If the ground is on course to selling out then credit where it's due.

My point was more about how the sport seemed to, once again, take what should be one of it's bigger events and 'cheapen' it with an offer through a deal site. Last season we had tickets to Wigan v Saints on Groupon and this year we have tickets to the WCC, an event that was attracting 30k+ a few years ago. It hardly portrays the sport and some of it's 'red letter' fixtures as premium, must-see events.

Once a business gets stuck on a treadmill of discounting, it can be very hard to get off.

I would agree with you if all tickets were discounted but only a small number have. We are heading for a sell out where 95-98% will have been sold at full price.

You didn't make that point originally.
And bear in mind nearly 20k of the seats sold will be full price with around 3k sold so far at between 20/40% discount in an effort to sell the "Away" end isn't the terrible effort some were trying to make out (we've had numerous leeds/saints and wolf fans seeming to take delight in certain perceived failings.).

I asked one was he going?
I went to the Widnes OT game
I went to 3 of the saints games
I went to all 3 of the Leeds games at elland road.

With regards to 30k figures
Leeds went from 33k to 27k in 3 years at elland road (cause for concern?)
The Last 3 at headingley went down to 21/20 then 19.
Is that a cause for concern?

There seems to be a bit of a Fad for bagging Wigan at the moment over attendances.
There's definitely some truth in it but I suspect a lot of it has to do with a number of other issues.
The SL war/takeover ( a lot of Leeds fans seem to feel miffed at this and want to pick up on anything negative about Wigan)
Salary cap issue
General anti Wigan (which will always be there, not to say that there isn't anti other club's and Leeds included it just seems very irrational bordering on ridiculous a lot of the time).

End of the day I think the general consensus is that the game in this country was struggling and needed to be improved significantly to stop the general malaise around the game even and in some instances especially it's own fans.

On a wider note I would encourage some fans to spend as much time as they do being negative and trying to spend some of it being positive.
I think a lot of the changes that have been made I what has been a relatively short period of time have been very positive.
The rule changes in particular have improved the game imo and I believe we've moved to the best play off system and I hope the play off series attendances reflect that, I just hope people try and get behind it and improve the games provide for us all.

I found that with my brewery business having shelf life slight deteriorating in quality within 6 weeks so ended up putting deals together which helped my sales but customers got used to it,
to my astonishment one customer had one cask open and serving when it was 2 month old but it had honey in so kept well
I never dropped to weatherspoons prices though

I've been more than happy to call out Leeds when I see fit and you're right, there are general trends that I don't believe that the clubs and the sport are doing enough to adapt to. I include Wigan and Leeds in that as much as anyone else.

However, what I will say is that Leeds' approach in recent years has quite clearly been to focus on lower volume and higher margin, rather than a "stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap" model that we see deployed by other clubs and the RFL. You only have to look at how Headingley is being reconfigured to see that - cheap standing capacity has been replaced with seats that will be selling for a matchday rate of around £35-£40 a seat. I highly doubt that there are many cheap or free tickets floating around LS postcodes, perhaps the only exception to that recently being last season's games at Elland Road - although I suspect that their hand was forced by the health and safety implications of playing an SL fixture in a building site.

I get that not all clubs can do that, but we literally have clubs going to the other extreme entirely because 'cheap tickets' is the only trick in their playbook. One of the things that helped the stack of cards collapse at Bradford was giving discounts to people who would have happily paid full price and at some point, Huddersfield are going to start asking those fans who've been enjoying 10+ years of £9 a game season tickets to start paying full price - Davy is, after all, on the same mortal coil as the rest of us.

My original comment was a glib remark in reaction to what I would argue is the 'cheapening' of what should be one of our major events. I don't think it's unfair or unjustified to call that into question. Tactical offers are fine in the right circumstances, but for what for what should be a major event?

Yes it was a glib remark, hence I could at that point only respond to a glib remark.

