Wellington Phoenix fans wanted in Sydney

The Wellington Phoenix could have a significant chunk of their vocal fanbase cheering them on in Sydney if moves by team management are successful.

Phoenix chief executive Tony Pignata is attempting to put a deal together with A-League sponsor Qantas in a bid to boost the capacity on flights to Sydney for the weekend's preliminary final against Sydney FC.

Phoenix spokesman John Mitchell said there had been some "promising developments on that front", which they hoped to firm up over the next couple of days.

"Certainly Qantas has shown a desire to increase their capacity by essentially putting on a bigger plane," he said.

"But, again, it's going to come down to whether there's the interest there.

"I'm sure there is, I've spoken to a lot of people today who've said they've already booked their tickets and are on their way."

If the Qantas deal goes ahead, Phoenix management will look to organise travel packages for Phoenix club members to help them get to the game.

Fans who make the journey would all be seated together under the A-League's policy of allocating a group of seats to opposition fans.

"That'll certainly be the case at the Sydney Football Stadium for Phoenix fans."

Mr Mitchell said the Phoenix also expected a number of Sydney-based Kiwi fans to show up to lend their support.

Meanwhile, Mr Mitchell defended the large number of empty seats at Wellington's Westpac stadium, in spite of the match being declared a sell out.

The official figure put the crowd at 32,792, but thousands of seats were left empty as the Phoenix downed the Newcastle Jets in extra time in Sunday's thriller match.

He said there were stadium members who had permanent seats who had tickets to all games at the stadium and, "clearly not all those people turned up".

About four corporate boxes were also unused, and tickets allocated to Australian-based sponsors of the A-League had also not been taken up.

"Naturally a lot of those A-League sponsors are located in Australia so they wouldn't have travelled over but, in terms of the seats that were allocated to the public, certainly it was a sellout."

The Football Federation of Australia was contractually obliged to supply a certain number of tickets to sponsors, he said.

He said it was too short notice to organise for those tickets which were unwanted to be reallocated to the public.

Some seats allocated to opposition fans under the A-League policy had also been left unused.

- © Fairfax NZ News