A furious AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan has admitted his initial reaction to the Ticketek fiasco from earlier this week was that he wanted a different company to look after finals ticket sales, forecasting dire consequences for Ticketek if a similar meltdown occurred in the future.

“There’s got to be consequences, there has to be,” McLachlan told 3AW on Friday.

'Agitated': AFL chief Gillon McLachlan was upset by the finals ticketing fiasco. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

In what seems to be becoming an annual occurrence, when tickets went on sale at 9am on Tuesday, desperate fans of the teams playing in the three finals at the MCG and SCG next week had to deal with a Ticketek website that was unable to cope with the demand.

It got so bad that Ticketek was forced to shut down its website and new staggered on-sale times were announced for Wednesday to enable a smoother process.