Since last week tickets have been available to buy from Jersey Tourism, and on Monday this week they also went on sale at Marks and Spencer in King Street.
Lynne Hind, the Battle’s company secretary, said that up to this point, people had been buying tickets online and from the parade’s headquarters at Meadowbank since the beginning of the year.
‘Ticket sales are going very well and we are about level with last year,’ said Mrs Hind. ‘Islanders seem to be buying their tickets earlier this year – they have been buying them over the last couple of weeks rather than waiting until the Battle week itself.
‘Our main sales started from February really, and we get the same people coming back year after year asking for the same tickets. We have sold a lot of tickets at the Battle office and the tour operators have bought large numbers this year.’
Mrs Hind said that online ticket sales were also up this year, although these have now been stopped because it is too close to the parade for tickets to be guaranteed to arrive by post in time.
Meanwhile, the proportion of grandstand seats to pavement seats will be slightly different this year from previous parades, although the total capacity for the event will remain the same, at 13,000 people.
‘We have taken out some of the grandstand seats and are having more pavement seats for the Day Parade, and a bigger standing area for the Moonlight Parade,’ explained Mrs Hind. ‘But there will be the same number of tickets and the same total arena capacity of 13,000.’
There has also been a small change to the style of tickets this year.
‘The tickets now have a tear-off strip so that once people are in the arena their ticket cannot be re-used,’ explained Mrs Hind. ‘We have introduced this because last year some people were passing tickets under the barriers and they were being re-used.’
