priority one” access to a grand final ticket in their membership propaganda. Each club has their own suite of membership products with varying methods of providing access to grand final tickets.

Priority one access is typically attached to the more expensive membership offerings, such as social club memberships, but clubs also make it possible for standard members to purchase an add-on during the season.

As an example, Geelong members could fork out $240 for the “premiership membership add-on”. Collingwood had members who paid an additional $150 for a “social club add-on” which assured them of a grand final ticket, just like Adelaide’s $150 “grand final guarantee”. But, of course, those rights were forfeited when their clubs bowed out of the finals race.

So how many tickets are distributed randomly in the ballot?

We’d like to tell you. But the clubs and the AFL keep the numbers a closely guarded secret. We approached all four preliminary final clubs, and those who responded told this masthead that they put a cap on priority-one memberships. But none would say what that cap is, and the AFL was also careful not to release numbers, past or present, on ballot registrations.

The Brisbane Lions noted some of their members with priority one access would be unable to travel interstate for the grand final, and said their allocation was well below capacity, meaning members with lesser access will have a chance of getting tickets in the ballot.

How do members find out if they’ve been successful in the ballot?

The first thing they’ll notice is Ticketek withdrawing money from their nominated bank account. That has already started happening this weekend. Geelong members were told on Saturday that the ballot was about to be conducted and that, if they were successful, money would be withdrawn from their nominated bank account later that day, which is what happened. Those who missed out in the ballot have, no doubt, been checking their account balance all weekend for the first sign of a hefty withdrawal. Their next best bet for watching the game might be to visit the free live site being established on Geelong’s Eastern Beach waterfront on Saturday by the City of Greater Geelong.

How much money the lucky members pay for their tickets is largely out of their control – that was determined by what seats were randomly allocated to them in the ballot.

The price of hope is big business

As the AFL itself has noted, it “could sell out the MCG four times over” on grand final day, and the preliminary final crowds at the weekend were further proof of Victoria’s appetite for football in September.

That huge demand means diehard footy fans fork out huge sums for the chance to be there in person when their team plays in the decider. And in most cases, they happily do so if it means they might get to see their team lift the premiership cup in person.

An entry-level seat might cost $195 – comparable to a major concert ticket – but the true cost of purchasing that ticket is worth at least double that, for those who’ve paid for the guaranteed right to purchase it. And those who haven’t paid to secure a ticket are up against more and more members, who’ve all paid for the hope of their number coming up in the ballot.

Even the seemingly modest $6 admin fee paid by every member who entered the ballot adds up. Consider this: if just 45 per cent of Collingwood, Geelong, Brisbane Lions and Hawthorn members registered for this year’s ballot, they will have paid $1 million in administration fees alone.

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