The AFL Grand Final, which is the final premiership deciding match each season in the Australian Football League (AFL), has been played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Victoria, every year since 1902, except on seven occasions when the ground was unavailable or because of the COVID-19 pandemic in the case of the 2020 and 2021 Grand Finals, and it is presently contracted to be played there until 2059. Despite the long-term stability in its location, and its natural fit as the largest capacity stadium in both Melbourne and Australia, the ongoing use of the Melbourne Cricket Ground has been controversial throughout its history.
During the latter half of the 20th century, the location debate was driven by the Victorian Football League (or VFL, as the league was then known) seeking better commercial terms than it had at the Melbourne Cricket Ground from the Victorian Government and Melbourne Cricket Club – the ground's owners and operators respectively. This most notably resulted in an unsuccessful attempt to move the grand final to the VFL-owned VFL Park during the 1980s.
In the 1990s and into the 21st century, the VFL expanded interstate to become the AFL, while eight of the league's eighteen clubs have been based outside Victoria since 2012: a ninth non-Victorian club, Tasmania, will be admitted to the competition in 2028 as the league's 19th team. During this time, the location debate centred around the fairness of the grand final being staged permanently in Victoria after the league had spread nationally.
Early history
Early VFL Grand Finals were played at different neutral venues chosen by the league's match committee a week in advance. The selection of the venue could depend on the condition of the surface, as many grounds were being prepared for the cricket season in September; and at this time, and football was not allowed on the Melbourne Cricket Ground after mid-August, as the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) sought to protect its surface for interstate and international cricket matches. The portion of the gate and privileges for cricket club members demanded by grounds landlords was considered by the league's match committee in its annual choice of venue. Of the first four grand finals, two were played at St Kilda, one at East Melbourne and one at South Melbourne.
In 1902, the ban on late-season football was lifted, and the grand final was played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the first time. The MCC was unwilling to grant any concessions to the league regarding its members – full members would gain free entry to the game and privileges for ladies' tickets – but the VFL nevertheless rewarded the MCC for its assistance in the staging of interstate games that year. The ground was thereafter used for all grand finals; and, after 1908, all finals.
Ever since the game moved to the ground, the agreement continued to allow MCC members to gain free entry to the Grand Final if they had paid the following cricket season's membership fee, and the high number of non-paying spectators long became a sticking point in negotiations between the VFL and MCC. In 1929, the MCC began paying the VFL lump sums for the right to host the finals and grand final each year – similar to an agreement it already had with the Victorian Cricket Association for exclusive rights to stage international cricket – and the lump sum partly covered the cost of its members' entry. This began at £300/yr, then was increased to £500/yr in 1931, as part of a ten-year deal between the VFL, the MCC and MCG Trust (the Victorian Government-appointed body which acts as the ground's owner) to keep the grand final, and other finals, at the ground until 1940; a new sixteen-year agreement, from 1941 until 1956, followed it. The ground was not used for the grand final between 1942 and 1945, as it was required to be used by the Australian military after its entry into the Pacific campaign of World War II.
1950s: the opportunity of the Olympics
In the 1950s, the VFL continued to resent its reliance on the arrangement at the ground: the MCG Trust fixed admission prices, and the MCC continued to take a large portion of the gate, retain entry privileges for its members, and pay a £500/yr fee which had not increased since the 1930s.
In the early 1950s, the 1956 Melbourne Olympics offered the VFL its first opportunity to break from the deal. In early 1952, 's stadium at Princes Park was selected to be upgraded to become the Olympic Stadium. Different plans for its capacity ranged from 70,000 to 125,000, compared with the Melbourne Cricket Ground's then-capacity of about 88,000. With less hostile landlords, the VFL was widely expected to relocate the finals, including the grand final, to Princes Park under more favourable terms after the Olympics and its current grand final deal ended in 1956.
However, in the 1952 Victorian state election, held in December 1952, the Labor Party's John Cain, Sr. replaced the Country Party's John McDonald as Premier of Victoria. Within two months, seeking cost reductions on the Olympics, plans for an all-new stadium at Carlton were abandoned in favour of a much lower cost redevelopment of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which included the construction of the Olympic Stand and expansion of the ground's capacity to over 100,000. This left the Melbourne Cricket Ground as the only ground large enough to accommodate the Grand Final, giving the VFL little choice but to extend its arrangement at the ground.
The issue of the Melbourne Football Club having an unfair advantage by playing the grand final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground – which was its normal home ground – was noted after the club won five premierships in six years between 1955 and 1960. In 1961, one club delegate proposed in a league meeting that ground's goal posts be moved prior to each Melbourne finals match to temper its home ground advantage, an idea which drew wide laughter before being overwhelmingly voted down.
