Probably not far off there. Lets face it, the new Wembley is a lovely stadium but with the CW seats left empty it doesn't look great and the whole Wembley aura is not like it was of old with the twin towers and the spine tingle you used to get in the ground when one end roared and it cascaded around the whole stadium.I wouldn't be against moving it back to the Millenium, perfect size for us and a rugby stadium to boot, the finals in the early 00's there were great.

Couldn't agree more Biff. Very much looking forward to the day, but as usual the first thing you see on TV (e.g. news highlights) will be empty seats.
I know it's out of the RFL's hands, but the Club Wembley farce makes me sick. Wembley as a whole is one big, overpriced joke (another frustrating example being FA Cup semi-finals being held there purely to bleed fans dry).
IMO the CC Final at Wembley generally looks awful on TV. A 74,000 full house at MM this weekend would have looked stunning in comparison.
Agree as well about the old Wembley. Yes it was aging a lot in a way, but it was a magical place. The new Wembley to me just resembles a generic stadium which could be in any country in the world.
Take the CC Final back to Cardiff!

My experience of club Wembley tickets is that lots are held by national/international property/legal/financial type firms. Usually in the week before the game the public schoolboys decide whether they can be assed to go to the game; which is mainly no. They then offer them to their northern workmate oiks who then spend the week desperately trying to get clients to fill them.

Fully agree mate.Enjoy your weekend, although i can't wish your team luck for obvious reasons

Despite WilliamGutterGalliMollyPooleyFaxwhatever coming on here trying to tell us otherwise, remember the photographic evidence showing that the Club Wembley tier was in fact packed for the 2013 England v NZ World Cup semi final. It showed that it is possible to fill the Club Wembley seats for a Rugby League event.

That is true but the CW seats were open on on general sale i believe for the WC game.The RFL did a good job there though and made sure that despite it not being a full house all the lower and middle tiers got filled first.

As others have said, there will be at least 65-70k fans there on Saturday as always but because the stadium holds 90k and the 10-15k club wembley seats are all but empty and stand out like a sore thumb it looks pretty bad.

The RFL website today is saying "Almost 80,000 tickets for the Ladbrokes Challenge Cup final between Hull Kingston Rovers and Leeds Rhinos at Wembley Stadium on Saturday August 29 have already been sold but a limited number are still available to purchase from as little as £20."

This whole 'it looks bad on tv' business is nonsense IMO. Anyone interested in sport knows the deal with Club Wembley. We will see an attendance of 80k and the CC will be a success again, like it is every year. Wembley is the spiritual home of the CC Final.

But they count the Club Wembley seats as sold tickets.No way as way as we know most of those seats will be filled.The attendance will come out as around 80k when in reality it will be around 70k actual bodies in the stadium.

Oh yes please! Being only 50 miles from Cardiff I loved it when the CCF was there. Cracking stadium and great atmosphere!

I'm guessing the RFL don't really care, as they will receive money for them seats anyway.

Absolutely. But it still doesn't hide the fact that there are actually about nearly 20k empty seats on the day and it stands out like a sore thumb

Don't they offer an on sell of club Wembley seats?

I can make some cardboard cut outs if it'll make you happy?

Having attended every Challenge Cup final at the new wembley, i can't say that the empty seats in the Wembley Club have ever spoilt my weekend.

I don't particularly care about empty seats when there's still a good crowd there. If the official attendance was say 85k and ALL the Club Wembley seats were empty then the number of people there would be approx 67/68k.

Some people will no doubt mutter about there being higher crowds in the past but crucially in the past we didn't have a very well attended Grand Final too.

I understand what people mean about Cardiff and it's a good stadium. But I think it's absolutely vital for RL to hold as many showpiece events as possible in London. That's where all the money, media and influence is. That's where we need to be.

I don't think the crowds are bad at all and im not having a go at it.The days i went as a kid before SL to the old wembley there was about 78-80k so the difference is not much and considering we now have another show piece final these days that is bigger also pulling circa 70k we do well. My gripe is with the CW seats being virtually empty however i do realise there isn't a right lot can be done about it.

Pretty sure that the initial Club Wembley tickets run out in 2017, hopefully RL can get out of this deal then, and instead shut the top tier and sell out the bottom 2 first. The England-Australia game a few years back did that and it looked full for the TV.

I don't understand the Club Wembley paranoia. It's pretty much the same for every event held there and means a guaranteed income at minimal cost. It's a nightmare for the FA but brilliant business for the RFL.

they were certainly struggling to sell many 10 year debenture renewals and were thinking of 5/7 year ones. Many were saying with fewer events held/poorer overall quality it wasn't worth the outlay.
The problem is the RFL really do not want to be excluded from the debenture included matches, far from it. Guaranteed money at top dollar for those seats.

Can imagine the England football teams decline isn't helping with sales, as they are the main tenant and main draw for these tickets. Maybe a compromise would be that less club Wembley seats are sold, meaning the rest can be put in general sale.

At last, someone gets it. Hardly any games at Wembley look sensational on TV and that is because of the problem of CW non-attenders, but also the fact that the toffs that tend to occupy the prime central seating bang opposite the cameras are by and large not much interested in what happens on the field either, and so when the second half kicks off, the cameras face swathes of empty seats.

It's an issue for forum handwringers and trolls and your typical RL whinge-about-anythingers, but not for the RFL, for the simple reason knockersbump states, we're in the club, and that guarantees them a fixed amount of CW income. The CW members paid; Wembley distributes the payment as per; the RFL trousers its share. And you seriously think they would give a shoiite whether or not WC seats are occupied? The aesthetics may bruise the tender hearts of some on here but money talks.

Don't get what the RFL are doing wrong by saying the club wembley seats are sold? They are sold.

Everyone else counts seats sold in the attendance, so why shouldn't we?

Anyway, it looks like a cracking crowd, me and the Mrs are in the Leeds end, can't wait.

Yep. It's like during the World Cup when apparently we had to be the only major sport in the world to not use the attendance figure for both games of a double header. To do so would be ridiculous/trickery/Nigel Wood lying/evidence of RL's decline. Apparently.

If you're going to have a pop at a poster, can I suggest you get your facts straight?
It was William Eve who claimed the empty seats at Wembley. I do not recall Gutterfax or anyone else claiming they were empty.

By the way, have you finally managed to unsubscribe from BT sport yet? I was concerned for your mental wellbeing given you'd paid to watch a sport you dislike and then apparently the sods at BT wouldn't let you turn it off.....