Munster Council reveal ticket pricing plans for extended hurling championship campaign
Stand tickets will be as low as €20 for this summer’s Munster senior hurling championship round games.
A Munster Council provincial meeting yesterday agreed a pre-purchased stand ticket will cost €20 (€25 if bought on the day of the game) and €15 (€20 on the day) for a terrace admission.
As the Munster championship jumps from four to 11 games this year, and with each county guaranteed four outings, officials had taken last year’s first round game between Tipperary and Cork in Semple Stadium as the model to structure their round game pricing for 2018.
Entry for juveniles (U16s) will be €5 and a €5 concession will apply for OAPs and students.
The council are keen to incentivise early-bird purchases so as to ensure there is as little money as possible received in ‘walk-ups’ on the day.
The introduction of Cusack Park and possibly Walsh Park into the stadium rota raises new issues for the council.
The Ennis venue has approximately 1,200 seats, meaning there will be little seats available once the requests of players, season ticket holders, and officials have been satisfied.
Compare that to Páirc Uí Chaoimh, where the covered seats amount to around 20,000, and the Gaelic Grounds, which has close to 8,000.
Walsh Park has approximately 5,000 but the number of tickets available to the public could go as low as 2,000 due to the aforementioned demands.
The call on whether it will host Waterford’s home games against Tipperary on June 3 and Cork on June 17 will be made in the coming weeks. Because of the various stadia sizes, there will be no county-specific ticket packages.
Ticket prices for the Munster hurling final on July 1 should be in or around the same as last year in Thurles — €30 pre-purchase (p-p) adult covered stand, €25 p-p uncovered, €20 p-p terrace, €5 p-p juveniles.
Considering adult stand tickets for the Allianz Leagues cost €15 (€12 pre-purchase), the council are hopeful that their pricing will be agreeable to the public when they are ready to release the final details.
Season ticket holders, as per before, will be entitled to purchase a ticket for each of their team’s four matches.
No decision has been made on the price structure for the All-Ireland senior football championship All-Ireland quarter-final round matches (Super 8), although it is anticipated they will be less than the price for last year’s double-headers (€35 for stand, €25 for Hill 16), which showed an increase of €5 from 2016.
It’s likely that stand admission will be around €25 while there is the possibility of county-specific quarter-final packages being offered to fans for all of their team’s three Super 8 fixtures.
This story first appeared in Examiner Sport
