DHL Stormers 26/27 season tickets: What’s in it, what’s changed and why.
Here is all the important info you need.
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Season tickets cover every DHL Stormers home league match at DHL Stadium – nine Vodacom URC fixtures, two Investec Champions Cup pool fixtures and three Carling Currie Cup fixtures – in your own seat, for the whole season.
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Springbok Tests and play-off matches are no longer ours to price or sell. That is a change in how professional rugby is structured, not a change in what we want to give you.
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What we can guarantee is First Right to Your Seat: as a season ticket holder, you get the first opportunity to buy your own seat for those matches, before tickets go on public sale.
The detail is below, for those who want it.
THANK YOU FOR STANDING WITH US
Before anything else, we want to say thank you.
Every season ticket represents far more than admission to a rugby match. It is a commitment to our club – through good seasons and difficult ones, through sunshine and rain, through afternoon kick-offs and late-night finishes. Week after week, year after year, you show up. None of us will ever take that for granted.
Last season you broke our own regular season attendance record once again. Every match at DHL Stadium reminded the rugby world what makes Cape Town such a special place to play the game. There are few atmospheres in world rugby that compare – and you have made the DHL Stormers the second best-supported club in the global game.
WHAT YOUR SEASON TICKET GIVES YOU
For the 26/27 season, your season ticket includes:
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Every home league match at DHL Stadium – nine Vodacom URC fixtures and two Investec Champions Cup pool fixtures and three Carling Currie Cup fixtures.
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Your own seat, in the same place, with the same supporters around you, all season.
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First Right to Your Seat for Springbok Tests and home play-off matches at DHL Stadium – the first opportunity to buy your seat before public sale.
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A saving of 30% compared to buying match tickets individually across the regular season.
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You also get your own priority entry gate at the stadium and preferential options to purchase tickets for other selected events at DHL Stadium, where available.
A CHANGING RUGBY LANDSCAPE
Some of what a season ticket used to include is no longer ours to include. Those changes happened quietly, in competition boardrooms rather than on the field, but they have had a direct effect on the product we can offer you.
We have read your comments and we understand the frustration, particularly among supporters who have been with us for decades. So rather than leave you to guess, here is the explanation.
SPRINGBOK TEST MATCHES
The question we are asked most often is why a Springbok Test at DHL Stadium is no longer included with your season ticket.
The honest answer is affordability. Including a Test would roughly double the price of a season ticket and put it out of reach for most of our supporters.
There are two practical obstacles on top of that. When season tickets go on sale, we do not yet know whether DHL Stadium will be awarded a Springbok Test for the coming season. And if Cape Town is awarded one, we cannot know what those tickets will cost, because the pricing and sale of Springbok Tests now sits with SARU, rather than with Stormers Rugby.
This was not always the case. In the Super Rugby era the calendar worked differently: we knew which Test would be played at our stadium before season tickets went on sale, and ticket pricing was ours to set. Test tickets were also priced very differently relative to our other matches.
So the best solution available to us today is First Right to Your Seat. That applied to the upcoming Springbok Test against the All Blacks, and it is an improvement on last season.
It also applied to the DHL Stormers’ recent match against the All Blacks – a memorable night of rugby, and one where prices were set and tickets sold by SARU, not by us. We know that caused some confusion about which app the tickets appeared in. The only right we held for our season ticket holders was priority access to their own seats, and we made sure you had it.
PLAY-OFF RUGBY
Ownership of play-off matches has also changed.
During South Africa’s first four seasons in the Vodacom URC, SARU was not yet a shareholder in the competition, so home play-off matches belonged to the home club. We priced and sold the tickets, marketed the event, delivered the matchday – and kept the financial benefit.
With SARU now a full shareholder, all Vodacom URC play-off matches belong to the competition rather than to the participating clubs. Practically, that means we would have to buy those tickets from the URC in order to hand them to you.
To include home play-offs in the season ticket, we would have to raise the price for every supporter based on a guess: how likely we are to host a play-off, and what those tickets might cost. If we then failed to qualify, you would have paid for a match that never happened. If we hosted several, the club would carry a significant loss.
We do not think either outcome is fair to you. First Right to Your Seat means you watch from your regular seat, among the same supporters, and pay only for the matches that are actually played and that you actually choose to attend. It also keeps the season ticket itself as affordable as we can make it.
We will keep pushing SARU and the URC for better outcomes for our season ticket holders. You are our most valuable supporters and we will keep saying so in the rooms where these decisions are made.
OUR HOME AT DHL STADIUM
Finally, the occasional home fixture played away from DHL Stadium.
Our home is one of South Africa’s premier multi-purpose venues, and it hosts major concerts and events throughout the year. Those events are often booked long before the rugby calendar is finalised, which occasionally leaves us with no option but to move a home fixture.
This remains the exception. In each of the last two seasons, one fixture was relocated. In the 26/27 season there are no matches relocated.
When it does happen, two things protect you. The clash is known before we go to market, so it is already reflected in the price of your season ticket – you are not paying for a DHL Stadium fixture you do not receive. And we offer you any relocated match at 50% of the standard ticket price. Not ideal, but the fairest arrangement available to us.
LOOKING FORWARD
All of the above comes back to one principle: a season ticket that is fair, transparent, affordable and sustainable in a professional game that has changed a great deal in a short time.
What has not changed is our ambition.
Project 2029, our five-year plan to build a squad capable of winning everything we enter, continues to gather momentum. The return of Siya Kolisi, Cheslin Kolbe and Wilco Louw tells you where this club is headed, and another outstanding group is coming through the Stormers Rugby Institute behind them.
None of it happens without you. Every renewal invests in our players, our coaches, our pathways and the future of rugby in the Western Cape. Every packed stand strengthens our home-ground advantage. Every supporter in blue and white reminds the rugby world what makes this club different.
If you have a question about your seat, your renewal or anything in this letter, contact us at [email protected] and we will come back to you.
Together, we have built one of the great matchday experiences in world rugby. We believe the best years of this club are still ahead of us, and hope you will be in your seat to see them.