More informed comments like the one above are far more constructive

Not disagreeing with a lot of what you say
I had numerous reasons to be in co fact with Simon Collison who was the marketing manager then chief exec at Wigan from around 2006 to around 2016.
I think he was very successful and a bit of an unsung hero in Wigans rise over that period.
He told me that they had been to America to research marketing and o e thing that was clear was that giving tickets away NEVER works and heavily discounting is similar.
Wigan used to give tickets away in schools early years at JJB, crowds averaged around 10/11k
They stopped doing it around 2006 and crowds rised to an average over the next 10yeara of around 14k.

Last couple of years crowds have gone down, Wigan have tried promotional stuff but nowhere near to the level of "The Big One" or the Heinz stand day out.
Some of that has imcluded cheaper tickets but not sure that alone is the reason to the drop to around 11.5/12k.
State of the game and other social issues have played a part.

Top line is I want all our club's to get bigger attendances.
I believe that some of the changes made over the last 6 months or so we're the right ones but it will take time to undo a lot of the issues over the last 5 plus years.
A lot of fans seem to want Elston etc to fail (and sorry to say Leeds fams seem to be quite vocal about this) but in truth the game couldn't carry on going the way it was.
They seem to want to point to Wigans falling attendances of the last 2 years in isolation and use it as an argument that the changes to the game were wrong and Gary and Nigel were right all along, they weren't imo.
Let's see where we are in 3/5 years, they may or may not succeed, but a lot of club allegiances have to be put to one side here for the good of the game.

Biggest crowd of the weekend?
Where was everyone else at the other games?

I obviously can't speak for all Leeds fans, and I obviously do want Elstone to succeed because if he does, we all succeed. But I do agree with Gary Hetherington's position that clubs were using the S8 structure and Red Hall as an excuse for their own failings.

When you have high profile club chairmen and CEOs using some of the excuses that they've used to explain poor crowds, I can't feel that Hetherington has/had a point:

"Fans don't know when they're on holiday." - How many people really base their holidays or ticket purchasing decisions around this? And even if it does affect season ticket sales to a greater degree than I suspect it does, does that really affect the 'walk up' market?

"We don't have enough notice of when we're playing" - despite anywhere between 10 and 20 days between the S8 fixtures being publically announced and a club's first home game.

"It's hard to sell corporate hospitality" - from a club that doesn't even have a page about their corporate hospitality on their website.

"Something something away fans" - the less said about this, the better.

"It's hard to sell sponsorships" - from clubs that seem to have an almost revolving door of sponsors and others that have to raffle-off sponsorship deals like a bag of meat at the local WMC.

Stuff like this, for me, really doesn't uphold the argument that the Super Eights and Wood / Rimmer were the things running the sport into the ground. The real reasons are far, far closer to home.

Nope
The biggest crowd of the week was at Hull the night before, nice try though.

The game was free on Sky Sports Mix, that would have had an impact. Leeds brought less than usual. Some would be saving up for the WCC, evening kick-off, Storm Eric.

Choose your pick

I don't class thursday as a weekend.
Anyway carry on trying to put a negative spin on a 20k plus crowd and Wigan.
I'm sure people like you are part of the answer not the problem.

Good post.
I've criticised the quality of play in recent years but I think the recent change in rules albeit early days is having a positive impact plus most teams seem to trying to play a more expansive style of play.
Elstone has only just really started so Im quite hopeful that we will start to see other changes that will benefit the game.

Good to see that Wigan appear on course to achieve a better crowd that the WCC in 2017 against Cronulla.

Wigan's decline in crowds over recent years has been a cause from concern, dropping from around an average of 16-17,000 in 2010 and 2011 to around 11,000 by 2018. Personally, I suspect the tedious nature of Wane's tactics contributed heavily to this as Wigan have been successful on the field in this period.

But I've never understood why some fans seem to take pleasure in their rivals getting lower crowds. As a Saints fans, I didn't enjoy seeing only 11,000 at the DW last week for the Leeds match, but I guess that many fans will have decided to go to this game instead .

Maybe moving the WCC back to the curtain raiser for the season is a better idea? Here's hoping for at least 22,000 in anyway.