I paid £15 for the West Stand last night . Great value but was sitting on my own . The people that usually around me were nowhere to be seen . Disappointing.

EW

We didn’t go had other plans to be fair,we’d sort of hoped for a weekend game but there you go,I feel the issue is price I’d have priced it at 15 quid in all parts of the ground,money is being squeezed and sport for family men and women isn’t an essential.

The other issue is the structure of the comp,how many times in recent seasons have Wigan drawn yet another super league team,the swinton and dewsbury trips are a few years ago now but both where well attended I seem to recall I wonder as well if people are a bit jaded with the opposition as well?

I absolutely agree with all of that and ‘if’ people can go every week it’s all good but not everybody can or does. My issue is more with what we’re charging away fans in superleague games when they come or what we’ll charge those casual Wigan fans that don’t have season tickets. I worry that the casual walk up fan will find things a) a touch too expensive and b) a hassle, given that they can’t just pay cash/card on the turnstiles anymore and as you rightfully point out, the games are being televised more and more, so some will just not bother.

I don’t know what the answer is but I’m sure it’s not charging away fans £30. I think we and the other clubs need to get our heads together on what can be done to try and tempt more people to go to away games. We also need to keep an eye on our own walk up crowd and make sure we’re not putting them off.

Me and a couple of mates discussed the cup set up a couple of weeks back and we all agreed that it’s not right how late superleague clubs are coming in. It should be a round earlier IMO and you then get more chance of pulling a Championship/League one club out. It doesn’t just let superleague fans potentially visit a new ground/town but as with Whitehaven today, it can be a massive financial boost.

OT, but does anyone know if the road to the back of the stadium (past the gym and what was the soccer dome) switches to being one way after a match?

It's twice now this season that, fans have been using both lanes to exit and cars have still been coming up?

The problem is Jukes you're looking at it the wrong way. If any business owner attributed their lack of custom to issues or failings with the customers themselves then that's a one way ticket to closure.

Price may not be the issue for all stay away fans (I'm sure it's not actually) but the fact is thousands of people are making the choice not to attend when they did years ago. The club has to find a way of persuading them that it is 'worth' them making the choice to attend again and that word worth is the crucial thing - is it worth it in terms of financial value, entertainment value on the field, match day experience etc. As an example I'm playing golf today with a groupon voucher - £8 for 3-4 hours entertainment. It takes that long because we're hopeless but you get the point. I'm not saying the two forms of entertainment are directly comparable but people will increasingly make those comparisons in light of the cost of living crisis.

Just as an add on to this I wonder if the new head of marketing will consider some form of research with the fan database with a particular focus on those who haven't been in a while.

We said the same thing surely it’d benefit all concerned by pushing the SL clubs in a round earlier but the high ups just don’t see it sadly

Surely those Cas fans could have purchased South Stand tickets for £24 on the day as I believe there's no rule they can't.

NK
You keep mentioning the cas £30 thing, it's wrong, I think everyone agrees with that.

But that doesn't affect why Wigan fans didn't go last night.

And we keep talking about it as if its a Wigan thing, it's not, the whole of RL have got this problem
The Challenge cup just magnifies it

We can't charge walk up fans the same as season tickets because people just won't buy season tickets.
Someone just mentioned they would have gone if itched been a weekend game, but it couldn't as it was selected as the Friday TV game, make it 15 across all the ground - fine - but when people.dont come do we charge 10 or 5 etc?
People moaning about why was it not on CH4 for free, rather than Premier and having to pay for it, Wow. I mean God forbid the RFL should get money out of a TV deal.

There were quite a few familiar faces missing around me last night, all our lot went.
Times are difficult, possibly the most testing times since the late 70s/80s financially wise
Plenty different reasons for that and that's a whole can of worms but as Paul Weller once said "The public gets what the wants".
And it's the same at Wigan, I agree with a lot of people who talk about reaching out to lapsed ST Holders etc.
I think they could HYPE things at times better etc.

But as you know, Fans of our own club continually running it down for the pettiest of reasons doesn't help.

But Reducing tickets to a Fiver as I originally replied to is not the answer, it's a short cut to going out of business.
Maddogg reply that I'm thinking about it the wrong way, I'd disagree, but I get i would obviously

Creat atmosphere, hype it up, etc etc yes
But cheapening the experience etc, when WE ARE ALREADY CHEAP and possibly the cheapest in our Bracket is not the answer.

Having this conversation around a Challenge cup tie is also difficult.
For whatever reason everyone wants to get to Wembley, bit no one wants to pay to watch the games that get you there?
That's a RL wide problem and I'm not sure how that can be fixed. But I'll guarantee making CC Games a Fiver is not the answer.

Rogues also pointed out earlier, last 20 years at JJB/DW out attendances averages are higher than the last 20 at CP.

What I will say is the perception created by social media is the total opposite, that we were playing to 20k at CP every week and now we're playing to 5k every week.

Neither are true.

I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing here. I’ve said I thought the pricing last night was about right. My concern is the weekly league rounds and making sure we don’t price people out of them. I’ve no issue with the cup costs and the fact the crowd was so low highlights that it isn’t just a Wigan thing or a money thing. There is a general apathy towards cup games, play off games etc.

You will always get the bulk of your crowd from season tickets and they absolutely should cost less per game than a walk up ticket but we need to ensure we don’t price the casual fans out and that’s my point. Without labouring the £30 point, that applies to Wigan fans as well and a ticket on the day in the South is £25. I think it’s a gone a little too far tbh and IMO is a lazy way of making up for the shortfall from the lost fans. So it’s basically like we’ve given up trying to get them back because if they weren’t coming for £20-£24, they’re certainly not coming for £25-£30. To many people a few extra quid may not mean a great deal but in the current climate it will impact on plenty of others.

Hopefully this new marketing exec has something up their sleeve that can bring in fans and income, without simply charging more per ticket for the die hards/regular walk up crowd.