Dave T
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Posts posted by Dave T
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4 minutes ago, WN83 said:
Yeah, there are plenty of reasons for optimism IMO.
They need to sort things like that out in regards the seating map. I noticed a block that were keyed as though 90% would be Green (£45) and 10% Blue (£30) but when you click in it, they're all £30 tickets. It's block 117 when I've just checked.
Yes, there are four corner blocks that are just coloured incorrectly, advertised as £45 when the tickets in them are £30.
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4 minutes ago, Worzel said:
Anybody who is buying tickets 5 months or more out from the event isn't as price sensitive as we think. I really don't think £10 is here nor there in the context of existing rugby league fans (the pre-sales audience), most of whom will have high travel costs versus the ticket price.
I understand the point you're making, but there's no evidence that the pricing of this seat release is based on sales demand to-date. If anything sales so far tell us there is good demand for tickets priced at £30 and £45, with ticket sales being ahead of both prior norms and their targets for this event. This pricing is clearly aimed at a different segment of buyer, the new customer, people we haven't really marketed to yet.
If we had genuinely sold 60% of tickets available with 4 months to go, I'm not sure we would commit to releasing every ticket above the 50k mark at the cheapest price band or below. But that could easily be the cynic in me!
I've had a quick look at a previous pricing map for an England FA game at Wembley, and noted that they used a huge section of the top tier as a family area with cheap tickets, and I think it could have been a nice way to launch these tickets - they do appear to have just sneaked out on sale to an extent.
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6 minutes ago, Damien said:
I don't think it's the same at all but there's hardly any point going round in circles about it.
Undoubtedly Wembley holding 90,000 is a factor. I doubt anyone has ever been under any illusions how difficult it would be to shift 90,000 tickets, which in itself is 15,000 more than the record international crowd. There hasn't been anything going on that no one wouldn't have expected here and I would say that 30k+ sales at this point is positive.
The capacity necessitates a different approach, because it's always going to be difficult to get people to buy early, and sales will also dictate this approach. I think Wembley with its 50k lower tiers tickets and 40k in the upper tier pretty much demands you look to fill the 50k and only open the upper tier should demand look like allowing. I think most would be happy with that approach and opening the upper tier is what they are now doing.
It's no shock that selling 40k inferior seats in the rafters will be a difficult task. £20 isn't stupidly cheap like the Saracens £5 games but it is cheap enough to take a different tack on the lower bowl prices. I also think people are severely overestimating how many people will be disgruntled at buying a better £30 tickets compared to buying a worse £20 ticket and saving a tenner. In the grand scheme of a day out at Wembley it's nothing. If it was the same £30 ticket for £20 then I'd be in complete agreement.
I agree with all of that (apart form the first line obviously!
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The debating point is a bit of a technical one really - I agree, I don't think people will be peed off, but I do think it does reflect that sales may be slightly more sluggish than they are suggesting.
It is around 6 weeks ago they said over 30k were sold, and they quoting that number. I think there is some creativity in that. We now have c58k on sale, and it doesn't look like over half of them are sold out (although some blocks do have healthy sales, behind the sticks particularly). However, I may be being overly cynical there, as your point that the RFL don't tend to open sections and incur costs unless they have to did make me think, so hopefully that is the case.
Hopefully now the Cup Final is out of the way we get a boost. 63k hopefully enjoyed it and are tempted again, and 1.3m saw it on TV and fancy some of it.
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Just now, Damien said:
That's disingenuous. People criticise existing tickets being discounted and that's is a big difference to what is being done here. We are not talking about the £45 tickets becoming £20. If we were I'm sure people would hold the same opinions as they have in the past. I don't see how what is being done here disincentives anyone, if they want better seats they will still buy them.
Some people will always want the cheapest seats. They will have bought the £30 tickets based on them being the cheapest seats.
Now 2 months later, they are told there are cheaper seats available - despite being told the prices for the Ashes start at £30.
I take the point about it being technically different to offering a £50 ticket for £20 - but it still goes against the 'buy early' principle that they have done so well with this series. We really have reverted to type here. And I expect it is because we have huge blocks of expensive tickets unsold and have realised it's not gonna be a doddle to sell them.
