The official launch of the Guinness Pro14 Final in Cardiff next June took place yesterday with CEO Martin Anayi saying that he believes the atmosphere will “blow the doors off Cardiff City Stadium.
The target is to sell-out the venue and provide an unrivalled atmosphere at the Final next June 20th. This will be the first time that Cardiff has hosted the event in the era of ‘Destination Finals’.
The first of those was at Kingspan Stadium in Belfast in 2015. The Final then was hosted at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh, twice at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin and then last year back to Scotland at Celtic Park.
There have been four record attendances in a row promising a sell out 33,280 Cardiff City Stadium as the finale for this season.
“They are real rugby fans at the Cardiff City Stadium, which is quite unusual for a football operations team, so we’re very happy and we think it’s the right size for us in the city,” said Anayi.
“We’re coming from four record crowds in the last four years but for us it’s the right time to come to Cardiff and they proposed a great solution for us.”
“We’ve had a fantastic response to our Final so far, it’s got bigger and bigger and bigger every year and since 2015 it’s been a Destination Final of course.”
“We looked at what we could do to really blow the doors off in terms of atmosphere and that’s a sell-out.”
“We want it full to the rafters so for us it’s the perfect size. We’ve already seen a record amount of interest on presale and registering interest online.”
The tickets go on general sale tomorrow morning after a 48 pre-sale window for fans who are signed up as members of PRO14 Xtra.
“First and foremost for us Cardiff is a great city and we didn’t feel that we were doing it justice really, that we hadn’t had the final here for a long time in Wales,” added martyn Phillips, CEO of the Wales Rugby Union.
“We felt under a bit of pressure really to make that happen for the Welsh regions and for the competition.”
“The way we were able to do that was to get into the Cardiff City stadium so we’re balancing two things, ultimately we’re going to get a great game in a great city.”
The race to Cardiff begins on September 27 when Round 1 of the 2019/20 Guinness PRO14 season kicks off in front of an ever-increasing global audience.
Image credit: Ryan Byrne, Inpho.ie
