Anyone know the breakdown?

I.e. I've bought a weekend pass, will that count as two tickets sold?

I'd imagine it's 30k over the 2 days. Not 30k on one day.

It is, so you'd expect approx 20k sold for Saturday, 10k for Sunday based on what's happened in recent years. The East stand is sold out for the Saturday now. Reasonable numbers but not spectacular, and also a worry that pretty much all the accommodation is sold out which may put some off. Anyone know what promotion they are doing in Newcastle itself? Surely they can do something at a Newcastle United home game?

Well, that's just put me off. I hope Newcastle doesn't become a habit, cos I can't see me trailing 300+ miles up there for it. I've happily been to Manchester in the past, and don't mind that, but it's just too far for me now.

Although it's been Manchester for a couple of seasons, Newcastle isn't too far away from the "heartlands" and there are plenty of watering holes to keep the fans happy.
Plus, it may help add some fans in the North East.

It's exactly the type of location that we should be looking for.

I certainly don't begrudge them giving Newcastle a go; you can't please everyone with venue choices, I realise that. I liked it when it was in Cardiff, which is fairly near me, and also cos I think the Millennium Stadium is a cracking venue. And in my view, Wales is a more fertile spot for recruitment than Tyneside. But that may not have pleased fans from the heartlands so much.

We had booked a caravan in Whitley Bay for 6 of us for the weekend only to find out the owner has just sold it on so had no where to stay. Looked last week - The cheapest we could find on offer in newcastle itself was £300 per room per night. We were offered a studio in Gateshead for 5 people for £1022 for two nights



Nothing in newcastle, gateshead, South shields, North shields, Whitley bay, Tynemouth at all for any reasonable price. We've managed to find a hotel in Darlington and will have to get the train in. It's the school holidays - but really!!!!!
A full house isn't going to happen for lack of accommodation. Back to Manchester for me - people can travel in each day.

There isn't really a perfect venue for everyone, while Cardiff isn't far for the Lancashire clubs it's a trek for the fans in Hull and West Yorkshire. Manchester is ideal as its slap bang in the heartlands, but of course that means we aren't promoting ourselves to a new audience.

Is that what this thing is really for?

If so then the jury is out if it's considered a success.

Yes, as I said, you can't please everyone. But jools' sad story upthread convinces me that it's a non-runner for this year for me anyway. My faith in 'promoting ourselves to a new audience' isn't as great as some people's, I think, but we're serious about doing that, then I would have thought the Midlands, which seems to shown quite a spurt of interest in league in recent years (Coventry, Hemel, the All Golds etc) is worthy of a chance.

Sunderland is only 25 min on metro. Durham, Darlington all very close too.

Bit concerned at numbers as walk up won't be that high and it will include tickets sent to clubs.

Eight weeks to go. 30k then 25k a hopeful target.

The lack of accommodation is worrying as those wanting to stay will not want to stay in middles borough as I imagine they will want to go out for a drink so driving or getting transport elsewhere is a bit pointless as you may as well go home once you start talking about travelling 30 mins to and from accommodation.

Coach trips maybe a way to go to get more in.

Hopefully it will be a success although I still think the format would have been better suited for the first games of the super 8's. Meaning an even number of home and away games for the clubs, although it would require moving the dates.

As far as I can see the lower bowl of St James' fits 35k-40k, and some of those won't be sellable as many tickets are unreserved, so surely we can sell the bottom of the ground out for the Saturday at least.

The RFL have got to think of other ways to get round the accommodation issue though, even getting the 11 clubs (excluding Catalan) to fill just 1 coach each gets another 500+ on the gate.

Cardiff is 3 hours away for the Lancashire clubs!

Prices are crazy for accommodation and most seems booked up - I feel it could be killed off by the low crowd.
I am looking for accommodation for 4 - my dad, me and my grown up kids - and we do not want to share beds!!
I cant see anything under £1000. Which is crazy - it would cost more for that game than for all other games put together

I'm in Newcastle twice a week and I've not seen a single advert for the Magic weekend. The city is plastered with ads for the RU World Cup games at St James Park including a huge one draped across the Tyne Bridge. Maybe the council are prevented from promoting our event as part of their contract to be a host city for the RU tournament ?

Try some of the outlying towns. Hexham, for example, has regular trains into the city which take about 35-40 mins. Same with Morpeth.

Look for accommodation in Jesmond, Whitley Bay, Tynemouth, Byker, Wallsend, etc etc. All these places are in the suburbs and are less than 20 or so minutes away from the city centre.

The issue with Newcastle is that it's very popular on weekends for stag dos and night outs, never mind with this added on top. You get hotels being half booked regardless of events like this - and the city is remarkably small when you think about it, so accommodation was always going to be an issue.

I literally live a stones throw away from St James Park in the city centre - I can clearly hear matches if I open a window on match days. Yet I haven't seen a lick of advertising - fingers crossed that changes soon.

Lovely part of the world! Stayed in a farmhouse there before a GNR one year and it's great!
Probably clear a hangover quick too!

Same issue for us....4 of us looking to go for the full weekend, cant find any sensible accommodation so we probably won't bother.

We don't really want to stay in Hexham or Sunderland or Darlington or anywhere else. After travelling 3 hours to get to the North East, we don't really want to spend another couple of hours travelling to and from Newcastle.

The event is in Newcastle, so people will rightly want to stay in Newcastle.

It literally takes 15 minutes or less to get to all 3 of those places on a train that stops 5 minutes from the stadium, if that.

Like I said, after travelling to the North East, we don't want to be buggering around with more travelling around the local area constantly.

Drive to Sunderland, train to Newcastle, train back to Sunderland to get refreshed and changed after the rugby, train back to Newcastle, train back to Sunderland to sleep; then repeat on Sunday. That would be assuming the train timetables fitted with our schedule on the day, and they ran late into the night (both days) otherwise you are messing around with taxis etc...

Actually it looks like the last train on Saturday night to Sunderland is 23:18 and takes 28 minutes.

The event is in Newcastle, so we want to stay in Newcastle.

I did - nothing under £1000


absolutely! we've managed to get somewhere in Darlington - but we will have the same amount of travelling by train as if we were going to Manchester - on top of that we have to drive back on the Sunday night as the bank holiday is the Monday before!
Bad bad move by the RFL.

Tune Hotel has 5 double rooms left at £147 per night according to Expedia

New Gate has rooms at £144 per night

Sleeperz has 4 rooms left at £275 per night

Hampton by Hilton has rooms at £159 per night

All within the city centre.