As those few of you reading this at the Hong Kong Sevens today will know, tickets are extremely hard to get. All kinds of interesting but unwanted reactions appear when you get a supply-demand imbalance in economics. It is like “Whack a Mole”; hit one with a mallet and another one pops up – providing headaches for everybody.
The supply problem occurs because our largest stadium only seats 40,000 people, about the size of a block in Mong Kok. Yet the demand for sevens tickets is global, driven by a professional marketing machine sponsored by a global bank and a full-service airline, making the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens the “Bucket List” event for ruggers all over the world.
It was not always thus. At the first Sevens, 40 years ago, loyal rugby supporters like my parents sat in the rain in the old Football Club eating their sandwiches. They now can’t get tickets.
The best way to source a ticket is to play for a local club
Only 3,000 tickets are sold directly to the public at face value. The rest go to sponsors, hospitality packages and rugby clubs. After all the sticky fingers have taken their share, the Hong Kong Rugby Football Union also needs to make some money to go back into local rugby.
If the supply of tickets is fixed and demand is high, prices must rise. This does not happen as it should, because the HKRFU rightly wants to avoid (most) rugby-minded people from being priced out of the event. So while they have gone up a relatively moderate 80 per cent in the past 7 years, these real price increases have not diminished demand.
The best way to source a ticket is to play for a local club. So club players and social members have mushroomed – pushing up the costs of membership and limiting available tickets.
Readers should be aware that this means of ticket acquisition involves a moment of euphoria (while pulling on that rugby shirt) followed by difficulty in doing anything physical for the next five days. Nevertheless, it has motivated me to extend my playing career this year to 52 continuous seasons in order to get my Sevens ticket.
Rugby is genuinely popular at the Hong Kong grass roots as thousands of kids from five and up fight out their own competitions. This is character-building for the little players and enables parents to get tickets; though the supply has shrunk as demand has exploded.