Some of you maybe interested that Travelzoo is currently offering tickets at £14 Adult, £5 Child.

Sales going well then....

Be surprised if this tops 15k. No idea why, but 11k for the opening game v Leeds sets a benchmark.

My response on a thread on the Wigan board a couple of weeks ago


21k against Cronulla 2 years ago
Somewhere within reach of that would be very good

I think its time Wigan followed the examples set by Hull, Widnes, Leigh and Huddersfield in closing off sections of their stadiums.
Wigans crowds these days dont justify having all 4 stands open in a 25k staium.

Hull aside, the rest have poor attendances and so can condense everyone into a stand or 2. If you close the Boston Stand you close an 8k capacity and force those into 5k + 6k capacity stands - the game at Leeds wouldn't have fit in the South/Springfield Stand combined. If you close the Springfield Stand you lose all the corporate/pricier seats.

I've no doubt they have considered it as it contributes to larger running costs but even a poor Wigan crowd wouldn't really fit in the other 2 (assuming they keep the away fans separate).

Thank you very much for this

Wigan have on occasions closed the "Away" stand due to small numbers of away fans.
No chance they will currently consider closing the other 3 for exactly the reasons you state - Plus they have sold seasons tickets for those exact seats

Would it be plausable to allocate the end 3 blocks of the boston stand for example to away fans and close off the traditional away stand? Id imagine that would be ample for the majority of games with the exception of Saints, Wire and Cas

It looked shocking on tv on friday and the atmoshere came across as terrible as well (i apreciate it may have been better and just come across poor on the tv). I just cant see any justification at all in opening 4 stands when the stadium is more than half empty

Look to be yes. The East and West Stands (touchline stands) are looking pretty full, with just some tickets in the top corners and the South stand has less then 500 left this morning, which now looks to be less then a couple of hundred going off the E-Ticket site.

The cheap tickets are for the North Stand which is usually the away end and it will clearly be a tougher sell.

There will be over 20,000 there which will stack up pretty well against most WCC crowds.

I agree it looked awful, and the atmosphere at the DW is poor even when it's a much higher crowd so it's not just a tv illusion. The obviously solution as you say is close the North Stand but then you risk it putting away fans off. I know for me I love being at away games behind the sticks. With Wigan their attendances aren;t quite poor enough for this. Ultimately, they need a more suitable stadium as DW is not fit for purpose based off current crowds and it's always been dead from an atmosphere perspective.

A small allocation of tickets were released on promotion, here’s an update looking at our official site: East stand sold out last night (full price). South stand (less than 200 left) - prices at £27 adult West stand (less than 800 left) - prices at £30-33 adult North stand (less than 1500 left) - prices at £23 adult. https://www.eticketing.co.uk/wiganwarri ... Index/1934 So looking at that we are around 22k+ with four full selling days left. An attendance that 95% of clubs in our sport would find impossible to achieve in their home ground or neutral stadium.

A small allocation of tickets were released on promotion, here’s an update looking at our official site: East stand sold out last night (full price). South stand (less than 200 left) - prices at £27 adult West stand (less than 800 left) - prices at £30-33 adult North stand (less than 1500 left) - prices at £23 adult. https://www.eticketing.co.uk/wiganwarri ... Index/1934 So looking at that we are around 22k+ with four full selling days left. An attendance that 95% of clubs in our sport would find impossible to achieve in their home ground or neutral stadium.

Whilst down last couple of years and even if there are mitigating factors WIGANs crowds are still in line and better with what they were when we moved to the jjb back in 2000.
Under 10k was a regular thing for the first 5 years at the stadium and I only remember one sub 10k in the regular season over the last 5years
Back then our attendances were swelled by regular 4/5k following from Bradford/saints which doesn't happen as much nowadays good Fri d system apart.
Yes, I think there are a could of writing trends but confident they'll be addressed.

By the way east/south pretty much sold out for Sunday and only about 2.5k left i. The other stands including the away end with the "cheap" tickets.

22kish plus I reckon.
Not bad no matter how much doom and gloom some people want to portray.

Yeah thanks.
Let's see how many positive posts we get now.

I guess the ones who couldn't wait to tell us how bad things were going won't be as quick to tell us the opposite now?

The purpose of my original post was to advise people that they could get cheap tickets if they wanted 'em. Not to have a pop at Wigan or anybody else.

If the ground is on course to selling out then credit where it's due.

My point was more about how the sport seemed to, once again, take what should be one of it's bigger events and 'cheapen' it with an offer through a deal site. Last season we had tickets to Wigan v Saints on Groupon and this year we have tickets to the WCC, an event that was attracting 30k+ a few years ago. It hardly portrays the sport and some of it's 'red letter' fixtures as premium, must-see events.

