Just seen that Bradford are advertizing cheap tickets on Groupon.

£22 down to £9 for an adult -

your pick of games - either London, Widnes or Catalan.

You would have thought they would have learnt about silly ticket prices from nearly going out of business less than a year back?

No the difference here is that is for specific matches that nobody really cares about. Last time it was cheap as season tickets.

But if this becomes common enough to be expected, folk will start taking account of that when deciding whether their season ticket is worthwhile.

At the moment it's a relatively straightforward - season ticket is £150 (or whatever), £15 at the turnstiles - I need to go to ten games to break even.

If some of those £15s become fivers, that depresses the value of your season ticket.

Anyway, this is all pretty new and remains to be seen what happens but I think clubs need to be wary of assuming season ticket holders won't mind about paying more than others for the same service. It's not like there's a lack of supply - I don't see many lock-outs these days.

I'd want to receive more than £9 so it doesn't work for me.

How many supporters who normally go and spend the full £22 will have picked up the Groupon offer?

its not necessarily going to attract 'new' 'never been before' fans is it?

Fair point but what company does n't use loss leaders to try and get new customers in, you will always get current customers buying at the cheaper price but hopefully some new customers will come through the door and possibly stay.

It's exactly what we did with cheap tickets at the gala and who was complaining about that?

True - but you need to target them properly so that potential new customers know they're available.

It`s a hard one to call really , I suppose you have to hope some people get bitten by the "rugby bug" and carry on coming back to pay full price.I would say these people are now few and far between as there are plenty of things to do on a match day that do not cost the earth unless you capture the kids who drive the families leisure time.We found that when we had a pub , the amount of ex Fax fans that came in on Sundays instead of going to the match was unbelievable I`d ask them all why they stopped coming to matches and there were a variety of differant excuses and they were quite happy going walking and lunch out rather than coming with us to the match.
I think the Club could have made more of the fact the Club is 140 yrs old this year , they could have tried Thrum Hall reunions at matches to try to get ex fans back plus invited all old Fax players back , fans wearing oldest shirt , memorabelia night , things like that. Plus get themselves out on the streets of Halifax geting the players talking to kids for a few weekends persuading them to try it.
I was lucky when I was a kid I lived in the district the players lived , I only had to walk on the end of Francis St to see players playing rugby with the local kids they were part of the community the club was woven into the thread of the Town . I`d only be 6/7 when one of the players got me to go up and watch and that`s 60 yrs since but things arn`t like that any more people have far more choice of what to spend their money on so you just have to go out there and persuade them to give us a try.Plus it`s no good doing things once and saying it didn`t work you have to do it time and again to get any benifit from it.
After saying all this I suppose it`s down to money and if the RFL would allow extra money to the clubs for promotion of the game it may make a differance but I find the empty spaces on the terraces alarming .

Cheap ticket offers only work if you strictly control them

Families only, no kids, no entry

Have a dedicated area where these tickets are used for, allowing your existing hard core support to see the results of the offer removing any rumours of exploitation, provide cheap kids food deals and free merchandise if possible ( t shirts,hats or at the least cheap flags ) , dedicate it a family area with no alcohol sales

The problem is this requires a lot more extra work than just printing a ticket, and club management are inherently lazy

Bradford like many clubs in the past think throwing away free or cheap tickets is the answer to many problems. IF you are going to go down the route of cheaper tickets then you need to have a long term strategy and a plan in mind in what you are wanting to achieve. If the money is not there to cover the shortfall then you will end up like Bradford did just recently. Bradford seem to be once again undervalueing games and hoping. The problems in the game are often self inflicted, lazyness and thinking short term, with no real plan for the long term future. The axing of the U20s and DR arrangement is a good example. The plan for the new league structure another example of this and why the game is heading down the road to disaster. I have slowly lost interest to the point where I dont really care that much about the game and the future. I watch an NRL game if I can as its quality stuff most times,but SL forget it! And Championship rugby for me this season has been a bit flat and I feel that the comp has been cheapened and made a joke by the Dual Reg. Just dont enjoy following it as I once did. And once clubs like Bradford start throwing cheap tickets in, the product and game loses something for me.

Bradford are offering family tickets for £22 single tickets £9 but 2 for £17 , "same old same old "me thinks.

Think I might change my team to the Bulls, I've got three wives and sixteen children, a cheap day out for my family!