Joined: Nov 30 2014 Posts: 1264 Location: Inside my own head
Ticket prices are one of my main annoyances with rugby league, any sport that runs on tight budgets and fails to attract crowds. What I mean by that is we want to attract new fans or bring back some of those that have lapsed over the years and we want to do that by charging people £24-£25 to get in? If you're just a casual or even just a random person who one day on a sunny Friday think, "Oh it might be nice to take the kids down some live sport tonight" and then look up the prices and see that that dad and two kids would have to pay £48 to get into say, Hull vs Wakefield then you can understand why people aren't fighting to get through the turnstiles.
I always refer back to Harlequins/London Broncos when I talk to people about this; when they were at Twickenham Stoop (I think it might have been 2011 season) they were pulling in just a couple of thousand fans. For a couple of games they halved ticket prices and suddenly were getting 5,000 through the gates which meant that they were actually making more money than they would have been anyway and the game looked better, there was a better atmosphere, everything. If we just made tickets a flat rate of say £15 for adults, £10 for kids or something like that, maybe offer the friend for a fiver thing as well and marketed the hell out of it, send a few players into schools to advertise to kids and what have you I would like to bet we would get a lot of new people through the turnstiles.
When you can get into Premier League and Championship football for less (I seem to remember the West Brom game the other year was £18 for upper west) then the casual isn't going to choose Super League over the biggest sports league in the world are they? It isn't rocket science!!
>>On this years prices, paying on the day to get into unreserved south is £24 now? This will be the first year in a while that I have had a season pass (which by the way I decided on because of the savings and because I am just gonna skip out of work an hour early every game) and when I was going down games without a pass and buying tickets on the day (I couldn't get through to Hull to buy in advance) I was paying £19 to get into South, that was only 3-4 years ago. So ticket prices are going up by about £1-£1.50 a year. Why when there is 15,000 empty seats? Do we not want bums on those?
Mild mannered Janitor wrote:I see no issues with those prices. Would I be right in saying, buying in advance with a membership is cheaper than last season?
Well I see an issue as far as I am concerned. My wife and I stopped renewing our passes after the debacle of a play off match at Huddersfield a few years back and decided to pick our games as we went along. Last season I think we paid £15 as senior citizens to sit in the South stand when we purchased our seats in advance. For the new season this price has risen to £18 which is a whopping 20% increase. I don't think we will bother any more.
Joined: Sep 23 2008 Posts: 1909 Location: Top of the East Stand
listener wrote:Well I see an issue as far as I am concerned. My wife and I stopped renewing our passes after the debacle of a play off match at Huddersfield a few years back and decided to pick our games as we went along. Last season I think we paid £15 as senior citizens to sit in the South stand when we purchased our seats in advance. For the new season this price has risen to £18 which is a whopping 20% increase. I don't think we will bother any more.
£18 to watch a live sporting event seems a pretty good deal in my opinion. Especially for the sports top flight games.
Joined: Sep 23 2008 Posts: 1909 Location: Top of the East Stand
yorksguy1865 wrote:Ticket prices are one of my main annoyances with rugby league, any sport that runs on tight budgets and fails to attract crowds. What I mean by that is we want to attract new fans or bring back some of those that have lapsed over the years and we want to do that by charging people £24-£25 to get in? If you're just a casual or even just a random person who one day on a sunny Friday think, "Oh it might be nice to take the kids down some live sport tonight" and then look up the prices and see that that dad and two kids would have to pay £48 to get into say, Hull vs Wakefield then you can understand why people aren't fighting to get through the turnstiles.
I always refer back to Harlequins/London Broncos when I talk to people about this; when they were at Twickenham Stoop (I think it might have been 2011 season) they were pulling in just a couple of thousand fans. For a couple of games they halved ticket prices and suddenly were getting 5,000 through the gates which meant that they were actually making more money than they would have been anyway and the game looked better, there was a better atmosphere, everything. If we just made tickets a flat rate of say £15 for adults, £10 for kids or something like that, maybe offer the friend for a fiver thing as well and marketed the hell out of it, send a few players into schools to advertise to kids and what have you I would like to bet we would get a lot of new people through the turnstiles.
When you can get into Premier League and Championship football for less (I seem to remember the West Brom game the other year was £18 for upper west) then the casual isn't going to choose Super League over the biggest sports league in the world are they? It isn't rocket science!!
>>On this years prices, paying on the day to get into unreserved south is £24 now? This will be the first year in a while that I have had a season pass (which by the way I decided on because of the savings and because I am just gonna skip out of work an hour early every game) and when I was going down games without a pass and buying tickets on the day (I couldn't get through to Hull to buy in advance) I was paying £19 to get into South, that was only 3-4 years ago. So ticket prices are going up by about £1-£1.50 a year. Why when there is 15,000 empty seats? Do we not want bums on those?
Just wondered if you knew whether the SMC still take a cut of ticket sales? Obviously this would impact how much Hull FC make per game.
I'd rather pay a little bit more and watch the likes of internationals such as Ellis, Pritchard and Manu, than for the club not to be able to afford said players due to cheaper ticket pricing?
Faithful One wrote:Just wondered if you knew whether the SMC still take a cut of ticket sales? Obviously this would impact how much Hull FC make per game.
I'd rather pay a little bit more and watch the likes of internationals such as Ellis, Pritchard and Manu, than for the club not to be able to afford said players due to cheaper ticket pricing?
I believe the SMC does take a cut on ticket sales, that's why match days are a problem. We have to get them printed in advance, and pay the SMC whether we sell them or not.
Is Hodgson the new Griffin, or is it all about pace?
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