Bradford Junior Ticket Idea : Fri Jan 21, 2011 7:22 pm  

http://www.barla.org.uk/News/Details.asp?id=2462 Potentially great idea from Bradford, getting more juniors playing the game and more people through the turnstiles.

http://www.barla.org.uk/News/Details.asp?id=2462 Potentially great idea from Bradford, getting more juniors playing the game and more people through the turnstiles.

Re: Bradford Junior Ticket Idea : Sat Jan 22, 2011 1:38 am  

Harlequins dd this a couple of years back. It was a complete flop down in London.

Will be interesting to see if it works differently in Bradford

Re: Bradford Junior Ticket Idea : Sat Jan 22, 2011 8:54 am  

The issue you have in St Helens is the sheer number of amateur clubs. On average, Id say there are at least 150-200 players at every age group so from u7s to u16s that's 1500-2000 free season tickets. With a limited capacity crowd at Saints, they would be severely restricting their income, especially for the big games where they could sell out. Bradford/Keighley service area I would guess don't have as many clubs/players and odsal doesn't have any capacity issues, which gives them more flexibility to do something like this.

Re: Bradford Junior Ticket Idea : Sun Jan 23, 2011 1:07 am  

It wasn't quite this deal in London, but similar - offering heavily discounted entry to amateur players from loca clubs. The one drawback was that the Quins played many games that year on a Saturday, as did the amateur teams. So it didn't really work so well. I think the whole London transport issue also came into force. For a lot of the teams, getting a free ticket to Quins was like being offered a free ticket to Saints.... in Leeds City Centre. It might have been a nice thought, but it takes more than a free ticket to convince people to make a 4 hour round journey ! Like a lot of sympathisers down here, I think Quins' only hope of improving crowds is to develop a fanbase amongst the people who live within reasonable distance of the ground, like a northern club. That would exclude all but two amateur teams down here.

Saints, on the other hand, could win or lose from such a scheme. On the one hand, as long as the fixtures don't clash, the heavily concentrated nature of Saints' support might well see lots of people encouraged to turn up. On the other hand, how many kids playing in St Helens amateur teams don't already go to Saints ? It'd be worth doing some research on it, but I wouldn't jump right in.