The Melbourne Cricket Club is proposing a big increase in its membership in response to growing waiting times.

The club has a plan to increase the number of restricted memberships by 50,000 over a five-year period.

Membership in the MCC has long been considered a status symbol for sports fans and gives the member access to the major events at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).

There are currently more than 103,000 members but on most days, the membership reserve was "underutilised" with only about 5,000 members attending.

The member's stand has a capacity of 22,000.

"Even some of the marquee events, such as the Boxing Day Test, an AFL preliminary final or the Anzac Day match, consistently require us to sell a large number of visitor tickets in order to fill our seating area," the MCC said in a statement.

Concern about a blow-out in the waiting time for memberships had prompted the club to act.

It currently takes about 18 years to get a membership offer and the MCC said ideally it would take no more than 25 years.

The club said modelling showed, with 236,000 people already on a list that was growing by 10,000 per year, the waiting time would get much worse.

"The modelling we've done [showed] that if we don't increase the number of members we have or take some form of action, then someone who puts their name on the waiting list today will wait 41 years to receive an offer," club spokesman Shane Brown told 774 ABC Melbourne.

The MCC is proposing to add extra "restricted" members over a 5 to 10 year period, by no more than 10,000 in any one year up to 50,000 in total.

Membership was increased by 30,000 between 2000 and 2005 and it had little impact on attendance.

"Over time the attendance of those new members hasn't risen a great deal," Mr Brown said.

"We certainly feel at this stage we allow a lot of guests into the members on major match days so we have the flexibility, we think, to have more people in the members' reserve than we do now."

If the club is finding that the increase in members is filling up the member's stand, the club will, in the first instance, reduce the number of guest passes.

The proposal would have to be ratified by full members at a special meeting in August next year.

It costs $110 to nominate to become a member and person seeking membership needs to be nominated by two full members.