The variable ticket pricing system adopted by the Australian Football League (AFL) this year has not gone well with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
There have been arguable changes in the AFL member ticket pricing for different games and AFL fans were asked to pay more for the games that are in big demand.
A few of the general admission club members had to pay an extra amount of $39 to watch a high-profile game. This is an amount that they had to pay over and above their annual membership fee to the club.
This has not pleased the members at all.
Australian Rules Football is a very popular football sport in Australia and every year hundreds of thousands of club members watch games in the stadiums.
ACCC has given warning notices to certain clubs and the AFL. It looks like five clubs: Richmond, Hawthorn, Carlton, Collingwood and Geelong. ACCC says that the Australian Football League has not declared in advance that some of the games would cost more.
ACCC, the national consumer watchdog, feels that the AFL has to be honest with their fans and members about variable ticket prices for high profile games.
The ACCC said that consumers who are thinking of purchasing an AFL ticket or even buying a club membership must not be kept in the dark and must be given full information about the cost of the ticket as well as details on the cost and the benefits of club membership.
The announcement by AFL back in February that they were to introduce variable pricing looks to be misleading, according to ACCC chairman Rod Sims. He has just issued a warning notice to the clubs involved as well as the AFL and if the ACCC finds out that there are discrepancies in the pricing in the future, then AFL can face a penalty of up to $1.1 million in fine for each infringement of the law.
After the intervention of the ACCC and the various media reports in the print and the TV media, it looks like AFL has stopped collecting excess fees from its members from Round 15. In fact, a number of the AFL clubs have also made changes to their wordings.
The extra costs were mainly targeted at the AFL members and the general admission AFL club members who watched the reverse classified games. The additional cost of the game ticket varied between $7.50 and $39, depending on the membership.
The AFL has accepted the feedback given by the ACCC and that is the reason why you see AFL removing all the fully reserved classified games from the 15th round onwards.
AFL members and the ticket fans can now breathe a sigh of relief after the intervention of ACCC in this ticket pricing matter.
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