Once a business gets stuck on a treadmill of discounting, it can be very hard to get off.

I would agree with you if all tickets were discounted but only a small number have. We are heading for a sell out where 95-98% will have been sold at full price.

You didn't make that point originally.
And bear in mind nearly 20k of the seats sold will be full price with around 3k sold so far at between 20/40% discount in an effort to sell the "Away" end isn't the terrible effort some were trying to make out (we've had numerous leeds/saints and wolf fans seeming to take delight in certain perceived failings.).

I asked one was he going?
I went to the Widnes OT game
I went to 3 of the saints games
I went to all 3 of the Leeds games at elland road.

With regards to 30k figures
Leeds went from 33k to 27k in 3 years at elland road (cause for concern?)
The Last 3 at headingley went down to 21/20 then 19.
Is that a cause for concern?

There seems to be a bit of a Fad for bagging Wigan at the moment over attendances.
There's definitely some truth in it but I suspect a lot of it has to do with a number of other issues.
The SL war/takeover ( a lot of Leeds fans seem to feel miffed at this and want to pick up on anything negative about Wigan)
Salary cap issue
General anti Wigan (which will always be there, not to say that there isn't anti other club's and Leeds included it just seems very irrational bordering on ridiculous a lot of the time).

End of the day I think the general consensus is that the game in this country was struggling and needed to be improved significantly to stop the general malaise around the game even and in some instances especially it's own fans.

On a wider note I would encourage some fans to spend as much time as they do being negative and trying to spend some of it being positive.
I think a lot of the changes that have been made I what has been a relatively short period of time have been very positive.
The rule changes in particular have improved the game imo and I believe we've moved to the best play off system and I hope the play off series attendances reflect that, I just hope people try and get behind it and improve the games provide for us all.

I found that with my brewery business having shelf life slight deteriorating in quality within 6 weeks so ended up putting deals together which helped my sales but customers got used to it,
to my astonishment one customer had one cask open and serving when it was 2 month old

but it had honey in so kept well
I never dropped to weatherspoons prices though

I've been more than happy to call out Leeds when I see fit and you're right, there are general trends that I don't believe that the clubs and the sport are doing enough to adapt to. I include Wigan and Leeds in that as much as anyone else.

However, what I will say is that Leeds' approach in recent years has quite clearly been to focus on lower volume and higher margin, rather than a "stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap" model that we see deployed by other clubs and the RFL. You only have to look at how Headingley is being reconfigured to see that - cheap standing capacity has been replaced with seats that will be selling for a matchday rate of around £35-£40 a seat. I highly doubt that there are many cheap or free tickets floating around LS postcodes, perhaps the only exception to that recently being last season's games at Elland Road - although I suspect that their hand was forced by the health and safety implications of playing an SL fixture in a building site.

I get that not all clubs can do that, but we literally have clubs going to the other extreme entirely because 'cheap tickets' is the only trick in their playbook. One of the things that helped the stack of cards collapse at Bradford was giving discounts to people who would have happily paid full price and at some point, Huddersfield are going to start asking those fans who've been enjoying 10+ years of £9 a game season tickets to start paying full price - Davy is, after all, on the same mortal coil as the rest of us.

My original comment was a glib remark in reaction to what I would argue is the 'cheapening' of what should be one of our major events. I don't think it's unfair or unjustified to call that into question. Tactical offers are fine in the right circumstances, but for what for what should be a major event?

Quote ="MattyB"A small allocation of tickets were released on promotion, here’s an update looking at our official site: East stand sold out last night (full price). South stand (less than 200 left) - prices at £27 adult West stand (less than 800 left) - prices at £30-33 adult North stand (less than 1500 left) - prices at £23 adult. https://www.eticketing.co.uk/wiganwarri ... Index/1934 So looking at that we are around 22k+ with four full selling days left. An attendance that 95% of clubs in our sport would find impossible to achieve in their home ground or neutral stadium.'" Where was everyone last week??

Quote ="MattyB"A small allocation of tickets were released on promotion, here’s an update looking at our official site: East stand sold out last night (full price). South stand (less than 200 left) - prices at £27 adult West stand (less than 800 left) - prices at £30-33 adult North stand (less than 1500 left) - prices at £23 adult. https://www.eticketing.co.uk/wiganwarri ... Index/1934 So looking at that we are around 22k+ with four full selling days left. An attendance that 95% of clubs in our sport would find impossible to achieve in their home ground or neutral stadium.'" Where was everyone last week??

Yes it was a glib remark, hence I could at that point only respond to a glib remark.

