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If we offered a £150 season ticket, how many would sign up??

Bradford and Hartlepool have done the £150 ST in recent years, with a jump in attendances as a result.

We have around 10,000 ST holders at half decent prices so how many could we get for £150?

I think we could easily add another 5,000 on top of what we get already, even more if it was marketed well....

Orient have 2,000 more ST holders this season with the free season tix to students, and big discounts on adult tickets with referral schemes....
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    I think an extra 5,000 is very optimistic Trev.
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    A fair amount more I would expect, personally I would go no matter what, but the matches are that bit more exciting when the ground is full.
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    Another question for the Trust to survey fans about ?
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    I think an extra 5,000 is very optimistic Trev.

    What makes you say that?
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    Orient pulled a rabbit out the hat there. Their ground is tidy and really accessible now too. I imagine they will keep a good portion of the 'new' fans. Not sure if they have made noises about going for promotion this season or if this is a fop to keep fan hapy and pull in new ones for yet another season in league 1.

    We are in a different position to Orient in terms of expectations and pricing strategies. Charlton would need to time an intiative like that just right and with strong marketing. Doubtful that the current management has capability or strength of foresight just now. Could be something new owners try.

    Never a bad thing to try pulling in new supporters if done properly.
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    Probably would just mean more fair weather fans, you'd only need to do 10 games to get your monies worth.
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    Probably would just mean more fair weather fans, you'd only need to do 10 games to get your monies worth.

    Even if its a fair weather fan, I think its still worth the extra programme buying/food buying revenue they would contribute...
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    Probably would just mean more fair weather fans, you'd only need to do 10 games to get your monies worth.

    its true. we would just lose a lot of our occasional support.
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    Where would you seat the £150 season ticket holders? There would have to be sufficient (negative) differentiation between their seats and those paying substantially more.

    The obvious place to sell a £150 season ticket would be the Lower North (worst view) but this would prevent the club charging away fans a premium rate in the equivalent seats in the Jimmy Seed.

    Alternatively the club might consider selling £150 season tickets in the far wings of the East or West stands, but how would stewards prevent people moving to better seats given the stands are never remotely full?
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    hartlepoolunited.co.uk/tickets/season-tickets/

    From what I can see Hartlepool just charge £150 for anywhere in the ground, there arent different prices relating to the quality of the view....
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    10k x £300 average now = 20k x £150

    And more than likely reduced walk up
    We'd be out of pocket and moneys too tight to mention
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    10k x £300 average now = 20k x £150

    And more than likely reduced walk up
    We'd be out of pocket and moneys too tight to mention

    The idea is the greater numbers turning up each game would result in higher sales of food/programmes/merch etc which would make up for the shortfall in ST income...

    Obviously bigger sales in merch isnt guaranteed, but thats the general theory behind super cheap STs...
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    Be interesting to get Airmans perspective on peripheral spending, I'm not sure it is particularly high.

    There would be a danger that existing ST holders would down grade their ST's in future.

    Not sure a £150 ST is a the answer to crowds in the medium term, performances on the pitch tend to have a stronger effect long term.
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    CAFCTrev said:

    10k x £300 average now = 20k x £150

    And more than likely reduced walk up
    We'd be out of pocket and moneys too tight to mention

    The idea is the greater numbers turning up each game would result in higher sales of food/programmes/merch etc which would make up for the shortfall in ST income...

    Obviously bigger sales in merch isnt guaranteed, but thats the general theory behind super cheap STs...
    And how much would we get away with charging those that pay £299 now, next season?

    We could, of course, charge a flat fee of £150 irrespective as to where you sit in the ground then we would probably get an extra 10,000 fans in. Of course we would probably need to 'raise' another few million to cover the shortfall, or sell Solly, Wiggins and Morrison and play players from the youth side.
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    CAFCTrev said:

    10k x £300 average now = 20k x £150

    And more than likely reduced walk up
    We'd be out of pocket and moneys too tight to mention

    The idea is the greater numbers turning up each game would result in higher sales of food/programmes/merch etc which would make up for the shortfall in ST income...

    Obviously bigger sales in merch isnt guaranteed, but thats the general theory behind super cheap STs...
    But around 5000 currently buy tickets for matches. So we'd probably be losing most of that revenue too. To be honest I think our STs represent great value. Unless you could double the gate with low cost tickets then I don't think it works.
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    I guess its something you would try in one section of the Valley for a season to see what the uplift in sales was like.....
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    There is an important more general point though which is that I don't think the club currently offers enough different 'price points' for its season tickets. They are thus probably foregoing revenue from those willing and able to pay more, as well as those unable to pay the lowest available price (but willing to pay some reasonable price, perhaps indeed £150).

    Although not necessarily a great comparision, nonetheless this map of the new stadium of the New York Mets illustrates in just how many ways they carve up the stadium in order to entice the wealthiest fans to pay more whilst not alienating the poorest fans from showing up at all.

    image
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    Interesting nya, but as you say maybe not the best sport to compare with as most of the action occurs by the plate so easy to guess which are the expensive seats... I think you could maybe cut the lower north edges ST to the same as the quadrant (but keep match day the same so as to still charge the same for away supporters) but that's only a few hundred seats. Do you know what they charge a football games in the US where the action is more spread out? Is it just graduated on sides/ends and height above the pitch?
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    The club have just raised prices back to the Championship prices of old and suffered a small drop in numbers. And this has to be part of a plan to reduce operating losses.

    The Trust could survey fans on a variety of pricing issues such as those raised by NYA and how many cheap games for a fiver are tolerable before Season Ticket Holders get pissed off.

