Anger after Adelaide Oval corporate boxes are being sold for 2020 Christmas Pageant
A plan to sell corporate boxes for the Christmas Pageant at Adelaide Oval has been dumped after it caused outrage, while the pageant director reveals how it happened.
SA News
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SA Premier Steven Marshall has intervened to halt the sale of corporate boxes at Adelaide Oval for next month’s Christmas Pageant.
It was revealed on Thursday corporate boxes and bar packages for the Christmas Pageant were being sold for thousands of dollars, while families and children had to enter a free ballot draw for tickets to see the event.
During Question Time, Mr Marshall told parliament he’d stopped the sale and the unsold tickets would go back to into the ballot.
He said he was “disappointed with the arrangements to date” but he would not reverse the boxes already sold.
All 18-seat corporate suites on offer at $2250 ($125 per person) had already sold out, as had the four-seat open air boxes for $420 ($105 per person).
Opposition treasury spokesman Stephen Mullighan said corporate packages were being sold with prime positions to view the pageant, which is presented by the State Government through Events South Australia, while thousands of children would miss out on seeing it.
“For every person who buys their way into a swish corporate box, a child will miss their chance to see Santa arrive in Adelaide,” Mr Mullighan said.
Remaining corporate packages were removed from Adelaide Oval’s online event sales page this afternoon.
Until Mr Marshall said he had intervened, tables of 10 were still available in the Ian McLachlan Room and Magarey Room for $1150 ($115 pp), and outdoor boxes for five people at $525. Two tickets in the Bodyline Bar were $230.
All packages included food, beer, wine and soft drinks, some with a two-hour limit.
Pageant director Brian Gilbertson said the sale of corporate boxes had been part of the conditions of using Adelaide Oval as a venue, and was a small trade-off for the large increase in overall numbers who could attend.
Under COVID-19 restrictions, street gatherings to view the parade would have been severely limited.
“We were down to a potential small audience of delivering Father Christmas to maybe 5000 to 7000 (people),” Mr Gilbertson said.
“We wanted to maximise that as best we could.
“There’s a structure within Adelaide Oval which includes corporate boxes but our main interest was that we would get over 20,000 in there, apart from the corporate boxes – which is some 15,000 more than we would get out on the streets.”
Corporate box allocations were expected to total around 3000 seats, while 22,000 tickets are expected to be available through the free ballot.
“The pageant is about fairness, and what we (will) see in the Oval is over 20,000 general admission seats in a ballot that is the fairest distribution of those particular seats,” Mr Gilbertson said.
At a press conference earlier today for Friday’s AFL preliminary final, Adelaide Oval Stadium Management Authority chief executive Andrew Daniels said it was the first he’d heard about the sale of corporate boxes and ticket packages for the Christmas Pageant.
“I’m not sure what the arrangements are,” Mr Daniels said.
“We have approval for a 50 per cent capacity, which includes obviously both seated and corporate, but I can’t comment on what the current selling or giving out of those tickets are.”
Up to 25,000 people will be able to attend Adelaide Oval for the twilight Christmas Pageant event on November 14, which organisers have said would be a theatrical production complete with singing and dancing.
More than 300,000 children and families usually line the city streets of Adelaide on a Saturday morning for the pageant, which has been held each year since 1933, except from 1941-44 during World War II.
This year’s pageant was moved to Adelaide Oval to enable a COVID-safe event, and will also be broadcast live on Channel 9.