AFLW 2024 - Round 9 - Indigenous Round - Chat, game threads, injury lists, team lineups and more.
Just on your replacement games. So when we first moved 2 games to Ballarat we got replacement games in Melbourne for the first 3 years. After Covid, it disappeared, yet my membership went up. So the club did not lose any money they took the chance to take advantage of a situation. They were not "free" tickets as you state as they were part of my 11 game membership which included two replacement games. I paid for that right, which was then excluded for no reason given at the time. Like I said membership went up, so a big free kick for the club and a loss for members after covid which I thought was poor. Plenty of clubs still sell memberships with replacement games. We chose to take the cash, no other way around it.
Easiest way is to have to 2 QLD and 2 NSW teams play each other in round 1 and have the 4 VIC teams play each other as well.
This involves reimbursing the home team of those games, that's the point I'm trying to make.
The club is trying to raise revenue. Whether it's too expensive or fair or not can be debated, but supporting the Bulldogs still remains cheaper to get game access than basically every other team in the league.
But that was only ever a package the club elected to offer on the basis that they were willing to reimburse whatever home team hosted the Dogs that would have otherwise gotten the tickets at face value.
There never is inherently a right to one membership package over another, which is strange to me.
I agree that the club could have maybe communicated their reasoning a bit better. However, if there's no other reason than "it simply makes more financial sense to do so", I can understand why they wouldn't have, because the foundational logic is no different than explaining why they raise prices or whatever. The club intends to raise revenue and balance its books.
All of this is fair, but I don't see how the replacement game argument is any different than the overall view simply not wanting memberships to be too expensive. I don't disagree with that overall viewpoint - I would prefer memberships not to be too expensive overall too, clearly - but I still can't complain generally, as buying a membership is still cheaper than buying tickets at face value, allows me to be a voting member of the club (I ascribe value that above just the game access), is determined part of an overall value proposition that gives me access to 11 games in Victoria and not 10 + whatever away games (even at an increased cost/travel time for the 10th game, offsetting the lack of flights required for the 11th), priority ticketing access for finals, etc., gives more money to the club than to the AFL, and remains generally cheaper than basically all other AFL clubs in for similar value-for-money propositions. The fact that membership revenue and numbers continue to rise reflects that reality.
Would never happen because a large reason for the fact that opening round exists is to make it an "event" and activate the local and travelling fans of big clubs to make GC and GWS's home crowds seem less crap. They played Richmond and Collingwood, who provide the biggest away crowds in the competition, for a reason. It then unlocks more flexible fixturing and matchups for those two teams to maximise crowds and revenue for the rest of the season, with byes around Anzac, doubling up on other matchups, etc. etc.
Yeah I mean keep the BS fixture of Opening Round against VIC opponents but then in actual Round 1 the week after have the Lions play the Suns, Giants play the Swans and say Hawks/Pies and Cats/Bombers are some shit.
This just isn't true, in fact I'd argue that we're the most expensive club per GA match entry.
Isn't our 9 game GA membership $220?
That's not true because GA access doesn't practically enable you to actually access those games when the demand is there and they deem them fully ticketed. Which is often.
That's not true because GA access doesn't practically enable you to actually access those games when the demand is there and they deem them fully ticketed. Which is often.
In all of those games, you're only buying the free access to the game with the theoretical possibility that demand isn't so great, which is never the case (such as literally every Anzac Day etc. but an increasing number of games otherwise for those teams). Otherwise you have to pay to upgrade a seat, which you're not even guaranteed to be able to get access to, or just miss out.
Essendon has not had a GA accessible game in for years at Docklands. You're paying $330 for the effective right to then subsequently pay another $10 or $20 per game or (or whatever it is) whatever to get to go to a given game, which if it sells out quickly, you might even miss out on.
Never mind the fact that there's no real limit to these clubs selling reserved seats, so if they sell more reserved seat memberships, that limits the pool of potential seats that can be GA upgraded
For instance, this is from the Collingwood terms and conditions:
Swans clash deemed fully ticketed match
GA members must secure a reserved seat for round 23.www.essendonfc.com.au
I will concede that in some edge cases (e.g. Hawks' "flexi 10" membership of 10 GA tickets in any combination of games) is cheaper at $240. But it's effectively the same cost. And you can still in effect use a GA Dogs membership to every single home game we play at Docklands - you may have to rock up early to ensure you have a seat - but at least it's not "fully ticketed" and you're not paying an additional amount for the ticket.
That being said, for the sake of argument, lets consider:
- The dogs move two of its least in-demand games to Ballarat (often vs Gold Coast, or Adelaide). Those games are fundamentally a lower value proposition if played in Melbourne, through smaller crowds. The value to them is not proportionate to the value of attending a game vs. a Melbourne-based club, for instance, so losing these games is not of the same value if we theoretically "lost" a game in the 9 game membership if we played another Melbourne-based team in Ballarat, for some reason.
- Subsequently you're paying for the 9 most in-demand home games for the Dogs.
- You don't have to spend any extra effort or money to upgrade any of these games, which is an additional cost in time, money and effort.
- Very few people are actually getting value of their 10th and 11th game, because they're not attending the 10th and 11th game in Melbourne - they're doing other things. Therefore, while an additional 2 games for the Hawks cost $30 more, which the 11th game is effectively "free" proportionally, the fact that the Hawks can get this game is of minimal value - not the $30 value, at least - because the benefit of getting access to the 11th game is less than access to the 10th game, which is in turn less than the 9th game.
- This is why the Dogs sell 6 home games at $160 ($26.67 per ticket) but then sell the additional 3 games for only an increase in cost of $60 ($20 per game). The 7th, 8th and 9th most desirable game for a given fan is less worth to them, so the club can't continue the proportional increase in cost of $26.67 per game ticket and expect similar takeup in membership, so they offer a discount.
