AFL Grand Final location debate
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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 AFL Grand Final; 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, and eight of the league's eighteen clubs have been based outside Victoria since 2012. 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.