Ticket to the test $45 - and that's in the cheap seats

By JULIE MIDDLETON, consumer affairs reporter

Think it costs an arm and a leg to get out there and support the All Blacks?

It certainly takes more from your wallet than it used to, comparing the cost with ticket prices from 40 years ago.

Back then, getting a coveted ticket cost between 10 and 15 shillings.

Using the Reserve Bank's inflation-adjusted calculator, the Herald has worked out that the top ticket for an All Blacks versus England game at Eden Park in 1963 cost the equivalent of $23.66 in today's money.

Even the cheapest ticket for today's clash between the two teams - a place on the uncovered terraces - is double that, at $45.

The most expensive ticket - a seat in the covered main stand - is $100.

New Zealand Rugby Union deputy chief executive Steve Tew claims there is far more to a rugby game now than 40 years ago. Comparisons with 1963, he says, are not comparing apples with apples.

"With all due respect," he says, "it's like comparing a bike to a car. In 1963 it was a bunch of amateurs who got together on Thursdays and bought their own boots. Now we have professionals that are sought all over the world."

Everything is more sophisticated, he says, not just the players: the pre-game entertainment and the latest technology for referees and spectators have to be paid for.

An international rugby match which pits the World Cup holders against another of the world's strongest teams should be viewed as an event as prestigious as, say, a Wimbledon tennis final.

"We don't charge the prices you would pay for other similar international events like the Superbowl [American football]."

In England, he says, spectators pay as much as £70 to £80 ($204 to $233) for a seat at an All Blacks test.

But the NZRFU is sensitive to public feeling over the cost of tickets - Mr Tew calls it "the elasticity of ticket prices". It did "definitive" market research before last year's World Cup to survey public sentiment.

Mr Tew says tickets to the Lions versus New Zealand games next year will be even more expensive than to this year's All Blacks versus England tickets. Part of that is just a simple supply-and-demand equation - "we could sell tickets for those matches three or four times over".

Helping to hike the price is the fact that the Lions trip is a one-off, and the NZRFU will have to pay the team a fee.

Ticket prices have not yet been set. They are "a judgment call - we're not trying to be mercenary, but we are running a business".

Historian Jock Phillips, author of A Man's Country which covers rugby culture, doesn't think international rugby tickets are overpriced.

Speaking of the $45 terrace tickets, he says, "it's [the same cost as] a fill of a petrol tank. Two bottles of wine. Three trips to the movies.

"It's a professional game, and when there are people earning $500,000, someone has to pay".