Which NZ-Australia Test ticket is the best buy?

General Admission or Reserve — the real 3 tiers, and how they translate at each ground

Cricket Australia Test tickets run on two real public tiers — General Admission and Reserved/Reserve Grandstand seating — with a third, genuinely separate corporate-hospitality channel sitting above both (see the Luxury Guide). There's no standard third public "suite" tier the way some other sports sell one. What changes from ground to ground isn't the tier structure itself, it's what each tier actually buys you — a grass bank at one ground is a completely different experience from a grass bank at another.

The 3 real tiers

Your NZ-Australia Series Ticket Guide

The free presale membership that gets you ahead of the crowd for Boxing Day and the Pink Test

A four-Test tour spread across four cities is a genuinely different buying problem from a single match, and most fans only work this out after the good seats for the marquee days are gone. The presale mechanism is the part almost nobody outside Australia knows to look for — a free membership that exists purely to move you ahead of the general public sale window, with no catch beyond signing up early enough. Knowing that Boxing Day and the Sydney Test carry real pricing premiums over the same match's back end, and that GA tickets get harder to convert into a good seat the bigger the crowd gets, is the difference between planning this trip around guesswork and planning it around how Australian cricket ticketing actually works.

Worth knowing

• —Join CricketPlus (free, at cricket.com.au/cricketplus) as early as possible before the series goes on sale — presale access and the best available pricing are only extended to members with a valid access code, and each code covers up to 19 tickets per match.
• —If you're choosing which single day of a Test to prioritise on a budget, day four or five is genuinely cheaper than day one or two of the same match — pricing follows day-by-day demand, not a flat per-Test rate.

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Ground-by-ground seating comparisons

Melbourne and Adelaide are the two grounds where where you sit genuinely changes the day: the MCG is simply the largest of the four, so the gap between a good seat and a bad one is bigger than anywhere else on this tour; Adelaide Oval is the only ground with a real fork in the decision itself, a formal reserved stand against the Hill's grass mound. Perth Stadium and the SCG don't have that same split, so General Admission versus Reserve above already covers what you need to know for those two.

Where to Sit: MCG Boxing Day Comparison

Why 'Southern Stand' isn't one seat, and why day four is the smarter buy than day one

The mistake most first-time MCG visitors make is treating "reserved seating" as a single tier, when in practice a Southern Stand upper-level ticket and a Ponsford Stand lower-level ticket can be the same nominal price category and completely different experiences of the same match. Boxing Day is a fixture where knowing this actually changes what you book, not just where you happen to sit: day one sells out fast and gives you little control over placement, while days four and five open up real choice at a lower price, on a pitch that's usually turning enough by then to produce properly contested cricket. The stadium is built at a scale where the wrong seat genuinely costs you the ability to read the game, not just comfort — that's worth knowing before you buy, not after.

Yarra Park

Worth knowing

• —If offered a Great Southern Stand ticket without a specific tier listed, ask for the lower bowl — the upper tier puts you significantly further from play and is the seat most visitors regret after the fact.
• —Days four and five of the Boxing Day Test consistently have better ticket availability and lower prices than days one and two of the same match, based on the pattern from recent MCG Boxing Day Tests — a genuinely useful trade-off if your budget or plans are flexible on which day to attend.

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Where to Sit: Adelaide Oval — The Hill vs. The Reserve

A $535 million redevelopment kept the grass mound — here's when to choose it over a fixed seat

Most Australian grounds gave up their old standing terraces decades ago in favour of an all-seated bowl. Adelaide Oval didn't, and the Hill's survival through a $535 million redevelopment says something real about what this ground values — a cricket crowd that can still turn up with a rug and watch from grass under actual trees, the way generations of Adelaide fans always have, for a fraction of grandstand pricing. That's not nostalgia dressed up as marketing; it's still exactly how a genuine slice of the Test-day crowd here chooses to watch. The Reserve side gives you the opposite: certainty, a specific seat, a specific angle on the game, and for a five-day Test where you might be in the same spot across multiple sessions, that certainty is worth something the Hill can't offer. Neither is the "correct" answer — which one you'd pick says more about what kind of day at the cricket you actually want.

North Adelaide

Worth knowing

• —If you want to actually judge line and length rather than just watch the outcome, ask for a seat behind the bowler's arm when booking Reserve seating — it's the one angle that shows you what the bowler is actually doing, not just where the ball ends up.
• —The Hill doesn't allow chairs, glass, or cans brought in — bring a rug instead, and buy any drinks once you're inside rather than trying to carry them through the gates.

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