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AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan says fans should take all of next week off in order to be part of the build-up to the grand final.
General public tickets for the AFL grand final have sold out within nine minutes, with league boss Gillon McLachlan urging fans to take next week off in order to give the premiership decider the build up it deserves.
A total of 10,250 tickets were made available for the general public to buy at 10am local time on Thursday. By 10.09am, it was all gone.
It was the busiest sale in Ticketmaster Australia's history with the online queue peaking at 180,000 fans.
That was five times bigger than last year's grand final.
An allotment of 24,000 tickets (12,000 per club) was made available to members of the Western Bulldogs and Melbourne earlier this week.
All of those tickets sold out in quick fashion, too.
The Optus Stadium capacity is 61,266.
Although the AFL scrapped the traditional grand-final parade in favour of a ticketed open training session at Optus Stadium on Friday week, the City of Perth will hold a scaled-down 'People's Parade'.
About 5000 people are expected to attend the September 24 parade, which will see supporters of both teams gather at either end of the Murray Street Mall.
McLachlan fully supports the concept and he wants fans to use the entire week to organise grand final-related events.
"What should be happening is stuff everywhere. That's what happens in Melbourne," McLachlan said.
"And next week - take the whole week off. I would. That's what everyone else does in Melbourne and just have a cracking time.
"It's been 150 years in the making to get a grand final here. I reckon take a week off, have lunches, go your hardest."
Last week, the WA government rushed through legislation making ticket scalping illegal in a bid to avoid people using the grand final as a money-making scheme.
Fans are still allowed to re-sell their tickets, but the mark-up will be restricted to a maximum of 10 per cent of the original price.
Any individual found breaking the law could be fined up to $20,000, with companies to be slugged up to $100,000.
