Sky Stadium hopes to sell out venue with a very different Christmas event

Sky Stadium. Photo / Mark Mitchell

In the lead-up to Christmas Wellingtonians will be hearing about a slightly different kind of event or more accurately, non-event, at Sky Stadium on December 21.

The Wellington City Mission has partnered with Sky Stadium, Ticketek and other sponsors, such as Wellington real estate agency Lowe & Co to create a unique occasion called Silent Night—one which ticket holders are explicitly asked not to show up for.

The fundraiser will be to support Wellingtonians doing it tough in harder financial times. People are encouraged to buy a ticket and then not attend – meaning 100 per cent of the ticket sales go to those who need it most.

Murray Edridge from Wellington City Mission said there have been far more people from all kinds of backgrounds walking through the mission’s doors since the pandemic.

“We’ve seen people who’ve never come to the city mission before … a wider section of the community has come in for support,” said Edridge.

“Life is tougher for people right now than at any time in our recent history.”

Edridge believes the Christmas season “makes the gap more obvious between those who are doing okay and those who aren’t.”

The organisation worked with the branding agency Special to come up with the niche concept.

Edridge gave “full marks” to the big names who were immediately supportive of the idea, “they absolutely got the concept and got 100 per cent behind it”.

He hopes the community “will get captured by the idea”.

Craig Lowe of Lowe & Co has known Edridge through the mission for a while and said he was “blown away by the concept itself”.

The business has pledged $130,000 worth of billboard advertising for the campaign to help spread the word throughout Wellington.

He said, “Wellington City Mission do the most incredible work in the community … it’s inspirational”, and he believed it was “[a] quirky idea that would fit well with Wellingtonians”.

Lowe believes “one of the most important things for the success of an event like this is exposure”, and wants the billboards to be “quirky and fun, like the event”.

Not only is the real estate firm covering the advertising costs, its agents are also on a drive to gather engagement.

Lowe said, “[it’s an] amazing opportunity for Wellingtonians [to] give back to the people who really need it.”

Shane Harmon, chief executive of Sky Stadium, said he was instantly in favour of the proposal - “[Wellington City Mission was] about 30 seconds into the pitch and we agreed.”

Harmon said he recognised straight away how much of a positive impact it could have on the community and saw that it fitted in with the local culture.

“This is pretty unique,” he said, “[It was a] simple idea that can have a big impact.”

He said the stadium intends to promote Silent Night with its “10,000 strong fan database … using all the promotional tools at our disposal.”

Sky Stadium has hosted annual dinner events for the Wellington Women’s Trust, but this will be the first similar event of this scale.

In case a few people miss the memo and do turn up to the stadium at 7.30pm on the night, Edridge said they are “still working on what will happen” but that they “will be looked after”.

As this is an event you are not meant to attend, you can buy tickets wherever you are in New Zealand, or even overseas. Tickets can be purchased through Ticketek.