Club Statement: Ticketing

[josie andrews]

* Wigan Warriors apologise to supporters who faced issues with tickets for Friday’s home Betfred Super League fixture.

* Club provides supporters with updated information on the process and current situation.

WIGAN WARRIORS WOULD LIKE TO APOLOGISE TO SUPPORTERS WHO FACED ISSUES WITH TICKETS FOR THE FIRST HOME GAME OF THE 2024 BETFRED SUPER LEAGUE SEASON AGAINST HUDDERSFIELD ON FRIDAY 1ST MARCH.

Following introducing the new ticketing platform with Ticketmaster Sport, the Club wishes to provide supporters with the following statement:

There is never an ideal time to make a change in such a business-critical platform. At the end of the 2023 season, in conjunction with Wigan Athletic, the Club decided to replace the existing ticketing platform. Unfortunately, due to several factors, the actual process of making the transition to the new platform only began in mid-December which created an extremely short timescale to implement the system and process tickets prior to the start of Wigan Warriors’ 2024 season. Furthermore, additional complexities arose due to the change being in the middle of Wigan Athletic’s 2023/2024 season and we needed to ensure we had a transitional plan in place that worked effectively for both clubs.

The vision for the change was driven by all the right reasons – we wanted to ensure that we could allow priority tickets for Season Ticket holders, offer all fans the opportunity to be better connected with the Club and offer a programme that allowed fans to receive an enhanced experiences in and around the stadium. To achieve this aim we also needed to reinstate the Fortress GB access control system and commission a full upgrade of the system, which was implemented between the 12th and 22nd February 2024.

The new permanent Ticketmaster Sport system was ready for use in early February, but then had the challenge of importing season ticket holder data and activating accounts in a short space of time. Ticketmaster also needed to be fully integrated with the Fortress access control system before any tickets could be allocated. Ultimately this gave the club a very short window after the World Club Challenge fixture to issue tickets. Even with the challenges to this point we still believed that we would be able to deliver supporter’s tickets in time for the first home game.

However, It became apparent in the week leading up to the first home game of the season that there were errors with the imported data resulting in incorrect seats being allocated and issued. The base data held by the club was correct, however, the data imported into Ticketmaster Sport appeared to have errors in the seating allocations. As a result, we made the decision to issue single issue tickets for the first home game, with our main priority ahead of Huddersfield being to ensure that no supporter was locked out of Fridays game.

Ticketmaster Sport are currently investigating the cause of the misallocation of seats and will rectify the issue this week. We will then be in a position to fulfil all season tickets thereafter, well in advance of the next home fixture.

Both Wigan Warriors and Wigan Athletic have made a significant investment in implementing the new ticketing platform and upgrading the access control system. Despite the problems that we encountered over the last few weeks, we remain confident that the revised solution will ensure that fans receive a positive ticketing experience in the longer term.

We thank everyone for their support and patience during this transitional period.

https://wiganwarriors.com/blog/2024/03/ ... statement/

[Mike]

I wouldn't be "confident". Ticketmaster have got the clubs money now and we don't have an alternative but to go forward with them. This equals ticketmaster not really giving a **** about our account....

[josie andrews]

What is Fortress GB?

[the pieman]

What is Fortress GB?

https://fortressgb.com/

Fan experience / gameday experience, so not been a great start

[ancientnloyal]

It about saving the planet after all was it. It’s about getting your data and pushing product to your phones.

Wigan is too corporate now. If it doesn’t make money they’re not bothered. As for the history of the club…

[Caboosegg]

It about saving the planet after all was it. It’s about getting your data and pushing product to your phones.

Wigan is too corporate now. If it doesn’t make money they’re not bothered. As for the history of the club…

Billionaires don't become billionaires by spending left right and centre.

[Exiled Wiganer]

What bothers me about this sort of thing is that I don’t remember us being asked as a society that everyone had to be computer literate to take part in society. Which isn’t a Wigan thing but as I grow older and have more responsibilities for older generations it really concerns me.

[Mike]

There's still a ticket office at the ground (for now), so hopefully there is still accessibility for those who want to pay on the day.

I think we all decided when the vast majority bought smart phones. Not everyone did, but that's not how it works, its about what most of us did.

I reckon the ticketing's going to get worse BTW. Demand based pricing is probably coming in a few years! How much does a ticket cost? Who knows! It all depends when you buy the ticket. There's no face value on most sporting event tickets in the US - you just pay what the algorithm thinks you should. (Or you can hang around the ground until a few mins after kick off and hope for a bargain!)

[josie andrews]

What is Fortress GB?

https://fortressgb.com/

Fan experience / gameday experience, so not been a great start

Mm

[the pieman]

What is Fortress GB?

https://fortressgb.com/

Fan experience / gameday experience, so not been a great start

Mm

i've just taken a look at the client list available on the website

from a RL perspective, Wigan and Leeds only on there as clients, however some real big names Liverpool, City, Arsenal and a host of well known football clubs

it looks very similar to the company who were our sponsor a few years back, where it was all about fan engagement and interaction. I suppose from the club perspective, this is really a driver at the younger fans i would say as they are the ones most tech savvy (yes i know older fans can use smart phones too), however, there is a distinct difference between us older fans and the younger ones, and i posted previously about some work that Oracle had done with the premier league, in terms of the coverage and information being generated. They worked out the gen X wanted short snippets as they didnt have the attention span to sit and watch the game attentively for 80 (90 in footballs case) minutes, whereas us older ones can sit and watch the game, and dont need to be distracted by our phone i.e. watching replays, other games, match stats

onto ticketmaster, its a strange one as most of us would recognise it as a nationally / internationally available website for the sale of concert / sporting events tickets. So for the club to move to something so well renowned should be seen as a positive and not using something written on the back of a fag packet. I think the timescales we gave ourselves (post season ticket renewals) and the start of the season was too short to fully test, and hence why we have had problems. In hindsight, the best approach may have been to put a letter out to all ST holders explaining the change, and that ST would be delayed (issue copy of tickets for Hudds game at that point in time) and it would all be resolved for the next home game, but get it right and not the apparent shambles that people have seen for the last 3-4 weeks. i work in IT consultancy, and sometimes it better to give the bad news and delay, than go ahead with something not quite fit for purpose