Wales Six Nations ticket crisis deepens

Tens of thousands of tickets for Wales’ three home Six Nations fixtures this year are still up for grabs – a virtually unprecedented situation for a tournament that has long been a cornerstone of the Welsh sporting calendar.

As of Friday morning, Cardiff’s 74,000-seat Principality Stadium had 15,300 unsold tickets for Sunday’s clash with France, 6,700 remaining for the Scotland fixture, and a staggering 27,000 still available for Italy’s visit in March, according to the WRU’s official ticket site.

The Welsh Rugby Union said buying habits have changed and that tickets had been selling at around 1,000 per day this week. However, the number of empty seats on Sunday could be even higher, with clubs allocated tickets – including Swansea, Llandaff North and Machen – resorting to social media over the past week in an attempt to shift them.

With prices ranging from £40 to £120, one club chairman bluntly said: “It’s not worth it.”

A perfect storm on and off the pitch

Welsh rugby finds itself in turmoil from every angle. The national team endured a 19-match losing streak before finally beating Japan last summer, and haven’t won a Six Nations match since 2023. Sunday’s fixture follows a bruising 48-7 defeat to England in the opening round.

Off the field, a bitter feud over the future of the regional game rumbles on, with the leader of Swansea council threatening the WRU with legal action and businesswoman Hayley Parsons calling on clubs to oust the chairman to force a change of direction.

What it means financially

Sports economist Prof Calvin Jones told BBC Wales the situation was almost without precedent.

“Obviously the Six Nations is the jewel in the crown of rugby in certain Welsh terms, and for France, the favourites probably for the tournament, it’s a really big match. I can’t remember in my 30 years as a sports economist this happening before.”

Prof Jones warned that while a single tournament with low ticket sales wouldn’t be catastrophic, a longer-term trend would spell serious trouble.

“The stadium is absolutely mission critical to Welsh rugby, that’s where the money now comes from given the declining rates for regional rugby that we’ve seen in the last 20 or 30 years. The WRU has done a very good job of diversifying again in terms of more concerts, cultural events and so on, but the stadium needs to work for Welsh rugby to work. So if this was to become a longer term problem, then you’d be really worried about financial viability of the whole game.”

More than 50% of the WRU’s turnover comes from gate receipts of men’s home internationals in Cardiff, making the financial impact of empty seats significant – though difficult to precisely quantify given varying ticket prices and concessions such as student discounts.

Prof Jones said there was a pressing need to “rebuild trust between the various bits of rugby and Wales.”