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1 hour ago, gingerjon said:
Indeed. It’s striking when you pick a fixture - say England v New Zealand - and note that in RU pretty much whole decades could go by without a meeting. And then from the mid 80s it steps up and now it’s multiple times a year.
In RL, we still claim that it is impossible to do things like this. Yet other sports just crack on and actually deliver stuff.
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It is odd to see people who have been aggressively critical of the RFL selling tickets cheaper after launch and therefore disincentivising early purchases now defend them doing literally that.
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8 hours ago, Tommygilf said:
England didn't play at all in 2019, that was no matches, nothing for the social media team, no opportunities to host sponsors, nothing.
Yeah we ended up with the GB flop on the other side of the world, but England RL as its own entity was planned to be made dormant on field for nearly 2 years between Autumn 2018 and Autumn 2020. I don't think that is good enough.
I don't believe we need to overstate the branding issue between GB and Eng. We both agree that it was muddled and a joke, but the brand aint great anyway, and let's be honest, Bennett admitted that it was an England team when leaving out Regan Grace and using Blake Austin on the wing for example! But the RFL had a rep team playing games that catered for English RL fans - throughout history GB and England has been interchangeable (although I now think we need to be better than that!). But we don't look back at the 90's and claim it was a farce that GB didn't play in 1995 because we branded ourselves as England.
And positioning it as a period of 2018-2020 as no England games is misleading.
Eng/GB played every year (outside of Covid) just as we always have done.
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36 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:
We can't have a situation like we had between 2018 and 2020 (planned!) again where England don't play at all.
What do you mean with your last line?
In 2018 England played a home series against the Kiwis and 2020 we had a home Ashes scheduled. In 2019, the RFL sent a touring team to NZ, and PNG. It may have been a messy GB tour, but that period was far from the worst as an English RL international fan.
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19 minutes ago, Exiled Wiganer said:
I was at all of those games, as well as the games against NZ and Samoa. I recall well the circumstances around each of them. I would argue that by far the best comparisons we have are to the big events in the 90s and the World Cup semi final. I would argue that we have never seen a more professional approach to marketing an Ashes series as we have had this year, and that we are in a unique position in being able to focus solely on this one game for the next 4 plus months. I can do very little aside from rounding up as many locals to go as I can, but everything I have seen so far makes me confident the organisers - Moran’s team - knows what they are doing.
I would though like to make another point about my original post. It was unnecessarily patronising of me to end it the way I did. It is perfectly fine for people - motivated by love of TGG - to be anxious and fear the worst, having got a lot of experience to draw upon. I was guilty of over stating my case, and that is something I am working on reining in. In another context on here I have been guilty of over forcibly expressing what is simply my opinion, and have resolved to be more respectful in the way I do so. Indeed, i would welcome people calling me out on the occasions that I over emphasise what is, after all, an expression of opinion, and attack others’ genuinely held and argued views.
Back on topic, I am personally thrilled by what I have seen so far and am confident Moran and co know what they’re doing, and that the crowd will be the best it can be.
I'm very optimistic of a large crowd, and London always delivers the biggest crowds, but I'm not sure i agree with the approach of only using the good crowds as a comparison point.
Get it right, we could break records, but it is also possible of 50k, which right now would probably be disappointing.
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42 minutes ago, Exiled Wiganer said:
i genuinely worry about anyone who is genuinely worried about the potential crowd size for Wembley.
The list of last Eng v Aus games in London:
2016 - Olympic Stad - 35k
2011 - Wembley - 42k
2000 - Twickenham - 34k
1995 - Wembley (WC Final) - 66k
1995 - Wembley - 41k
1994 - Wembley - 57k
1992 - Wembley (WC Final) - 74k
1990 - Wembley 55k
We can't rest on our laurels and just assume Wembley will do well. You could argue we did that the last couple of times we played there.
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34 minutes ago, Hopie said:
I enjoyed this post.
