A one-way ticket to frustration
In my role as contributing editor of australianfootball.com, I'm in a privileged position. As a holder of an AFL media pass, I can attend any AFL match in any week at any venue, simply by waving that pass by the gate attendant. Once through I can head up to the media rooms and watch the game in comfort, or get a fan's-eye view from various standing-room vantage points.
So when the grumblings of fans about the AFL's new pricing structure began to emerge earlier this season, I understood the issues that were being raised but was not directly affected by them – at least not until round seven. Though I possess an AFL media pass, I am also a proud, card-carrying Western Bulldogs member. As a rule when I attend Doggies' games I'll use my membership ticket rather than the media pass to get into the ground. In round seven the Dogs played "away" to Essendon at Etihad Stadium and I was informed by the Western Bulldogs website that if I was to attend as an "away" member (my membership nominally gets me into all home games and all away games played in Melbourne), I would have to obtain a reserved seat via Ticketmaster.
Of course I didn't have to do that. I could have simply swiped my media pass on the day and met up with my fellow Dogs fans on the inside. Our routine is to stand on the wing on level one anyway, so getting a seat was not a concern. But I decided I'd get one, just to the test the process out. It would probably cost me something like a $5 booking fee but I thought it was worth a small charge like that to ensure I "wouldn't lose touch with the ordinary fan".
I was partly joking to myself when I used that phrase - "lose touch with the ordinary fan" - but in hindsight, it's just as well I did go through with the exercise, because I realised I probably would have been losing touch without having done so.
The easiest way to obtain my reserved seat ticket was to follow the link from the Western Bulldogs website through to the Ticketmaster site, enter my membership number, select the ticket I wanted, pay and print the ticket off.
Following those steps, the first shock I received was to discover that the booking fee was not five dollars but $8.50. The concept of a booking fee has always made my blood boil a bit. Firstly, why can't such a fee be absorbed into the ticket price? In this case, there was a logical answer to that question. To obtain my ticket, even though I already had technically paid to get into this game via my away membership payment, there was obviously a certain amounting of "transacting" do be done and it's not unreasonable to charge for this. But $8.50? Surely that's gratuitous. Even allowing for a profit margin, is $8.50 really a fair and reasonable price for such a transaction?
I certainly have my doubts, but I grudgingly accepted that "that's just how things are" and continued. I was given a choice of collecting a ticket from Etihad Stadium or printing my own. I chose the easiest option for me - and presumably for Ticketmaster - and selected "Print your own e-ticket". It was at this juncture that my blood went beyond boiling point. To print my own ticket, using my own printer, my own paper and my own ink, Ticketmaster was to charge me a “handling” fee. Not only would they be doing so, but that “handling” fee would be seven dollars. This fee was on top of the $8.50 booking fee. That's a total of $15.50 I would be paying for the privilege of getting a reserved seat at an event I had in theory already paid to get into.
I don't consider myself to be an unreasonable person. My political leanings might be described by some as leaning to the left but I understand and accept that we operate in a society that is dictated in many ways by market forces and embraces the concept of 'user pays'. However, I simply cannot comprehend how me printing my own ticket can trigger a "handling" fee. A handling refund, certainly - because I was the one doing the handling! Even if, by some twisted logic that escapes me, that process could constitute handling by Ticketmaster, how is the figure of $7.00 reached? Surely the cost of any "handling" they had done was dealt with in the booking fee.
The irony here (if I understand Ticketmaster's system correctly) is that, had I chosen to collect the ticket at Etihad Stadium - an act that would have involved Ticketmaster or Etihad Stadium staff actually handling the ticket - I would not have been charged a handling fee! What's the phrase that young people use today? "Go figure!"
There are many layers to this issue that cause me incredible frustration. The cost and justification for the booking and handling fees are two of them. But the question I ask is, why is this whole process even necessary in the first place? This was a match between 12th and 15th on the ladder. The home side, Essendon, had lost its last three games, and the visitors their last two. Hardly a blockbuster and the capacity of 51,000 was never going to be under threat. The official attendance was 33,289. (This is a figure that I argue would have been somewhat higher - although nowhere near capacity - had it not been listed as a 'ticketed' game. I know at least one Bulldogs member who chose not to go because they "couldn't be bothered with the ticketing rigmarole".)
