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Sports fans in Australia are no mugs. That probably explains why there were more than 75,000 empty seats at the MCG on Saturday night.
The 23,000-odd fans who paid good money to watch Melbourne Victory ‘beat’ Juventus in a penalty shoot-out in the International Champions Cup deserve some recognition.
They are, evidently, dedicated football fans – the sort promoters take for granted when they sit down to set ticket prices that bear little in common with the real world the rest of us inhabit.
For most of us, paying $214.10 for a decent seat to watch the football – plus $6.10 for the privilege of printing the tickets at home – is a once-in-a-blue-moon extravagance.
And given that Juventus played in Australia as recently as 2014, it’s no surprise that dedicated football fans weren’t exactly bolting for their wallets as soon as the fixture was announced.
But then, it’s not season ticket holders promoters of such events are trying to appeal to.
The problem isn’t just that ticket prices for tournaments like the ICC are inordinately high, it’s also that promoters hope these are the only football matches you attend all year.
They couldn’t care less if you regularly attend Melbourne Victory or Melbourne City games, because they’re not even in the football business to begin with.
ICC fixtures in Australia are brought to you by TEG Live and TLA Worldwide, with the former calling itself “Australia’s leading integrated live entertainment solutions company” and the latter touting its ability to “create and deliver exclusive events within the sports landscape”.
TEG Live was once part of Nine Entertainment Co, which explains why the game was broadcast on Gem, while it also calls Ticketek one of its “assets” – no doubt helpful when you want to sell tickets to your own events.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with bringing major events like the ICC to Australia.
After all, more than 99,000 fans turned out last time the carnival was in town to see Real Madrid thump Manchester City at the MCG.
If the promoters reckon there’s a market for Juventus versus Tottenham Hotspur on a Tuesday night in Melbourne, so be it.
And if the tournament inspires certain fans to give the A-League a chance if they hadn’t already done so, then so much the better.
But the reality is that very few people who pay between $50 to $214 to watch the reserve teams of two European clubs go around in a glorified friendly are going to suddenly become rusted-on A-League fans on the back of the experience.
More likely is that the fans who do attend feel like they’re being ripped off, as Claire Siracusa’s editorial in The Age suggested last week.
I’m glad she wrote it, because despite the fact that Australian consumers are increasingly expected to turn a blind eye to questionable ticketing practises – I’ve already made my thoughts on Ticketmaster Resale known – I’m well aware that many folks aren’t particularly fond of the topic.
In fact, any time I write a piece like this, I usually get a message or two from concerned parties asking me to “work with them” or imploring me to take another look at their product.
Perhaps if I lived in the corporate world, where a night out at the football was spent in catered boxes eating exotic foods and drinking free beers, I might be inclined to view the ICC more positively.
It’s clear this is largely the market these entertainment promoters are trying to target.
But I don’t live in that world.
In fact, most of us live in a world where the high cost of living makes choices like whether to fork out hundreds of dollars to watch a friendly a serious discussion in our households.
When faced with that choice, is it really any wonder that so few fans turned up at the MCG on Saturday night?