Have season ticket holders been done?

[cpwigan]

I want trophies and that is all! What does it matter if we play well or not?

Exactly Rob. You tell them!

[DaveO]

I want trophies and that is all! What does it matter if we play well or not?

Because we won't be in a position to win any if no one pays to watch the league games either to sponsor the team or to simply fork out for season or match day tickets.

If fans play the system as the team is supposed to be doing and only turn up for the big games IL would have a heart attack.

[DaveO]

You should be asking the sponsors not the season ticket holders.

Do sponsors, sponsor the team to watch the likes of Sam Tomkins or Lewis Tierney?

The answer to that is obvious IMO.

As a season ticket holder if Sam and other have been rested more than injured then yes I do feel cheated.

This is because I don't believe there has been, or is ever, any need to rest players to extent it seems to have happened. Even if we win the GF it won't prove anything in this regard one way or the other.

The fact we had an exciting game on Friday is irrelevant. We still lost at the end of the day and I never find watching a loss ultimately satisfying whether we score some good tries or not. Had we won that match it would have been great but we didn't and if people really don't care what the league results are and just want to see the side win the GF why bother going to league games at all?

Support then becomes a simple matter of statistics. Have we got enough points to qualify for the playoffs and if we have who cares who turns out on the pitch and whether a game like Friday's is won or lost?

Sport is about competition, not statistics and I personally find it ludicrous people are so quick to write off watching reserve strength sides because they are supporters and it is somehow disloyal to do otherwise.

I went on Friday as I am a season ticket holder but I wasn't expecting a win. We did get an exciting game but we still lost. I should not be going to games expecting to lose.

Sponsors don't sponsor the game because they want to watch any particular players, or even because they want a particular team to win. For the sponsors, it is about advertising to the largest possible target audience for the money they pay. For them it is simply about economics, not favourite players.

The largest possible target audience will be the one that watches a team with its star players in. If people switch off or don't go because the star players play few games the value of the sponsorship is reduced. Wigan are worth sponsoring because it has players like Sam, Lockers and Richards in it because people want to watch this standard of player play.

[i'm spartacus]

The largest possible target audience will be the one that watches a team with its star players in. If people switch off or don't go because the star players play few games the value of the sponsorship is reduced. Wigan are worth sponsoring because it has players like Sam, Lockers and Richards in it because people want to watch this standard of player play.

You're going to turn this into a chicken and egg thing, I can just feel it, but you actually make my point without realising it.

The Sponsors don't care about who wins or loses, or who is a star player. They are there because they see it as good business to use this particular method of advertising. If it becomes a waste of money they will spend there brass somewhere else. The sponsors are only there because Wigan have a high profile and its economical.

Let me put it by way of an analogy. Suppose I have a business and I advertise in the Wigan Reporter because it has a bigger distribution than the Leigh Journal. Over a period of 12 months, the Leigh Journal becomes more popular because people are sick of reading estate agent adverts, and its distribution becomes much larger than the Wigan Reporter. I couldn't care less that the Wigan reporter has lost customers, their business is no concern of mine. I just want to promote my business to the largest audience possible, so I swap to the Journal.

Don't kid yourself that a business will care about team sheets and winners. They only care about customers and sales.

[cpwigan]

I do not think there is a perfect answer to this issue BUT clearly sponsors do care about exposure / impressing clients etc. So whether we like it or not Sam T pulls in companies etc. just as a Martin Offiah, an Ellery Hanley did. Match day sponsorship is arranged well in advance but it is likely to leave said sponsor with a poorer experience but that can occur for many reasons positive / negative. Looking at the bigger picture the fact that fixtures are relatively meaningless and treated as such cannot help the sport or individual clubs etc. Look at how the RFL struggles for sponsors or Wigan RLFC for that matter where our replacement sponsor is effectively an IL project company rather than a globally renowned brand. Nobody is fighting to sponsor or show RL in Britain.

[butt monkey]

Yeah but surely the BIGGEST exposure a sponsor can have is for those teams that DO play in the big matches and also WIN them.

The old adage "nobody likes to be associated with losers" always rings true in my mind and I'm sure if Wigan won every league game but fell short in every run-up to a final, the sponsors would struggle to justify sponsoring us. It's the cheap media exposure they crave not seeing a certain player in a team - they are sponsored individually for that purpose

[Kittwazzer]

Seems to me Dave that you want the toffee and the ha'penny!

As a season ticket holder, you want to turn up for your pre-paid games and see the best Wigan team available.

But if you shell out for a season ticket, that also makes you a supporter who presumably wants success for his team which nowadays means only winning GFs or CCFs. It also determines whether a coach is successful or not.

Unfortunately, the way SL is structured now with the league having so little value, the weekly games will always be secondary to the knockouts (for which people have to pay extra and fewer do each season).

The situation is a farce and has been since 1996.

But to answer the question. Season ticket holders get value for money if they turn up to all home games as it will have cost them less. And they get little extras thrown in. But that's as far as it goes!

[RobWigan]

I want trophies and that is all! What does it matter if we play well or not?

Because we won't be in a position to win any if no one pays to watch the league games either to sponsor the team or to simply fork out for season or match day tickets.

If fans play the system as the team is supposed to be doing and only turn up for the big games IL would have a heart attack.

Dont we have the best average attendance in Super League?

[No straw damn us]

I want trophies and that is all! What does it matter if we play well or not?

Because we won't be in a position to win any if no one pays to watch the league games either to sponsor the team or to simply fork out for season or match day tickets.

If fans play the system as the team is supposed to be doing and only turn up for the big games IL would have a heart attack.

Dont we have the best average attendance in Super League?

Not this season, Leeds do.