What’s it all worth anyway?
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By Scott MacLean
That grumbling sound you’ve heard over the past 24 hours? Probably the noise being made over the cost of tickets for the All Whites intercontinental playoff match against Peru next month at Westpac Stadium.
When announced my first thought at the prices (ranging from $59 to $129, up to half off for kids) was that by comparison with other events at the Stadium, that was more than reasonable and fortunately someone reputable had already done that research for me.
Canes v Lions $69-$129
Ed Mil Tattoo $89-$189
Football United ’14 $61-$141
Guns n Roses $92-$350
CWC QF ’15 $50-$150
Bled Cup ’16 $79-$142— Sports Freak (@Sportsfreakconz) October 16, 2017
Going further back, I spent north of $150 for a field level seat to the Wales v Ireland RWC 2011 quarter- final.
Reaction? Split to say the least, and to my surprise the greatest divide on my Twitter timeline seemed to be between media and football types
These are some pretty good ticket prices set by @NZ_Football for the Peru match. Very affordable. https://t.co/feo6Rswlbm
— Ben Strang (@BenJStrang) October 16, 2017
If NZF manage to sell this thing out at $95 a head for most of the seats, fair play to them. The odds of it happening are very slim.
— Patrick Barnes (@patrick478) October 16, 2017
and some that could see past the goalposts
May well be the case, but still think it’ll fill up. Suggestions (by some) that they’ll be lucky to get 10-15k is laughable.
— Andrew (@KloppGoff) October 16, 2017
Now the All Whites are NZ Football’s flagship product, and given the rarity with which we get home matches against teams outside of Oceania you can’t blame them putting something of a premium on it. And given what’s at stake it’s still good value.
Contrast that with the cost of tickets for the Lions Tests – a once in 12 years event – that seemed like a decent gouging of people’s pockets. But we’ll thank all those noisy northerners for the cash injection into the oval ball game even if a fair chunk of those were sold within tour packages.
And when it comes to rare sports events there’s actually not a lot of difference between a once in 4 and once in 12 year event. Four years is a long time between one-off games.
Do even these prices push it out of reach for some, or at least force a compromise in where they put any discretionary spending? Absolutely. Are they more than the Bahrain and Mexico games were, even accounting for inflation? Yes. But to accuse NZ Football – an organisation that has deserved several lumps for its (in)competency – of rorting fans and even putting the image of the game here at risk is laughable. Yes there were some of those.
So what happened once tickets went on sale to those who signed up to the waiting list?
20,000 tickets sold in first hour for @NZ_Football v Peru @WestpacStadium. A record for All Whites game in NZ. By comparison Mexico sold 14,500 on first day
— Shane Harmon (@ShaneHarmon) October 17, 2017
I think the NZF got this one right. And at least some were prepared to put their hand up that they perhaps didn’t.
20,000 tickets sold. I owe NZF an apology – I honestly thought they’d messed the chances of a sellout with the prices. Not the case at all.
— Patrick Barnes (@patrick478) October 17, 2017
Bring on November 11
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