1970s–80s: VFL Park The VFL's next strategy to sever its reliance on the Melbourne Cricket Ground arrangement was the construction of VFL Park (later known as Waverley Park) in south-eastern suburb of Mulgrave. Privately owned by the VFL, the land was purchased in 1962, and the new ground was opened for games in 1970. The first phase of its construction resulted had a capacity of 75,000; and the league started scheduling finals matches at the venue in 1972 – but not the grand final. Original designs for VFL Park allowed for eventual expansion to a capacity of 157,000.
The VFL put its plans to move the grand final to VFL Park into motion in August 1981: proposing a $14 million upgrade to increase its capacity to 104,500, and announcing that it would be ready for the 1984 VFL Grand Final. However, the Victorian Government, now under premier John Cain, Jr., blocked the upgrade. Initially, it was blocked on the basis that the higher crowd required improved public facilities and transport in the surrounding area, which the VFL agreed to fund; but by the end of 1982, the government stated openly that it preferred and was committed to keeping the grand final at Melbourne Cricket Ground, and thus rejected VFL Park expansion plans. This put the VFL and government in open conflict.
By the 1980s, the VFL's motivation to stage the game at VFL Park was not simply a matter of finding a better commercial deal: it was a matter of financial survival. Rising costs, including player payments, were sending more than half of the league's clubs broke; was in the process of relocating to Sydney due to its financial troubles, and several other clubs (including , and ) were soon to be fighting for their futures. Staging the grand final at VFL Park was worth an estimated $3 million per year to the VFL and its clubs, as it could keep a higher proportion of the gate, and use grand final entry as an incentive to sell VFL Park memberships.
Losing the grand final would have been a similar financial negative for the MCC and Victorian government. Both had invested heavily in the ageing facilities at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and grand final entry was also a noted incentive for MCC memberships. Surveys of VFL fans generally favoured the game remaining at the centrally located Melbourne Cricket Ground, rather than VFL Park which was relatively distant in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne.
Negotiations took place throughout 1982 and 1983. The Victorian government committed to a $15 million upgrade of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, including light towers for night football and cricket. The VFL gave up on its grand expansion plans, and sought a smaller $5 million upgrade to bring the capacity to 84,000; but the Cain Jr. government continued to reject any upgrade plans, and even threatened to pass legislation requiring the grand final be played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
By late 1983, the parties began negotiating for a new arrangement at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The VFL sought to lease the entire ground for finals, with its 28,000 VFL Park full members granted exclusive use of MCC members' facilities. The MCC executive counteroffered to waive the $250,000 lease fee, and set aside the members' facilities and the Olympic Stand for shared use by MCC and VFL Park members. The counteroffer was rejected in a vote of the MCC members by a substantial 74% majority; but, the government, via the MCG Trust, was able to use its powers to compel the MCC to accept the deal. The deal was done in early 1984, and plans to move the 1984 Grand Final to VFL Park were abandoned. For the VFL, this outcome was still a $2.4 million per year improvement on the previous arrangement, as it still enabled the league to use grand final entry as an incentive for the purchase of VFL Park memberships.
The MCC and VFL maintained an uneasy relationship through the balance of the 1980s. Then, in 1988, concrete cancer was found in the Melbourne Cricket Ground's ageing Southern Stand. The MCC could not afford to completely rebuild it, so the VFL and MCC agreed to a joint funding arrangement. The brand new Great Southern Stand (later known as the Shane Warne Stand), with facilities befitting a paid membership, was completed in 1992, and half of it was reserved for exclusive use of VFL members during the football season; MCC members then regained exclusive use of their traditional members' facilities. With a direct financial stake in the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the VFL no longer had an incentive to move the grand final from the ground, permanently ending the grand final location debate as it related to VFL Park.
1990s to today: national expansion
In 2003, a long-term deal was initially locked in to secure the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the grand final every year until 2032. This was extended in 2009 to 2037, then in 2018 to 2057, with compensatory extensions to 2058 and 2059 after the COVID-19 pandemic forced the 2020 and 2021 matches out of the venue. As for all Grand Final venue agreements, they were three-party deals among the VFL/AFL, MCC and the Victorian government's MCG Trust.
When the initial long-term deals were put in place, the former Victorian Football League was in the process of expanding interstate, and was renamed the Australian Football League in 1990: since the admission of in 2012, eight of the league's eighteen clubs have been non-Victorian, and a ninth non-Victorian club, , will be admitted to the competition in 2028 as the league's 19th club.