So why designate this match as a 'ticketed' game? There is theoretical justification. For several seasons now, Essendon, a strongly supported team, has made a blanket decision each season to designate all of its home games as 'ticketed'. On the face of it, that does not seem to be an unreasonable option. The club has just under 60,000 members and if the majority of these were to turn up to all home games, allocated seating would be a necessity. But that is not the reality. Few of Essendon's recent home matches have gone close to reaching capacity and, in the aftermath of the 'peptide affair', crowd numbers have actually been dropping.
In light of those facts, perhaps it's time for Essendon to reconsider that blanket policy. The following questions were submitted to the club's Head of Communications and the PR & Media Coordinator on May 21:
All EFC home games at Etihad have been fully ticketed for several seasons now. Is that policy reviewed before the beginning of each season?
Was consideration given prior to the 2014 season to altering this blanket policy?
Given that some of this year's crowd figures at some of Essendon's home games (for example 36,041 v St Kilda and 33,289 v Western Bulldogs) have been well short of capacity, will consideration be given to reviewing the policy in future?
At the time of publishing this article, no response had been received.
There may well be a good reason to assign all Essendon home games the status of 'ticketed'. It's difficult to think of one in light of current attendances but, if there is, then why not include the associated costs in the membership package? That way, fans – in particular fans of the visiting clubs such as myself - would not get an unexpected, nasty surprise when booking a ticket.
This might come across as somewhat of a trivial argument; $15.50 may not seem like a lot of money to many people. But it is to some. An upheaval to my personal family circumstances in recent years has indeed dictated that I must now carefully consider such a seemingly small cost when I manage my financial affairs. I am by no means alone in having to manage money so carefully.
Ticketmaster has also been contacted with a request to explain how the $8.50 booking fee is arrived at, how it is possible to charge an additional handling fee and again, how that charge of $7.00 is reached.
With answers not forthcoming, I remain one of the many fans disillusioned with the AFL's current pricing structure (although in my particular case, the concerns relate more directly to the associated fees rather than the actual ticket price). The AFL Fans Association is championing the cause of those fans, with the ACCC investigating a formal complaint from it about the league's ticket pricing regime. Confronted by this news, the AFL's outgoing CEO, Andrew Demetriou, surprisingly chose to 'play the man, not the ball', labelling the action as a "bit of a stunt by [AFLPA president Brian] Clarke" in an interview on Radio 3AW.
Whatever Demetriou's beef with Clarke, a one-time employee of AFL Queensland, I believe he and his replacement Gillon McLachlan, would do well to look beyond it and recognise that there are many fans out there who are not happy to be charged unreasonable prices for attending a game of football or - if the prices and associated fees are reasonable - would appreciate an adequate explanation of how they are so.
For now, I will be thankful for one of the few advantages of being a supporter of a team with a low membership base - my Bulldogs will not be playing in any further 'ticketed' games this year!
Comments
Roland Frasca 5 June 2014
The frustrations have finally been put to print and thousands of other fans share your sentiments.
I'm not certain if this is a common gripe amongst low membership base clubs (I'm a North Melbourne supporter), however Andrew, I too am completely 'flabbergasted' by the fee upon fee pyramid being applied to our membership ticketing - membership which is meant to appease:
a) a supporter's conscience in granting loyalty and funding to the club and b) a reassurance that you will be able to watch your team play (subject to capacity of course)
It is a mystery and always will be on how the pricing of such magnitude are 'manufactured' by the ticketing provider, and you and everybody knows that the $5.50 answer will never be broken down and justified, especially not by Ticketmaster or the number of middle-men who each have their claw within the booking-fee jar.
The further $7.00 handling fee - hmm perhaps this counts for a number of factors and any media communications officer from the ticketing provider may bring up factors such as to run such a large and complicated website, such as the one we are focused on in this article, is very expensive when you consider the vast array of IT required to churn and process tens of thousands of ticket sales (and handling and booking fees) on a daily basis.
I agree, as someone who is involved in the IT industry, the maintaining of such a beast of a web-site would have the usual overheads, including the slice of revenue (or component of any additional fee) it must pay it's many affiliated outlets, exorbitant data centre (or cloud infrastructure fees) and IT staff including developers and architects. Putting that all that aside, must I empathise for all the fee-charging ringlets involved that we must cover for all this with our booking-fees?
The 'value for money' ideology once affiliated with our great game can only now be captured now at the local footy ground or at our week-end junior games which seem such a vast world away from the glamour and "corporatized" television driven vehicle we are now left to fill-up with our 'fee petrol' fees (even when we thought we had earned our "four-cent discount" with the payment of our club memberships).
