I agree Michael.
I realise however that the chance of making the remainder of empty seats up with freebies is very small. Therefore I'd 'like' to see a few more 'sold' and we get a good house on!

I can't believe I'm needing/trying to explain on such a minimal matter. Trivial

jeeeeesus i think a few of you lot need to calm down. I think the point bowtun warrior is making is that the 14000 tickets that have "been sold" do make it sound a little bit like 14000 people have been down to the ticket office and bought them. he has never turned around and said "this is a rubbish idea blah blah blah" as some of you have seemed to insinuate. i don't care if worthington paid for them, they'll probably give them away or sell 'em cheap and its not like 4000 eager fans have bought them. for all we know, theyre giving 'em away and people are chucking them in the bin.
i'm not saying i agree with bowtun warrior im just saying that i think some of you lot are getting a bit up in arms over nothing. I don't think he was trying to put a negative spin on things, just a bit of perspective.

and calling people "retarded" is honestly uncalled for.

Don't forget Worthington's and Heinz - and local businesses - pump quite a bit of money into the club revenue coffers - you dont seriously expect Wigan to turn round to them and say "thanks for sponsoring us this year, would you mind buying 4,000 tickets at £16 a pop?" No... they would have purchased discounted tickets for a game otherwise that would have attracted the usual 2,000 extra floating fans who pay on the night or during the week. I don't know where 'given away' comes from but in my book if you purchase something and then distribute the tickets, it isn't exactly given away is it?

I applaud local businesses for their continued support.

Back to the OP: 4000 bums on seats in a stand that wouldn't normally be open generating additional income of £16k is good marketing and good PR. Well done Wigan.

I'm staggered that anyone can find a negative in this. I truly am.

I made a spoof post yesterday regarding other clubs finding this type of publicity initiative dishonourable. A friend then emailed me, to place a bet which club the first person to genuinely hold that view would come from.

I don't think either of us expected the poster to come from Wigan. But in retrospect, given other complaints that have been aired on this board in the past, perhaps we should have.

How many of last years Heinz Initiative tickets got "Thrown in the Bin"?

We'll only know on the night when there will be somewhere upto 4000 fans sat in that stand that may not neccesarily have been there otherwise (plus the income from Programmes,merchandise, drinks & Food etc) or there'll be no-one in and the club will have taken 16k in revenue that they wouldn't have.

We had 15k on for the corresponding fixture in 2009 with a similar initiative & the previosu year without this initiative we had 11.5 k.

This was what Bowton Warrior Originally Posted
[u" So reading between the lines of 10k odd season tickets + 5k freebies, we've sold a grand total of sod all to general public....

Or next to sod all!"[/u

Now apart from the Fact he got 2 statements totally incorrect are you telling me that this wasn't someone putting a Negative Spin on things? Terms Like "Sod All" or "Next to Sod all" are hardly appropriate in this instance are they?

Like I said earlier , anyones entitled to their opinion, but as I said don't get touchy (And Bear in mind the people defending Bowton Warrior are asking others to Calm Down when they're also getting their Knickers in a twist defending him) when others have a different perspective.

Hows about a Poll? Good Idea or Not? 14k Sold 2 weeks in advance of game a good thing or not?

I'd like a sneaky fiver on what the result would be!

irrespective of the two arguments going on here, that is a great reply from stop-this-song.

you have no idea how long i have been waiting to use that .gif.

It's beltin:)

Its a cracking idea to sell out a whole stand even at whatever discounted rate the companies have got them for.

We have 25000 seats available, and approx 10,000 of those are taken for each game by ST sales.

So why not offer family & corporate tickets at heavily discounted rates for the less attractive fixtures? Every discounted ticket sold is a bum on a seat that would otherwise remain just a seat. Even if 95% of those bums do not reurn, 5% may do, and they will fill an otherwise empty seat at another game. Eventually, there will be 15,000 ST holders.

The only "losers" may be the ST holders who work for the companies involved, but I guess they would still get a ticket anyway and give it to a friend/neighbour who may not have otherwise attended.

The more we can do to get the town behind us this season, the bigger the rewards will be next year, particularly if football continues to price itself out of the market to the casual watcher family - two adults & two kids to watch next Wednesday's fixture at the DW would cost me £70 miniumum!

So 14,000 tickets have been sold two weeks before the game, so how many more will be sold over the next 2 weeks. If we beat both Salford and Sheffield it should be up there with the Leeds game. This game has actually sold more tickets at this stage.