Additional seating plans for Carisbrook scrapped

A lack of demand for tickets has led to temporary seating plans scrapped at the Otago-British and Irish Lions rugby match in Dunedin next month.

The capacity of Carisbrook for the game will now be 30,000 and there was serious doubt the ground would be full.

About 7000 tickets were unsold for the June 18 game.

A ground member said today four tickets he had bought for the game had been upgraded, at no charge, to uncovered seats in the railway stand from temporary seats.

An accompanying letter from Otago Rugby Football Union (ORFU) told the member it had been decided not to install temporary seating because of the large number of tickets left.

Orfu marketing manager Chris Green said it was unlikely temporary seats would be installed for the Lions game.

However, he said that decision would be reviewed two weeks before the game.

"We have not removed them. We have not yet decided whether they will be installed. This will depend on the level of sales over the next 10 days," Green said.

"There is a significant cost to install them and they do impinge on the field, so if we don't need them we could do without them."

- NZPA