Colin Mansbridge: Crusaders CEO on tonight's game against the Blues, selling out the stadium

The Crusaders are back in their brand-new stadium. 

After christening the One NZ Stadium with a 35-20 victory over the Waratahs during Super Round, tonight's clash will see them go head-to-head with the Blues. 

Over 73 thousand fans walked through the stadium during its opening weekend, and it looks like it will be packed out tonight, tickets expected to sell out.  

Crusaders CEO Colin Mansbridge told Mike Hosking they expect to keep selling-out based on demand to date, which will be great for the club.  

He says moving into the new stadium is a sea change for them, and it’ll have a very positive result.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Crusaders back at the new Stadium tonight Blues. They tell
me it's to sell it. Colin Mansbridge is the Crusader CEO.
And with there's Colin Morning Morning, Mike, how you mate
very well? Is it a sellout?

Speaker 2 (00:12):
It is that there's actually there's a few seats, a
few pockets here and there, and as people have, as
people go through a process of saying I know, I
can't make it and put it back into the pool,
there's a few pop up so if you if you,
there's less than hundreds. So but it's essentially sell out. Yeah,
I want go and find those seats.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Is it the stadium? It must be the stadium because
you don't always sell out at the old ground, so
it must be the stadium this time. Is that right
or not being unfair?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
No? No, I think the stadium's got something to do
with it. It's It's one of the interesting things about
super And I was watching the Canes last week when
we played the Canes, when you got inside the Capes
and the event went on and they had a halftime
show with fireworks, and Malcolm was all excited about it.
It's actually a really awesome event. But when you're outside
of it and everyone's bag and it's sort of you

(01:04):
think it's it's not gonna be much fun when you
get there, but the people that get there are fun.
We just need to sing a wee bit more Sweet
Caroline and then how now what's happening with the Crusaders?

Speaker 1 (01:15):
But patchy this year colin.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
A wee bit up and down. It's sort of a
little bit of a replay in terms of uh, you know,
cattle and availability. But we've got what, We've got some
coming back and and I thought last week I was
really impressed with the effort and the team that the
team was outstanding to the effort and there were two
great teams going hammer and tongs with each other. So
I think that's probably a mark of where we're at

(01:40):
at the moment. So, you know, last week we lost.
Next time we played them in a couple of weeks,
maybe we'll win.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
You're going to keep selling out, and if you do,
what's that do for your bottom line?

Speaker 2 (01:50):
We will be selling out, I think based on demand
to date, and it will be great for us. It
would be you know, we're lucky of all the clubs.
It's a change for us in terms of going in there,
so it will it will be very positive for us.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
What's what's the word on the horses column? What's going
on there?

Speaker 2 (02:07):
I knew you were going to ask me that you've
just seen these AI images of these things around. So
one thing pre super Around, what was really clear when
we were planning for super Around was all of that
infrastructure was in there. It was dangerous. It was absolutely dangerous.

(02:29):
Post Super Around, games look different and they feel different
and it might be different. So I'll just that it might
be different and hold your breath.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Mate, good good, nice to talk to you. Have a
good weekend. Colin Mansbridge, see a good guy or what?
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