I consider the fees only to accommodate three things: 1) To ensure a guaranteed steady share-price for the investor (to reflect a wise and savvy bunch of board members doing good for the investor) 2) To guarantee a board-member a first class trip to Europe 3) To pay a bonus (not a salary) and it won't be to anybody within the the ticketing provider's IT department!
I am being quite facetious and 'far-fetched' to explain the 'money-for-jam' type fees that most large corporations believe they are entitled charge their customers but how farcical and 'far-fetched' is it becoming to think that your initial investment to watch your team play may incur further charges!
Sadly, I don't think that Gillon McLachlan will be able to influence or initiate any type of change with this aspect of the ticketing system. This is simply because of deals - deals which are already set in stone and can be tarnished with some form of litigation by any of the parties involved should they even be considered to be 're-negotiated'.
I only worry that because clubs like yours and mine will rarely (if they ever will) enforce a 'ticketed-game' because of the likelihood of club member numbers exceeding stadium capacity. The viability and future of similar placed clubs will be dictated soley by ratings because of TV 'deals' and ticketing and stadium 'deals' which will demand more from the fan to dig deeper into their pockets to meet the corporations' weekly profitable targets. It will lead to the demise of crowd numbers further due to the "un-affordability " and a subsequent Fitzroy type fate simply because the board members would like to sustain something in their lifestyles.
On the other 'bright-side' for teams like ours, a ticketed game will never be an asterisk clause in our membership conditions - and like the fees which are charged for these ticketed games that asterisk can mean anything (subject to change without notice or should it read subject to change - because we can!)
"A pie and a light beer - and I'd like to stand and watch thanks." Perhaps a handling fee for both the pie and beer will incur a 'legitimate' handling fee.
Roland -fee'ed up!
Julien Peter Benney 5 June 2014
The AFL’s new pricing structure has, in fact, been inevitable for an extremely long time – since well before any national competition became possible.
Once Hawthorn, Melbourne and St. Kilda shed vestiges of amateurism in the 1950s, the setting of ticket prices by the AFL became an archaic practice with very few benefits except for fans of the most popular clubs. Even for those people, the benefits were only very short-term because it meant that poor quality suburban grounds were never maintained at a reasonable level. By 1976, it was clear that grounds like Arden Street and Windy Hill were totally unsuitable for modern football – yet no effort was made to even recognise that ticket price controls, along with government health regulations, were the cause of the poor quality of these grounds.
Instead, aided by the demands to television, the AFL simply “rationalised” out all the suburban grounds – aided by the fact that except at Moorabbin, installing lights at these suburban grounds for larger television audiences was and is politically out of the question. That such a system is very unfair to the less well-supported clubs I have no doubts. Clubs like St. Kilda and the Bulldogs, were they able, would certainly prefer (and so might many supporters) to play on a ground with lower overheads than Docklands – and they would gain the “home ground advantage” the League has taken away from all but Geelong and the interstate clubs.
If it were clubs and not the AFL who were setting ticket prices – as happens in all other major sports leagues worldwide – clubs would be able and required to be much more innovative about attracting supporters.this would bring top-level football outside of television to a much wider section of Australia’s culture, and produce a much fairer competition than the AFL has had since ground rationalisation began – even since before it.
MsKatieKatieKay Kay 5 June 2014
I have shared your frustrations for a number of years now. I have watched as legitimate price signals have descended into out and out price gouging. When I started attending matches regularly about 7 years ago, there was usually at least one option that had no handling fee, eg collection from the venue on the day or home printing. I think I even recall an early time when certain options, such as home printing in the week of the game, would not attract any fees on top of memberships.
Each year, the option changed until finally we reached the current situation of booking fees and handling fees for all games. For AFL members the situation reached particularly farcical levels this year. AFL members can no longer get a reserve seat in the AFL reserve at Docklands on the day free of charge. Any reserve ticket attracts the fee of $7.50. This has been balanced by some games being allocated as "walk up" for AFL reserve, where AFL members only need to show their membership ticket and they can access the reserve if there's spare capacity.
