High ticket prices keep average fans away from Boks

FORMER Italy coach Nick Mallett was fired as the Springbok coach several years ago for suggesting that the Test ticket prices were too expensive, but his point is still valid today.

It was a shame to see all the open seats at the Rugby Championship clash between the Springboks and Australia at Loftus Versfeld last Saturday and I bet there are a lot of curious supporters waiting to see if Soccer City will be a sellout this weekend.

The empty seats at Loftus could be attributed to several factors, including the fact that SA’s die-hard fans might have opted to watch at a bar or at home to keep an eye on the Absa Currie Cup and the Test, or perhaps they were frustrated with the Boks’ performance in the three away Tests. But there is no doubt that the ludicrous ticket prices were one of the main contributing factors.

Most of the tickets for the Test were sold at R600, while a bunch went on special for R350.

But while one may dish out R350 with a smile, R600 will rule out a large portion of the middle-class families living fairly modest lives.

For years golf has been singled out as a sport for the elite with a round at a good course costing between R150 and R500 depending on one’s membership status — the best courses obviously cost more — but rugby is not far off.

At this rate a large portion of our population can only dream about watching the Boks live.

For those who do not know how the Test model works, each host union has to pay the South African Rugby Union (Saru) a cash guarantee of close to R10m if they are awarded a Test match, and the union handles every aspect of the game.

Saru, however, has taken over the Soccer City Test as a means of generating money to be distributed among the socalled smaller provincial unions that do not have the luxury of top-class facilities to host Tests.

Given this, one could argue that the provinces are to blame for the high ticket prices, but that said, some tickets at Saru’s Test were the same price.

In Saru’s defence, though, some tickets were on sale at R250 — albeit that the second bunch of 7,000 tickets was only made available on Monday.

The organisers of these Tests could argue until they are blue in the face, but the big difference in price between a Bok game and a Bafana Bafana game cannot be justified on the grounds that the Boks are one of the best teams in the world, and the rugby ticket prices are in line with those internationally.

Simply put, the tickets are expensive, particularly in the context of the tough economic times we are experiencing.

To put these prices into perspective, a family of four living a modest life will be better off watching a Test on television because it would cost close to R3,000 (for tickets, parking, a boerewors roll and a cold drink) if they went to the stadium.

With rugby being a business and Test matches serving an important purpose in allowing the top provinces in SA to remain self-sufficient, perhaps the solution to this dilemma is to devise a Test model that would be inclusive for the majority of the population.

They could still make a large portions of tickets available for R600, but perhaps a few thousand more should be made available at cheaper prices, especially since many of the stadiums have more seats following the upgrades for the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

Another suggestion could be to make scholar tickets available at affordable prices.

This would not only avoid an embarrassing situation like that at Loftus last week where hundreds of seats remained empty, it would also make the Springboks more accessible to a bigger portion of our country’s diverse population.

Isaacs is rugby correspondent