It’s almost upon us – that annual entry in the Star Wars saga that we’ll probably see until the earth crumbles under the heat of an expanding Sun. (Hey, I’m not complaining. I love Star Wars!) But with a new Star Wars comes a rush for movie tickets – here’s when and where to score yours.

This Saturday is the biggest day on the Australian sport calendar. No, it’s not The Melbourne Cup – yes, that race stops a nation, but only for a couple of minutes – and no, it’s not State of Origin – only two states care about that. What about the Ashes? Stop it.

This Saturday is all about the AFL Grand Final. Here’s everything you need to know about Australia’s premier sporting event.

Looking to purchase tickets any time soon? Well, here's something to remember: Ticketek charges a pretty high price for you to print your tickets using your own printer, in your own home. This is insane.

You don't think it's being too hyperbolic to say we need a royal commission, right?

This weekend, Saturday September 30, sees the Adelaide Crows take on the Richmond Tigers in the AFL Grand Final. If you’re a rabid fan who has followed either of those teams for 26 weeks, then you definitely want to be there at ‘The Big Dance’. But there’s only 34,000 tickets for club members and the Crows and Richmond have a combined membership well over 100,000.

How can you get tickets?

Back in February, consumer regulator the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) started a wide-ranging investigation into drip pricing: constantly adding extras during a purchase process so the final price ends up higher than expected or advertised. That campaign has scored a notable result today, with ticket agencies Ticketek and Ticketmaster promising to make their fees clearer to consumers.

There was a time where gaining access to a presale link for a forthcoming concert or event actually gave you an advantage. But when everyone who might want to go can easily get hold of one, are they essentially meaningless?

Australian companies supporting the Passbook ticket manager feature in iOS 6 aren't exactly thick on the ground, so every addition is welcome. Ticketing site Moshtix is adding support for Passbook, meaning you can store your concert tickets on your iPhone rather than having to print a PDF.

We recently highlighted a number of tactics for making sure you get tickets for popular events. Here's a twist on that list: buy through a credit card entertainment scheme and use the mobile site to ensure you're not stuck in ticket timeout hell and have a reasonable choice.

Dear Lifehacker, I have just missed out on buying tickets for the concert of a lifetime (Prince in my case) after getting partway through the process and then landing on an error page. This is a very common occurrence. Are there any techniques or strategies that you know of to beat the pesky time out on the major sites, any way around the annoyingly-impossible-to-read security pictures (CAPTCHA) and any way to improve my chances of securing those all-important tickets? Thanks, Purple Strain

Online ticket seller Eventbrite has been around since 2006, and plenty of Aussies already use it: the site sold $9 million worth of tickets to Australian events last year. The company has now launched a local web presence, promising better customer support for paid events, more payment options and better resources for discovering events in your city.

We're seeing an increasing range of options to deliver event tickets to mobile phones. That's a potentially welcome development, but I fear it won't result in our tickets for sporting events and concerts getting any cheaper.

Ticket reselling site StubHub sells tickets to thousands of events in the US each year, and Australians are the most enthusiastic non-American consumers of that service. Yet despite a recent executive visit to Australia to scope out opportunities, we won't be seeing a local version any time soon.

Last night, the Oprah Winfrey show conducted its lottery for two shows being filmed at the Sydney Opera House on December 14. If you missed out (as most people did), don't go hunting for tickets on eBay: the site is using the broadcast as the first chance to enforce its recently-announced free tickets policy, which bans resale of tickets that were free in the first place.

A proposal to ditch paper tickets for public transport in favour of only using smart cards has been dumped in Queensland. I don't think that we should be dumping paper tickets, but I do think we should be charging a lot more for them.

eBay policies often seem designed to benefit the auction site itself rather than consumers, but this one actually seems pretty reasonable: the site is working to ban resale of tickets for events where the tickets were originally given out for free.

Scammers are forever thinking up new ways to part consumers from their money, but often nothing more than a mildly convincing pitch for an in-demand product is needed.

Ticket resale site TicketChoice has revamped its site, adding a calendar-style listing of upcoming events where people are selling spare tickets and tools to promote those sales on Twitter, Facebook and other sites.