However, the process for deciding which games will be "walk up" seems to be as opaque as the process for calculating the handling fee. At the recent Dogs v Freo game, a category "C" game according to the AFL, the AFL Reserve could be accessed only with a reserve ticket! There was some public space that members could access, without a ticket, but it was on opposition 50m line - not the same as sitting on the wing. It was quite ridiculous to be told to sit on level 3 at a game that didn't attract even 15,000 people.
I agree that the ticketing arrangements affect crowd numbers. For me, it's not the price so much (although it really annoys me and I avoid it if possible), but the inconvenience and uncertainty. The complexity of ticketing turns a "hey, let's go to the footy this afternoon" to a military exercise requiring consideration of more rules than it takes to complete my tax return. It's even more impossible with friends with different memberships. The result is that, if it's a ticketed game, I may still go, but I don't invite anyone to come with me.
I have suggested to the AFL that they have an interactive tool/calculator on the AFL website that allows people to input what game they want to go to, where they want to sit, what membership types the purchasers have and then the tool can calculate where they can sit together and how much it will cost. If the AFL expects supporters to figure this stuff out, surely they can get a programmer to translate it into computer code. Naturally, I've had no response from the AFL to my suggestion.
The AFlL should take heed of the English Premier League, where the average age of supporters has increased by 10 years over the past 10 years, ie the supporter group has stayed stagnant and just aged because there are no young people joining. Why aren't they joining? Because high ticket prices have made soccer an unaffordable family outing and families are introducing kids to other, cheaper sports, with which the kids are sticking as they get older and become adults.
MsKatieKatieKay Kay 6 June 2014
Further to my earlier comment, I received the following response to my suggestion of the interactive tool:
The interactive tool is not something we can build into our website format. This being said, I am happy to pass on your feedback to our communications coordinator for further discussion.
Andrew Gigacz 6 June 2014
Thanks to all of you for your thoughtful and expansive feedback. There certainly seem to be quite a few people out there who are frustrated with several aspects of the ticketing system, if not purely the price of the ticket itself. KatieKatieKay, I think your idea of a calculator is a good one, although it seems a shame that such a tool is necessary in the first place. I'm a little surprised by the response "not something we can build into our website format" - although I probably shouldn't be. I have no doubt that such a tool could be built into all but the simplest of website formats.
Sadly I would not expect any action on this issue from the AFL unless the disenchantment amongst the fans reaches a "tipping point". I don't think we are quite there yet, but your feedback is very encouraging nonetheless.
Gigs (Andrew Gigacz)
Veronica Applegate 7 June 2014
I liked your article as it said the same things that I was thinking.
I went to the cats blues game last night and had to wait 40 minutes in the queue outside gate 6 to get a ticket for a seat at the game. I thought it was unreasonable to haveto wait so long and pay a $8.50 fee for the "priveledge" of doing so. I have already paid my membership at the start of the year and in other years could have just scanned my membership and gone in.
Waiting so long meant I missed the start of the game, but what was so frustrating was seeing the number of empty seats. All this could have been avoided if the game was general admission rather than a fully seated game. The AFL is keen to upgrade games to A reserve games but not so keen to downgrade. The AFL would have known at the start of the week the trend in ticket sales and could have said to the fans "we want you to come to the footy", Just turn up and watch the game. Instead it seems to say "stay away and watch it on TV".
Watching Sam Pang's Brazil on TV earlier in the week showed what happens if ticket prices becomes too high. Stadiums are virtually empty as fans are not able or want to attend games
Smokie Dawson 9 June 2014
Gigs, The practice of charging booking fees, handling fees and/or processing fees is nothing less than insidious. This is not "user-pays", it is pur price-gouging, nothing more nothing less. And to me, the fact that you would not have had to pay a handling fee had you picked up the ticket at Etihad reveals all.
Re Demetriou: he has a nasty history of ocassionally playing the man and not the ball.
Cheers Smokie.
Mike Goodwin 14 September 2014
I'm coming to this one late, but well said! The level of price-gouging on display these days is atrocious. Just this week, I registered on Ticketek for the Grand Final ticket ballot, for myself and another Hawks member. The handling/admin/gouging fee: $5.50. Per ticket! A fee, I hasten to add, that does not get refunded to you if your team loses their Preliminary Final. Let's say that less than half of Hawthorn's 68,ooo members register for the GF ticket ballot; 30,000 maybe. That's $165,000! For just ONE of the four Prelim teams! I don't think I'd be too far off saying Ticketek will take in over half-a-million dollars, just on ballot registrations. Truly appalling.
Login to leave a comment.