2 stands already sold out for Wigan vs St Helens on Good Friday. Could be a capacity crowd.

Great to see. The exploitation of the fans isn't right though. Paying Premier League prices to watch Super League isn't right. £22 for an 8 year old to watch Wigan is just off the scale. We need to bring a cap in for prices, especially given you can get a season ticket for that stand for £58. Family of 5 weighing in at £120 plus transport, drinks etc is not on. Someone on Twitter posted that you can fly to Majorca and spend a night in a hotel for the same price.

Why dont you fly to Majorca you miserable tw*t

I've seen a lot of Saints fans complaining about this on Twitter. Surely it is just a case of supply and demand, which means capitalising on profit from a business point of view?

There appears to be a lot of fans that claim to do anything to watch their beloved team, but pay a couple of quid more. Surely it costs more than £5 extra to travel to Hull.

You can't tell everyone that Saints provide a superior product and have a far larger following and then complain that there is a premium price for the high demand tickets. Or are you just defending your title as World Club Champions of whinging?

I completely agree that the club cant be criticised for prices when fans are buying tickets at those prices. The Good Friday derby will be a big money maker at a time when all RL clubs are hardly cash rich. Fans obviously have the choice not to pay but the demand is clearly still there for this particular game and it looks a safe bet to sell out (not a scenario RL finds itself in too often)

The issue comes when the demand is lower for games of lower stature. Having spoken to a director of the club about this - the club is keen to incentivise season ticket and membership purchases as much as possible. IMO though £30 for an adult match ticket and £22 for a child is too high for games and occasions of lesser quality. It doesnt make sense to me that prices are not set according to the stature of game and quality of occasion - finals are more expensive as they are a bigger spectacle and have more significance. I would have thought the same should apply to regular league games - Saints, Warrington, Leeds for example could be Band A matches and thus have higher prices. Prices could also be scaled according to where you are seated within a particular stand - it doesn't make sense to me that a seat on the front row in the corner of the East Stand is priced the same as mid way up the central block.

That's exactly the situation here. The lower priced tickets (behind the posts) have all been sold, and only the more expensive seats are left. Which are the ones everyone is complaining about, even though the prices haven't increased since going on sale.

If they wanted the cheap seats, they should have bought them before they sold out, imo.

4,793 for Cougars vs Bulls. Very good for the Championship.

Good points. It's fine to charge high prices if the demand is constantly there. But the knock on effect of this pricing is that both clubs will likely see a reduction in ticket sales for the next game. If you're a family spending £120+ on tickets for the derby, are you going to the next game, or missing that? A lot of people will be the ones who don't get season tickets as they can't afford them or can't make enough games to make them worth it. If the prices were more reasonable they'd go to more games, which in turn drives more season tickets if things go well. If Wigan have done the maths and are confident that extracting so much for one game is workable then that's one thing, but in an age where Premier League clubs are capping away prices, paying more for RL does seem odd. The big crowd will be great for Wigan, but it's also contributing to the games where three of the four stands are largely empty and the club announces a suspicious 10,000 gate which sets off a tidal wave of Latics fans laughing at them.

Wigan v St Helens is better than any Premier League game and worth the money.
You do have a choice re any other game or indeed this one.

If they announce a 10k crowd then they've sold 10k seats. Same as every other sports club in the country.

You mean they don't want to pay more tax on fictional ticket sales, just to boost their ego?

Believe it or not

You don't pay tax based on how many you declare came through the gates. It's not how it works. You record your ticket sales data and the revenue it generates and pay tax on your overall numbers. It's why some clubs include season ticket sales whether they turn up or not and some clubs don't.

I'm not saying they fake the crowds, but you do see loads of tweets about it when the three stands you can see on televised games have about 8 people in them.

Wigan could get 15,000 every week if they got the marketing and pricing right I think. Push the boat a bit more with the fan village element, market it a bit more thoroughly and get the prices to £20 for an adult and £12 for a kid, with maybe premium pricing for the Saints game. They need to push things a bit more or Leigh will become the big dogs in town.

Or maybe Saints could do better and get more fans in and catch upto Wigan,Warrington and now Leigh and sit at the the top table with the bigger clubs.

Strange thing to post. Leigh haven't had a crowd above any of ours yet, Warrington have had one. Neither have a higher average than we do and no club in SL takes the numbers we do.

Wigan take your numbers,
Leigh will sooner or later.
Warrington no doubt will and have.

But as the greatest RL side in history you should have the numbers too back it up surely.

If you think your home attendances are the biggest in the league, you are wrong.

If you are saying you have the biggest away following, it will dwindle once you start losing games and are not picking up silverware. The 'glory supporters' will disappear into the woodwork again. Ask any club that has had a run of successful seasons.

It's also worth pointing out that St Helens is a one sport/one team town. With nothing much else to do there.

The support is admirable in size, but everything is stacked in favour of big support.

Away support obviously. Of course it'll dwindle when we're unsuccessful. Show me a club that doesn't apply to.

Wigan seem to have put rules in place to stop Saints fans buying tickets now. Evidence of previous ticket purchase required now to buy tickets for the derby. Seems a daft move as there will be Saints fans everywhere in the ground anyway because it's derby day and it's not like the fans fight is it.

Lmao that’s just an embarassing post. It’s like the worst possible attempt at trolling ever.

Dont be daft I was having a joke with Saddened.
You pulling up anyone re trolling now that is funny

Same as the other thread ... Debate is fine but stop any name calling or personal insults or this ends up locked.

As on the other thread I will stop the name calling etc but as stated can you put a block on the insults from a certain poster.

If you're talking % of home support travelling to away games then I imagine Salford wipe the floor with the so-called "big boys".

There's been some pitiful Wigan/Leeds/Saints followings at the AJ Bell over the past couple of seasons. Location/traffic/parking excuses don't cut it I'm afraid.

Which is exactly what I said.

But the other clubs are currently in that 'unsuccesful' bracket, whilst Saints have had several years of building up a following of fair weather supporters and glory hunters.



You see pitiful away followings at all grounds, it's not just Salford.

It's hard to measure away support as there is a lack of factual figures, apart from the records Catalans release, which is a different kettle of fish altogether. But if you do use those figures (as a percentage of average home attendances), last year Wigan took 0.9% (110/12,27icon_cool.gif, Leeds took 3.1% (398/12,940), Saints took 5.6% (664/11,851), and Salford took 3.9% (177/4,529).

Bearing in mind that it is an unusual fixture, and attendances are higher in the middle of summer than the start of the season (when Wigan visited), but Salford are hardly 'wiping the floor' with record attendances.

The one thing that doesn't help Salford's tradition of lowest attendance figures is the location. Not many other clubs have to compete with a top flight football club for spectators, nor the sheer amount of other entertainment options available.