The AFL has revamped its grand final ticketing allocation for this weekend's showpiece event but fans shouldn't expect that to ease the battle for the hottest seats in town.

Grand final combatants Geelong and St Kilda will for the first time enjoy an even split of tickets, with about a combined 25,000 of the 100,000 on offer going to the two clubs.

Where tickets had been allocated on a pro-rata basis of members - the bigger the membership base the more tickets available - clubs now have an even spread.

The move comes after Geelong led a push last year for a greater allocation in wake of only 9,600 of its 25,000 members getting seats for the 2007 grand final.

While happy with the change, Cats executive Brian Cook says many members will still miss out.

The Cats' membership has now grown to 37,200, while the Saints boast 32,000.

"I think the AFL has improved in that area. The AFL has been industrious in trying to get more tickets to members," Cook said.

"It means there is more but it's never enough, particularly when you have 40,000 members in clubs."

Standard reserved seats are $161, although as few as 15,000 of those are available.

The AFL says it is on a hiding to nothing, with spokesman Patrick Keane admitting there will be people "extremely disappointed and angry to miss out".

But the room for sentiment is minimal. Grand final tickets are big business, as official documents show.

The AFL Ticket Scheme Proposal, seen by AAP, reports the finals generate the AFL $20 million in profit, with grand final tickets tipping in $9 million.

The grand final is a Declared Event under the provisions of the Sports Event Ticketing (Fair Access) Act, meaning the AFL is publicly required to declare how tickets are distributed.

This year's split includes more than 21,000 tickets going to AFL members, up to 23,000 to MCC members and guests, 7,500 to AFL sponsors, invitees and corporates, 5,000 to Etihad Stadium Medallion Club members while the 14 AFL clubs not playing on the big day are each given 1,000, down from 1,500 in 2001.

Clubs are urged by the AFL to sell these tickets at a "premium", many of which go to sponsors, to help boost their bottom line by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Sponsors can then on-sell these tickets provided they comply with certain regulations.

While these sponsors and the corporate types bankroll the league and its clubs, colourful AFL personality Sam Kekovich fears many "wouldn't even know who was even playing on Saturday".

Kekovich, always keen to stick up for the "Aussie battler", made his feelings clear last year at a $1,900 a ticket event at Punt Rd, the home of Richmond Football Club.

In a speech to those who had forked out to be at the "Centre Square" lunch, Kekovich turned on the "Melbourne spivocracy" whom he claims sit on their "fat posteriors in a marquee and wouldn't even know the way to the MCG without a tour guide".

He says nothing will change this year.

"The bottom-feeding financial bankers that have led us onto this stage of financial doom and gloom will once again be rewarded with their incompetence by getting the top end of the food chain when it comes to tickets," Kekovich said.

"Most of them wouldn't know where the ground is, most wouldn't even know who the respective combatants are.

"That's unfortunately the lay of the land."

Kekovich, who played in North Melbourne's breakthrough 1975 premiership and was named in the Kangaroos' team of the century, said club members deserved to share in more tickets.

"If you are a genuine member, they should have the bulk of the ground," he said.

"Those people have suffered through thick and thin but 95 per cent of them have no chance of going.

"If the AFL is fair dinkum, what they should do, instead of patting themselves on the back and saying what a good charitable organisation they are, they should just fork back about 40,000 tickets and distribute them amongst the two combatants."

The scarcity of tickets is a boon for scalpers, despite state government legislation aimed at eliminating this black market.

Thousands of tickets, when packaged with corporate entertainment, could be sold for more than $1,000 above their actual price.

And online auction website eBay already has sellers looking to cash in.

"Scalping still goes on but it certainly has been minimised, there is no doubt about that," Cook said.

"It's still about but there is a law against it now. You take your chances."

The AFL maintains that its ticketing process "is the world's best for an event of the scale of the 2009 AFL grand final".

But that's going to be of little comfort to broken-hearted Geelong and St Kilda members who miss out on seats.

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