I don't enjoy the VR making calls and not explaining them properly, they have a live mic and take ages to make decisions, yet the call that decides the biggest game of the season so far doesn't get a full explanation, that along with the on field ref saying "there's mitigation" but not explaining what it is are my pet peeve this season. They made RL into a primarily TV product (you can't here the ref in the stadium) and they don't explain the calls to the TV audience.
Yes, I agree with this. I'm not sure why they have actively decided to make communication worse this year.
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13 minutes ago, fighting irish said:
Fair enough mate. I'd just like to have got it right.
I'd have loved them to have deemed it grounded too!!!
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29 minutes ago, fighting irish said:
I'll say it once and then I'll leave it but having our premier televised events decided on a refereeing error, in front of millions of viewers, is not a good thing.
How on earth the video referee can judge that the Warrington man didn't ''intentionally'' ground the ball (with his body (between chest and hips)) is utterly preposterous. There's no doubt he did touch the ball down, but the touchdown was disallowed because he didn't mean to do it.
What do you think he was trying to do? Break Dance his way to fame and fortune?
Great game, great spectacle concluded with a complete travesty.
It'll go down in history as a day of infamy.
The core point in the discussion is one for the match thread, but on the point in question, I don't think controversy will harm the game at all. Obviously it is not something you want, but controversy like this doesn't switch people off in any material numbers, there is no evidence to suggest it does.
People watching that game will have seen a blockbuster finish, with the heartbreak and jubilation that only sport can bring.
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On 07/06/2025 at 13:14, Damien said:
It's quite clear the effect that the Club Wembley tickets had on crowds simply by looking at attendances.
For the first 10 years, when the initial 15,000 10 year Club Wembley tickets were in operation, we didn't have a crowd less than 76,235. Since then we've never had a crowd above 70k. Thats not just a coincidence.
Yea, I think the decline in crowds is more in the 5-10k territory rather than 15-20k.
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13 minutes ago, FearTheVee said:
Just looking at the site and it looks like of the new seats released the £30 are selling better than the £20, which suggests to me that a lot of people don't see the £20 as a discounted buy; they are buying more of the £30 as they are better tickets - which would seem to support a rationale for the price delta.
This is part of the challenge here. The indictations are that pricing at bargain basement prices isn't really needed. But it's back to where the RFL have gone.
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Just now, FearTheVee said:
But how does opening up say 3,500 or so tickets at £20 shift the agenda from trending at 40k to 70k? They've basically opened up as many tickets at £30 as they have £20 haven't they?
It doesn't. But as per my original point, you dont make things cheaper if they are flying off the shelf. The RFL have constantly gone down the route of cheaper tickets to give things a boost.
What this signposts is that all tickets in the upper tier will be cheap tickets (£20 and £30). Which is fine, but I genuinely believe the evidence suggests it's plan B.
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12 minutes ago, FearTheVee said:
How many tickets do you think they had planned to have sold by this time? Are you saying that you think the organisers think that we are a long way short of where we wanted to be / should be and need to enter discounting mode?
I've just had a look and there aren't actually that many Cat4 (£30) tickets left elsewhere - I know the focus is on the £20 tix but half of the tix released are actually £30 in the upper tier so I would argue that they are actually worse value (or at best equivalent for some of the better seats up there) than most of the £30 already sold - the opposite of discounting.
As for the £20 tix being great value, I'm not sure they are relative to the £30 tix. I certainly don't want to sit there.
I think we're looking in pretty good shape tbh - there is almost five months to go and a lot of the people who wil fill up the stadium will be floating sports fans who won't decide to go until a month or so before max IMO, as someone who works in London and can picture the type of folk that will go on a whim for the sake of £20/£30.
I hope your assessment is correct. I disagree that £20 could be seen as anything other than cheap for an event like this. They are cheaper than a terrace ticket for Castleford v Huddersfield next month.
If I had to guess, I expect they got a half decent amount of sales at the start, and then things have slowed down drastically. Over 30k sales should really see more sold out sections now, I expect that number is PR. Hopefully it isn't too far off the mark though.
I wouldn't be surprised if they were trending 40-50k and they want to go bolder and get 70k.
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13 minutes ago, Damien said:
This is what they do with the Grand Final isn't it when they open the top tier of the North Stand (if demand allows)?
