Should we be doing more to fill our stadium?

Tomorrow night we host the Super league champions Leeds, the best team in the competition. With our newly expanded stadium it’s a shame that we will probably not have a full house. Should we be marketing this game better? There is a bring a mate for a fiver voucher in each season ticket for tomorrow’s game, but we don’t seem to match the other big teams in terms of offering more reduced price tickets. Most of the other big clubs give shed loads of tickets away for the lesser games. It would seem that Warrington have a business plan that does not include offering loads of discounted tickets to inflate attendance figures. It would be interesting to see what the respective turnovers of all the clubs are, I would guess we would be up there, as most of the fans we have are prepared to pay to watch the club, this transfers into our excellent away following.

Look at what Saints are doing.

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Although, I’m not sure this makes sense, as it’s essentially half a season ticket for £42. If Warrington did this it would make buying a season ticket far less attractive.

Think of the logic from a business POV. 11,000 crowd - 8000 season ticket @ tickets at £20 (OK I know its less but it makes the maths easier) = £60,000. Reduce the price to say £15 and you would have to sell 4000 to simply breakeven. That sounds easy BUT those extra 1000 people will need a bigger "bribe" to come. We are still in a "limbo" state where it just doesnt make business sense to drop the price to try and get more people in. Bearing in mind that in the majority of cases the south stand as at (or close) to capacity the area for increasing crowds is in fact within the away support. Given their form, sky coverage and more importantly the M62 on a Friday you will not get a large following from Leeds for this game. If you want to get more away support in from Leeds for games like thi....tell Sky you wont move the game to friday night on their whim (but it aint gonna happen)

1 .Exciting flowing rugby
2. The RFL chopping & changing of fixtures to suit Sky should be stopped...they should plan for the season ahead &
3.Stop scheduling fixtures for Friday evenings involving crossing the pennines because that hits attendancies.

Giving away free tickets isn't the way forward IMO. It just devalues the spectacle and the experience. To move to the next level in terms of home support, i.e Wigan & Leeds, we need to entice 3-4k of the 190k people in Warrington who don't come to the HJ. It doesn't sound too difficult does it??

I think that offers on the lesser games should be used more. This will then entice them to return and pay top dollar for the bigger games. Simples.

I agree, get the kids in get 'em hooked.

How much does it cost to get £7 in tesco vouchers, is it about £350?

That's only been happening for about the 30 years...

The main reason we won't get a full house tomorrow is that Leeds won't bring that many. If we were averaging 11,500 in a 25,000 capacity stadium then there would be more of a need to fill it and we could do things like issuing freebies. Then again, we could do what the Bulls have done, make the season tickets less expensive, and we might get more people in that way, but then again, look what's happened to the Bulls? The gates are still rising and so long as we are successful they will continue to rise.

I think that Warrington is a peculiar case where we have the nearby towns of StHelens and Wigan that have had prolonged periods of success that have attracted support from the outer areas of our town. Look at the number of Saints shirts around westbrook Asda and the posters on here.

There is also the migration from these towns plus Widnes and Salford into Sankey, Penketh and Birchwood, where family ties bond these immigrants to their old clubs. There are also outlying areas of Warrington that have little ties to the town other than paying council tax, such as Lymm, Culcheth and Burtonwood.

So the figure of 190 000 can be reduced substantially. We need a sustained period of success to attract new supporters especially kids, they are the future. We also need to keep ticket prices to a realistic level. Breaking the £200 barrier for the South stand will be a big blow.

No, let's not cheapen the product. That's a desperate West Yorkshire trick.

Bringing your kids should be reasonable, I got hooked on the Wire on 10/15/20 quid season tickets and the rest followed as I got older.

As soon as people get the impression that a rugby match isn't worth 16-20 quid, it takes a long time to get them paying the full amount. Sure, use a bit of imagination for London or Catalan games, but let's not panic. The crowds and revenues we bring in are very sustainable.

I no longer live in the town, so apologies if this already happens, but IMO the club should be promoting itself in schools not only in Warrington but the surrounding areas. Regular visits from Wolfie accompanied by 2 or 3 of the playing staff to talk about the game, fitness, nutrition, and/or help with PE lessons. Kids who've spent an hour or two with some players (and Wolfie) coming home with autographed stuff, savings vouchers for the shop, a fixture list and the desire to pester their parents to go and watch a game. Not only would this entice new fans, but you never know, it could make all the difference in turning the next Steven Gerrard or Wayne Rooney into the next Sam Tomkins or Lee Briers.

Remember that we have improved our gates considerably since we left Wilderspool and we're still doing that. The club has also made tremendous progress in increasing our incomes streams from other sources too.

It does, so apologies accepted.

They cut the points towards the end of 2011 to 1 point per £1 spent, so I think it would be £700 now. You'd need to be a massive shopper to get anything out of those Clubcards, Tesco would be getting more from the data provided to them.

The four games that are "friend for a fiver" and "friend for a tenner" should be advertised more as people might forget that they have those vouchers.

HJ Stadium Season Average Attendances

2004 - 9,890
2005 - 11,001
2006 - 10,407
2007 - 10,517
2008 - 9,500
2009 - 9,221
2010 - 10,750
2011 - 11,108
2012 - 11,675

If we push for it there is a possibility that we could break 12,000 this year. Some years like 2006 and 2007 were boosted a bit due to playing Saints twice. What we are doing now is having consistency with the attendances, certain matches used to have a steep drop. We've not had a home SL attendance under 10,000 since Cas in 2011, and that was close with 9958.