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(L-R) Josh Fraser of Collingwood, Joel Selwood of Geelong, Travis Cloke of Collingwood, Harry Taylor of Carlton, Joel Corey of Geelong, Shannon Cox of Collingwood, Gary Ablett of Geeong & Martin Clarke of Collingwood in action during the AFL Round 03 match between the Geelong Cats and the Collingwood Magpies at the MCG. Slattery Images
The Melbourne Cricket Ground, the paddock that grew. It’s iconic of both Melbourne and Australia, from hosting the US Army in WWII, to setting baseball and rugby attendance records at various times.
The Ground famously hosted the first Olympics in the Southern Hemisphere.
It’s main bread and butter though is Australian Football and cricket.
But, who owns it? How does it operate?
Some recent comments, from people such as Ben Buckley, Cockerill and Lynch, have indicated that there’s still some degree of ignorance out there.
So …
The MCG is built on crown land. It belongs to the Victorian people (government).
Under the terms of the Melbourne Cricket Ground Act – 1933 – the government appointed MCG Trust is responsible for the management of the venue.
The MCG Trust has contracted the MCC to manage the MCG and the existing contract runs to 2042.
Under the terms, the MCC has the exclusive rights to manage the MCG.
The MCC is a private club, incorporated under the Melbourne Cricket Club Act of 1974, and boasts the biggest membership (by far) of any sporting club in Australia.
The club was founded in 1838 when the population of the Port Phillip District was around 2000.
Why is all this important?
Simply, that any government funds towards the stadium go to the MCC. Not the AFL. The AFL is a tenant. The AFL and the MCC have often had drawn out disputes and negotiations around their contract.
Recently, the AFL managed to negotiate an extra return for it’s matches (given that the AFL has well exceeded it’s attendance target at the ground). The MCC trade off was to seek to extend the MCC-AFL contract by another 5 years to 2037.
Why such long terms? The simple reason is economics.
The current ground configuration is made up of the $142 million Great Southern Stand, and the $434 million Northern/Olympic/Ponsford Stands. So where did the money come from?
Well, only $77 million from any level of Government (State). And that’s a story in itself. The rest is MCC funds and debt.
They carry well over $300 million in debt. And the only reason they can ‘afford’ to carry that debt is the more than 2.5 million attendees each year for AFL at the ‘G.
It is effectively the house that the AFL paid for, but the MCC built and the Victorian Government owns.
And that leads to the story about the VFL, some land at Waverley and successive state governments.
But that’s for another day.
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