More informed comments like the one above are far more constructive

Not disagreeing with a lot of what you say
I had numerous reasons to be in co fact with Simon Collison who was the marketing manager then chief exec at Wigan from around 2006 to around 2016.
I think he was very successful and a bit of an unsung hero in Wigans rise over that period.
He told me that they had been to America to research marketing and o e thing that was clear was that giving tickets away NEVER works and heavily discounting is similar.
Wigan used to give tickets away in schools early years at JJB, crowds averaged around 10/11k
They stopped doing it around 2006 and crowds rised to an average over the next 10yeara of around 14k.

Last couple of years crowds have gone down, Wigan have tried promotional stuff but nowhere near to the level of "The Big One" or the Heinz stand day out.
Some of that has imcluded cheaper tickets but not sure that alone is the reason to the drop to around 11.5/12k.
State of the game and other social issues have played a part.

Top line is I want all our club's to get bigger attendances.
I believe that some of the changes made over the last 6 months or so we're the right ones but it will take time to undo a lot of the issues over the last 5 plus years.
A lot of fans seem to want Elston etc to fail (and sorry to say Leeds fams seem to be quite vocal about this) but in truth the game couldn't carry on going the way it was.
They seem to want to point to Wigans falling attendances of the last 2 years in isolation and use it as an argument that the changes to the game were wrong and Gary and Nigel were right all along, they weren't imo.
Let's see where we are in 3/5 years, they may or may not succeed, but a lot of club allegiances have to be put to one side here for the good of the game.

Biggest crowd of the weekend?
Where was everyone else at the other games?

I obviously can't speak for all Leeds fans, and I obviously do want Elstone to succeed because if he does, we all succeed. But I do agree with Gary Hetherington's position that clubs were using the S8 structure and Red Hall as an excuse for their own failings.

When you have high profile club chairmen and CEOs using some of the excuses that they've used to explain poor crowds, I can't feel that Hetherington has/had a point:

"Fans don't know when they're on holiday." - How many people really base their holidays or ticket purchasing decisions around this? And even if it does affect season ticket sales to a greater degree than I suspect it does, does that really affect the 'walk up' market?

"We don't have enough notice of when we're playing" - despite anywhere between 10 and 20 days between the S8 fixtures being publically announced and a club's first home game.

"It's hard to sell corporate hospitality" - from a club that doesn't even have a page about their corporate hospitality on their website.

"Something something away fans" - the less said about this, the better.

"It's hard to sell sponsorships" - from clubs that seem to have an almost revolving door of sponsors and others that have to raffle-off sponsorship deals like a bag of meat at the local WMC.

Stuff like this, for me, really doesn't uphold the argument that the Super Eights and Wood / Rimmer were the things running the sport into the ground. The real reasons are far, far closer to home.

Whilst agreeing with the sentiment about looking closer to home the club's are all part of a wider picture (and I get the irony about the SL club's breaking away).
However
A lot of the issues surrounding attendances don't necessarily just come from marketing and or lack or quality of it.

The structure of the game, the rules, the refs, stagnant salary cap, reserves structure and I could go o n all impact on a club's ability to market themselves (and in some instances their desire to do so).
I feel like some clubs are just happy taking the sky money and working at that level, but the fascination to make competition Even has gone too far imo. I want it to better, not stagnate.

I admire Leeds for their commercial success, not withstanding that a bit like Man Utd it was always a matter of time before someone got it right so I don't think Gary is the miracle worker some portray, right place right time etc.
They also benefit from their location (big city), and other such factors that others don't.

I wrote a post a number of years ago about why shouldn't they benefit from.their own success, what would happen if they got a lot of injuries and then got relegated.
How would that benefit Leeds and rugby league.
A club with 10m plus operation turnover being relegated due to a some bad luck?
Why shouldn't they be allowed to spend that money to help themselves?
I didn't think a couple of years later it could have happened.

I know its moving into different areas of discussion but I do believe our top club's of which Leeds and Wigan are possibly the top 2 (awaits Saints fans) should be allowed to push their business and playing quality and in turn other club's such as Warrington/Saints/Hull/Catalans aren't a million miles away from. We need all club's to want to aspire to those levels and Cas/Hull is seem to be on board with that, we need all club's to want to push themselves whilst recognising that we need to be careful.
My feeling is that we have become too over officious on and off the field.
Changing the game to speed it up imo is working
Off the field we need to do the same, and last of that for me is incentivise club's to nakenthwir businesses bigger and more profitable.
I always liked the idea of the 50% rule I.e salary cap the club's so they can spend up to 50% of their income )or whatever % the club's agree on maybe up to an agreed higher limit (say 5million).
Push the club's to Increase their income, attract bigger sponsors, investors etc.

Anyway, let's hope more of us get behind the game and as best we can put club allegiances to one side not on the pitch, but for the growth of the game.