After a year of free entry, fans must pay for selected games

FANS will have to buy tickets for the first time to watch several AFL Women’s games next year.

The league revealed yesterday that supporters would be asked to pay “a few dollars” to cover ticketing costs for big games at smaller venues such as Punt Rd Oval.

It would also charge $15 an adult for women’s games played before AFL pre-season fixtures, as well as a full AFL men’s entry fee for doubleheaders involving an AFL home-and-away match.

The competition committee decided against charging for all AFLW games in 2020, but could introduce a competitionwide entry fee by 2021.

AFL head of women’s football Nicole Livingstone said yesterday that tickets would be introduced next year for certain games because of “operational needs”.

“We will consider ticketing, operationally, Punt Road because only 5000 (people) fit in there,” Livingstone said.

“We want to make sure that people don’t miss out. We’ll keep them really minimal — they’ll only be a couple of dollars … but there are a couple of venues that we’ll have to ticket for operational purposes.”

THE AFL has also backed its controversial conference system to “stand the test of time”.

Livingstone said that since the system — widely slammed for its inequality last season — was recommended by the competition committee in April, no other fixture model had been considered for the competition, which will expand to 14 teams next year.

The committee will use a “snaking allocation”, which uses finishing positions from the previous year’s ladders to set the conferences in an attempt to achieve competitive balance. Last year’s premier

Adelaide and grand finalist Carlton sit in separate conferences but will meet in Round 4 in one of 11 cross-conference games.

“We are committed to conferences. When we looked at how to set the conferences in 2020, we also wanted something that was going to be able to stand the test of time for the next couple of years,” she said.