Poor ticket sales for last weekend’s rugby Test between South Africa and Scotland has deepened the money woes of the Eastern Province Rugby Union, Herald Online reported on Tuesday.
It said only 17 000 tickets were sold for the match in Port Elizabeth.
This resulted in the crisis-ridden union’s debt to South African Rugby ballooning to R3-million.
Chief executive officer Philip Joseph said the province was left with a R1-million shortfall in terms of its financial obligations to SA Rugby for the match fee of R4,65-million.
The union still owed SA Rugby R2-million from last year’s French Test.
It was left with about 10 000 unsold tickets for Saturday’s game, and about 3 000 were given as complimentary tickets to clubs and schools.
”Before last week we sold about 500 tickets a day and then closer to Saturday we were selling about 1 000 tickets per day,” said Joseph.
”But we sold very few tickets at the gate — only about 300, which was unusual.”
Tickets for Saturday’s game were R250 for the open stand and R350 for the main stand.
”Maybe it has something to do with ticket prices or maybe the opposition team does not have much support in South Africa,” Joseph said. – Sapa