World Club Champions Wigan Warriors have been forced to apologise to their fans due to issues that the club struggled to deal with in regard to ticketing for their home opener.
Matt Peet’s side played on the road in Round One of Super League, missed Round Two due to their clash with Penrith and then made their return to the competition at home against Huddersfield Giants on Friday night.
It was set to be a major homecoming for Wigan Warriors with the game coming less than a week after their World Club Challenge victory.
Tickets were slashed in price to just £5 however it quickly became clear that there were issues with processing the tickets, something that caused major issues on Friday night.
The club have now explained what happened and that they are aiming to resurrect any issues in the coming days and weeks, particularly ahead of their next home game which sees them take on Castleford Tigers in April 19th, over six weeks away.
Wigan Warriors thank fans for their patience during “transitional period”
In a statement released via the Wigan Warriors website, the club have now apologised to supporters for any troubles with tickets for the game on Friday night.
The statement was headlined: “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.”
It continued: “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 Betfred 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 Friday’s 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.”
The statement concluded with a message of thanks: “We thank everyone for their support and patience during this transitional period.”
That transitional period will presumably be out of the way by the time the club’s next home game comes around given that it is over six weeks away, during wich Wigan Athletic Football Club will have multiple games and therefore hopefully filter out any issues to ensure a smooth transition for Warriors fans by April 19th.
