With the ticket prices for the 2023 Six Nations matches in Cardiff having just been revealed, it’s illuminating to look at exactly how they have risen over the decades.
A milestone will be reached when Wales host England during the 2023 Championship, with the most expensive tickets on sale at £130, a new record, while fans will have to fork out up to £120 to watch Ireland provide the opposition at the Principality Stadium.
Tickets start at £40 for both games, but inevitably it's the top prices that have grabbed the headlines and provoked yet more criticism of the Welsh Rugby Union. So just how have we reached this point?
As you can imagine, I’ve been to a fair few Championship matches down the years and I’ve got the ticket stubs to prove it. Before I took up the pen, I was there purely as a fan and it’s something of an eye-opener to look at just what I paid for a ticket back then.
The 1980s
The earliest stub I have is for the Wales-England game at the Old National Ground in March 1987. To watch that violent Five Nations encounter, standing in the South Enclosure, cost me the princely sum of £3.50! From that point on, you can track an increase, albeit a very gradual one.
The following year, a West Enclosure ticket for the memorable 1988 Wales-Scotland match, was £4. For that, you got to see Jonathan Davies and Ieuan Evans weave their magic on the road to the Triple Crown. That was the price again for Wales-Ireland in 1989 (Upper East Terrace) and Wales-France in 1990 (Lower East Terrace). Then, in 1991, to watch England claim their first victory in Cardiff for 28 years from the Upper East Terrace set you back a whopping £5!
The 1990s and noughties
Jump forward to the title-winning season of 1994 and stand tickets (North and West) for the Scotland and France games both cost £19. That seemed a fortune at the time. Little did we know what lay ahead! But, even a decade later in the Six Nations era, with the all-seater Millennium Stadium having replaced the old ground, prices were still a world away from what they are today.
In the autumn of 2005, you could watch Mike Ruddock’s Grand Slam-winning Welsh side take on all three Tri Nations teams - New Zealand, South Africa and Australia - for the grand total of £99. So, effectively, £33 per game if you bought the bundle! That same year, the average price for a ticket for Wales-England was £42.
Yet move forward a decade to 2015 and that figure was £85. From that point on, you see a series of landmarks hit. In 2017, the £100 milestone was reached for the first time, with that being the highest price for the England game. The following year, the top ticket for Scotland and France in Cardiff was up at £95.
Then in 2019, when England and Ireland were in town, a Category A ticket set you back £110. It was then the turn of Scotland and France to go past the £100 mark in 2020, with the highest price being £105.
All the games were, of course, behind closed doors in 2021 due to the Covid pandemic. But come this season and the fans were back. They returned to find a further hike, with the top price for Scotland and France being £115 in 2022.
The visit by the Scots still drew a near capacity crowd of 73,782. But it was the controversial Friday night French game which really saw ticket prices becoming a major talking point. As we headed into match week, it became apparent there were still some 10,000 unsold seats available via the WRU website.
A number of clubs hadn’t taken up their full allocation, wary of not being able to offload them, while the word was there were going to be fewer travelling French fans than usual, with there having been pre-tournament uncertainty over supporters being allowed in amid Covid restrictions in Wales. That meant there were far more tickets available on public sale via the WRU than is normally the case.
But whereas any such surplus usually gets snapped up, that wasn’t the case this time. The tickets just weren’t shifting. It became clear from public feedback that there were two main reasons for this: the challenges presented by a Friday night kick-off in terms of getting to and from the ground and the ticket prices, with the only ones left available from the WRU costing £105 and £100.
You also had some clubs struggling to sell the tickets they had bought and it ended up with a number of cut-price last-minute deals being offered. The end result of all this was an attendance of 63,208. Two years ago, for the same Six Nations fixture, it was 73,931, while in 2018 it was 74,169. Those were both Saturday games. More pertinently, the last time the Wales-France match was played on a Friday evening was in 2016 and on that occasion the crowd figure was 74,160. The WRU would point to fewer fans of Les Bleus travelling this year. But, as I say, the surplus which that helped create was not hoovered up by Welsh fans.
Now attention turns to the 2023 tournament, following this week's announcement. Once again, the WRU have been accused of pricing "real fans" out of the market with the cost of tickets. Just what constitutes a "real fan" is something of a moot point, with event goers who only attend Wales games having an important role to play in putting bums on seats and swelling the coffers.
On that last point, it's important to remember international rugby is the main source of funding for the domestic game in Wales, so the Union do have to look to maximise ticket income. The challenge is pitching prices at the right level.
If the England and Ireland games both sell out, which is pretty likely, then the WRU will have some justification in standing by their pricing strategy. It may well, of course, mean a lot of tickets being hoovered up by the corporate market and a large contingent of away fans, particularly for the England game. Whether the end justifies the means in terms of filling the stadium and generating the most money possible is probably an argument for another day!
SIX NATIONS TICKET PRICES DOWN THE YEARS
1970: Wales v Scotland, North Stand - £1: 10 shillings (£1.50)
1982: Wales v Scotland, West Enclosure - £2
1986: Wales v Scotland, Lower East Terrace - £2.75
1987: Wales v England, South Enclosure - £3.50
1989: Wales v Ireland, Upper East Terrace - £4
1990: Wales v France, South Stand Upper - £12
1991: Wales v England, Upper East Terrace - £5
1993: Wales v England, Lower East Terrace - £6
1994: Wales v Scotland, North Stand - £19; Wales v France, West Stand - £19
2000: Wales v France, Upper Tier, BT Stand - £30
2005: Average ticket price for Wales v England - £42
2014: Wales v Italy - Between £25 and £65; Wales v Scotland - Between £25 and £70; Wales v France - Between £30 and £80.
2015: Average ticket price for Wales v England - £85
2016: Top price £85. Surplus tickets, not taken up by the clubs, went on public sale at: Scotland - £75 and £65; France - £85 and £80; Italy - £70 and £60.
2017: Wales v England - £40, £70, £95, £100; Wales v Ireland - £40, £60, £85, £95.
2018: Scotland and France - £40, £60, £80, £85, £95; Italy - £20 (U16s) £30, £50, £60, £65, £75
2019: England and Ireland - Category A: £110, Category B: £100, Category C: £95, Category D: £70, Category E: £40
2020: Scotland and France - £40, £65, £90, £95, £105; Italy - £20 (U16s) £30, £50, £60, £65, £75.
2021: Behind closed doors
2022: Scotland and France - £40, £70, £100, £105, £115; Italy - £30 (U17s £15), £55 (U17s £27.50), £65 (U17s £32.50), £70 (U17s £35), £80 (U17s £40).
2023: Ireland - £40, £80, £105, £110 and £120; England - £40, £90, £115, £120, £130