No, that's a different thing. I think you and I are on the same page around keeping sections closed too aggressively and micro managing them, but at Wembley or OT it broadly works fine.
But the category in that tier is Category 5, and there are other section on sale at Category 5 today.
So not all seast are open, but all categories are.
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Just now, FearTheVee said:
But the CCF has a better record in terms of >51k crowds than any international RL match in the last 30 years (other than the world cup semi final double header). It's only the Catalans finals and the 2021 covid impacted finals that have been under that level and pre-Coviid we were running at 60k+ for about 30 years. So it makes sense to have those tickets on sale.
This is a different beast in terms of knowing whether we'd fill those tiers IMO - we haven't hit >51k for 30 years other than the game above.
Anyway, we'll never agree but I think it's been a sensible approach and not one I would class as discounting any more than some of the original tickets being cheaper than better tickets was discounting.
"Ticket sales are going great, so we will open up some cheap seats." is not whats happening here.
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1 minute ago, Damien said:
Other than them withholding the top tier until sales allowed and basically following the same approach as they have done for events for years, including what they do with the top tier of the North Stand at Old Trafford for the Grand Final, wasn't part of any plan either.
I suppose you reckon doing this to coincide with the Challenge Cup final, and still over 4 months out, wasn't part of any plan either.
We know they release new areas, we've moaned about it for years. What they've never done is release it with a brand new (great value) category band (that is missing from their graphics and website FAQ.
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Just now, FearTheVee said:
I don't know enough to argue this point, but I saw this picture earlier. I'm struggling to see that the seats in the upper tier in the background of this pic were ever on sale, suggesting at least some tickets weren't released at a lower price point?
The equivalent seats were behind the camera.
The lowest price band was always on sale. Not all seats are always on sale. That's another gripe altogether!
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25 minutes ago, Hopie said:
There is no evidence this is part of a plan.
I'm yet to see any evidence this is targeting a new market, for a start the tickets are available to all, and it will be very difficult to see if this new category leads to a boost in sales in particular areas when you do it the week we got advertising on BBC1, so the organisers won't know what was caused by one factor, or by the other.
They'll be able to track pretty well on some of this stuff. They'll know what spikes they've had from previous advertising on the BBC.
I dont disagree with your point, but then I suppose plenty of marketing will be targeted and won't just be visible to all. If they are targeting new markets with these £20 sections then they can track responses. Maybe they are running school, community club, community group campaigns alongside this.
I suppose we will only truly know on Oct 25.
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4 minutes ago, FearTheVee said:
Ah you're right I was misrepresenting that date, good spot. But the FAQ were in place before general sale so I'm making the same point (they should indeed be updated).
I get the point you're making, and the FAQ, along with the sales map price list starting at £30 is pretty compelling evidence that this is plan B pricing.
As I say, im not annoyed by it, I work in banking industry products which are pricing led, so get less wound up than many on things like this, but my only nagging feeling here is that sales for Wembley are sluggish. I worry that they have no other ideas than cheap tickets.
But, hopefully I'm way off and this will drive a flourish.
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1 hour ago, Archie Gordon said:
This seems about right.
There's been a lull in sales. The game has retreated to its usual response of cheaper tickets will fix that rather than thinking how to reignite sales by a promotional push. The odd thing is that the selling of the Ashes as a premium event with a £30 floor was demonstrably working.
Again, it's not the end of the world.
I think this is spot on (including your last line).
But let's be clear, they have never actively held back cheap tickets. They didn't do it for the Cup, they haven't done it for past internationals and they haven't done it for any other events.
This is the equivalent of deciding to sell via Groupon for a discount, but doing it via their own channels to save costs.
There is only one reason that cheap seats come onto the market. And it probably aligns with the fact that the Wembley sales number has only ever been 30k.
Personally, im less bothered about cheap seats at Wembley. We got 42k there the last time we played the Aussies, I'd love it to be 60 or 70k even if it means £20 tickets all round.
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England v Australia 2025 - coming to the UK!
in The General Rugby League Forum
Posted
I think its an error too. They aren't good at attention to detail.