{"id":189985,"date":"2025-11-20T02:22:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T02:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/189985\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T02:22:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T02:22:12","slug":"irfu-defends-ticket-prices-and-rejects-home-internationals-have-become-corporate-day-out-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/189985\/","title":{"rendered":"IRFU defends ticket prices and rejects home internationals have become \u2018corporate day out\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

IRFU<\/a> chief executive Kevin Potts has defended ticket prices for internationals at the Aviva Stadium and strongly rejected claims that Ireland<\/a>\u2019s home matches have increasingly become corporate days out.<\/p>\n

Category A tickets for this Saturday\u2019s game against South Africa<\/a> (kick-off 5.40pm) were set at \u20ac160, tickets prices for Ireland home games having increased by around 80 per cent in the last dozen years. <\/p>\n

\u201cTicket pricing is crucial to us,\u201d said the IRFU\u2019s chief financial officer Thelma O\u2019Driscoll, <\/b>explaining the need to balance maximising revenue from five or six home games a year with affordability for fans. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe take this very seriously and we have a number of committees involved internally in setting these prices,\u201d she added. \u201cWe commissioned an independent consultant to review our ticketing prices to make sure that our benchmarking was correct. We benchmark against unions and other sports and events, and the prices we\u2019ve come up with were verified by them. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo yes, they sound expensive, but we\u2019re comfortable with where they\u2019re sitting at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Potts added Ireland \u201chave the smallest stadium in the Six Nations\u201d and the funds generated by home fixtures are used \u201cto keep the national team competitive, to invest in our women\u2019s game and the grassroots game\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"IrelandIreland fans celebrate Mack Hansen\u2019s try against Australia at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday. Photograph: Gary Carr\/Inpho <\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWe have to charge prices that fill the stadium and deliver the revenues we need. I\u2019m very aware that for fans it\u2019s a big price but, so far, they\u2019ve been happy to pay it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Potts also disagreed with suggestions that Ireland\u2019s home games have begun to draw more of a corporate crowd.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany, many people I know have been here for years supporting rugby and there are rugby people around the stadium. There are corporates here for sure, and we need them and we\u2019re very appreciative of their support, but everybody who pays a price to come into that stadium is here to follow our national team. And calling it a corporate day out, I think, is disingenuous to all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Potts also maintained that supporters are still travelling to Dublin from all around Ireland in the same numbers as in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur ticket distribution across Ireland has not changed since we opened the Aviva Stadium back in 2010. The same numbers of tickets are going through the same provinces and to the same clubs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The IRFU has not yet revealed the ticket pricing for Ireland\u2019s home games in next year\u2019s Six Nations against Italy (Saturday, February 14th), Wales (Friday, March 6th) and Scotland (Saturday, March 14th).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IRFU chief executive Kevin Potts has defended ticket prices for internationals at the Aviva Stadium and strongly rejected…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[75579,9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,34132,40691,11,12,15,16,5,39462,7,8,4388],"class_list":{"0":"post-189985","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-autumn-nations-series","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-ireland-rugby","18":"tag-irfu","19":"tag-latest-news","20":"tag-latestnews","21":"tag-main-news","22":"tag-mainnews","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-south-africa-rugby","25":"tag-top-stories","26":"tag-topstories","27":"tag-wallabies"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115579646415121649","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}