I notice Wigan are promoting this Friday's game against Leeds as another one of those 'Big Ones' they seem to do once each season against a fellow top 6 side. The 'Big One 5' I believe it's being branded

Is this a desperate way of getting fans in the ground in what usually looks on tv a pretty empty stadium every time I see the Pies at home?

When you listen to Wigan fans,players and officials from the club over the years they will tell anyone their game with St Helens is THE biggest fixture/game/derby in English RL and nothing comes close to it....yet they are now bigging up games against the likes of Leeds.Wire and Huddersfield as the 'Big One'??

I expect Salford to come good next season. No doubt their game at the DW will become the 'Big One 6' and promoted as the huge 'Greater Manchester derby'.

Club's marketing their fixtures. Can't be having that. This is rugby league after all.

You've answered your question in your first sentence.

Troll Alert

Its outrageous!

How very dare Wigan promote a game! This is outrageous. Where will it all end?

Marketing int'it.

Just hope it's a good game, good game.

Team does nothing to promote a fixture -> This is awful, they're not being run properly and it's an outrage

Team promotes a fixture -> It's a desperate way to get more fans in through the gates, it's an outrage

I'm not surprised the OP used their trolling account to post this pish.

Terrible troll, awful post, the whole things just bad.

Put this one to sleep.

I'm as happy as anyone to take a pop at Wigan (in light-hearted banter) but why is a club marketing a game a bad thing?

I wish every club did something similar to Wigan's "Big One" efforts.

its called marketing - what do you want them top do? give away loads of free tickets like hull kr did in their 'big one' opener against leeds. now that was a desperate way of getting fans into the ground (op is a rovers supporter)

Past efforts have seen tickets offers, such as the first 1,000 tickets in each stand priced at £10 each. This year the club tried something different - no discounts. Essentially a standard full price fixture with a fancy name, but it seems to have paid off.

The South and East stands will both be sold out and the West stand will be pushing capacity. 18-19k home fans plus whatever Leeds bring. They must be delighted.

You're Chief Brodie...where's my fiver?

Just over 20,300 tonight.

Legends game featuring Farrell, Robinson, Connolly, Long, Joynt, Radlinski, Sculthorpe, Cassidy, Dermott, Hampson, Betts...etc.

Music from James Walsh from Starsailor.

Good night had by all.

1- The tickets were not 'given away'. They were paid for by the school.
2-The op is NOT a rovers supporter. At least try to get something right.

The 20k says it all.

Well done Wigan !

Was a good attendance but the atmosphere itself seemed strangely muted, especially for a leeds wigan clash.

Wasn't a good night for us Leeds fans.

Outstanding night. I was sceptical about the event when I found out they weren't offering the usual cheap tickets like in the past and thought the crowd would be no bigger then usual but with the other events going on around the game it ended up being a huge success.

I didn't think I'd ever see Andy Farrell putting Jason Robinson away for a try again!

Just shows what can be done with some aggressive and creative marketing and promotion.

The World Cup demonstrated this too but too few clubs put enough effort into this for me.

It does highlight something for me.

Too often in the whinging about low attendances people keep pointing at and blaming the league structure/playoff structure/meaningless games/lack of quality players.

Basically all points blaming the RFL and the current game as a whole.

Never really heard anybody point the finger at the clubs and ask if they're doing as much as they can to get bums through the doors. I think the effort made by clubs IMO to make sure people turn up has reduced quite a bit since 10+ years ago. They literally seem to just say "playing so & so this weekend, tickets are £X amount, turn up"......it's all incredibly lazy and the Wigan increased effort yesterday showed what can happen when the clubs try harder.

I am going to get shot down by some for this, but I thought the turn out from the Leeds fans was really poor last nigt. There couldn't have been more than 500 of them in the North Stand.

Was more than double that. Don't forget that stand has over 5,000 seats.

And a third of it was closed off and it still looked empty. Wouldn't have filled a full block of seats.