    To implement more differentiation you would have to know what additional facilities are available - clear to me that people are willing to pay more to sit in line with the penalty area / half way line for a good view of the game AND smaller queues.

    I am sure there are different markets for Charlton fans first... lapse fans...new local fans... fans who come 10 x a year, i.e., those on the verge of break even for buying a Season Ticket... Sending some of these people a one off proposal might help but a blanket price drop is far too painful and is simply not going to fly!

    It does work for one off games, so yes something the Trust can take up with the club in order to assist raising gates AND revenue
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    Its it comes down to whats better for the club:

    smaller gates but more money from higher priced STs
    larger gates but less money from cheaper STs....
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    fill the ground first at a cheap price and build the demand...20k season ticket holders means the other 7k can be sold at a premium to 3.4k away fans and 3.6k casual home fans..
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    I would fully endorse a standard £150 season ticket. I know a lot of non-charlton fans who would snap one of those up just for the joy of watching football week in week out (based on locality to Charlton and how much cheaper it would be than Premier League prices)
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    CAFCTrev said:

    Its it comes down to whats better for the club:

    smaller gates but more money from higher priced STs
    larger gates but less money from cheaper STs....

    In the short (and maybe the medium term) the only thing that matters is maximizing revenue. Any shortfall has to be paid for by the owners or any new owners when they take on the debt.

    I would love a full stadium, but I fear this is just another example of something that the fans would like that someone else has to pay for. I, for example, sit on the half way line in the East Stand. I accept that my view is better than some of the others, but as I've had the same seat for nearly 20 years I would be reluctant to pay a lot more for it so that those that haven't been coming during that time can get in for less than half what I pay!

    I think our tickets are too cheap when compared with other clubs that are competing with us to sign the same players. In the end we have to pay more or fall behind other teams. I am, obviously, assuming that we are not expecting someone else to subsidise our hobby for ever. Small incremental rises is the best way to increase our prices to the other teams in our division. Any reduction increases the necessary rise, and in some cases fans will not renew due to the perceived value when in reality it's the same (or less) than most other clubs we play each week. There were a number of unhappy fans on here when they worked out the percentage increase on their season ticket last March.

    The club can't win. If we were to fall into administration I am very sure than no one will come on here and say "On reflection I guess we should all have been paying more for our season tickets!"
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    I wrote a paper on this 18 months ago and presented it as an alternative strategy to the board, together with my recommendations based on a conventional approach. I wasn't wholly convinced by the flat rate strategy, and a big issue for me was the difficulty in reverting to a normal model, but we did revenue projections on it and in the short term it may have stacked up. The board didn't adopt it, however, and I think they were right not to do so.

    People will indeed pay more to sit close to the halfway line and except in the lower west they currently do. However, having too many price points without physical separation in a ground that is up to 50 per cent empty will just encourage people to buy one price of seat and sit in another. It's not worth the enforcement hassle.

    I don't wish to dampen seriously_red's enthusiasm, but we have explored all sorts of pricing models and initiatives over many years. There will always be new and different ideas, but the way to find out what works is to try them out, not carry out surveys, especially in a niche market as small as ours.
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    CAFCTrev said:

    10k x £300 average now = 20k x £150

    And more than likely reduced walk up
    We'd be out of pocket and moneys too tight to mention

    The idea is the greater numbers turning up each game would result in higher sales of food/programmes/merch etc which would make up for the shortfall in ST income...

    Obviously bigger sales in merch isnt guaranteed, but thats the general theory behind super cheap STs...
    But around 5000 currently buy tickets for matches. So we'd probably be losing most of that revenue too. To be honest I think our STs represent great value. Unless you could double the gate with low cost tickets then I don't think it works.
    Nothing like 5,000 home fans buying tickets, I'm afraid. About 3,000, if you're lucky.
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    I like the airlines model where once a threshold of tickets had been sold then the match day price would increase, encouraging more people to buy season tickets.
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    I would probs have got one.
    Cant justify £300 this year for a seaosn ticket because by shite part time weekend job means I cant get to almost all weekend games.
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    airman brown, do you know how much people spend on average on food and drink, maybe then we could find out the value of lowering season ticket prices would be. the truth is though that i doubt halving the st prices would double the amount bought. more like the 16000 or 17000 mark. i would think the average person spends £4 a game on food and drink. that means that if we had 8000 home fans, that is about full capacity so if 26000 fans spent £4 each, thats 104k a match from food and drink. that would mean we would make 2.4m a season from food and drink alone. that would more than make up for the money lost from cheaper season tickets. these projections are probably wrong. the idea though is that if more people come to games, refreshments could make up for the loss of higher ticket prices, and it is more ethical that way.
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    I think Airman has said previously, that on average, a fan spends a maximum of £1 on food & drink. Bearing in mind most spend zero.
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    edited August 2013

    airman brown, do you know how much people spend on average on food and drink, maybe then we could find out the value of lowering season ticket prices would be. the truth is though that i doubt halving the st prices would double the amount bought. more like the 16000 or 17000 mark. i would think the average person spends £4 a game on food and drink. that means that if we had 8000 home fans, that is about full capacity so if 26000 fans spent £4 each, thats 104k a match from food and drink. that would mean we would make 2.4m a season from food and drink alone. that would more than make up for the money lost from cheaper season tickets. these projections are probably wrong. the idea though is that if more people come to games, refreshments could make up for the loss of higher ticket prices, and it is more ethical that way.

    What about the extra costs involved with selling more food and drink? For starters there's buying the stuff in in the first place, then wages, extra power costs, etc. Making a profit isn't just about what you take through the till - unless you make all the pies and burgers yourself from slaughtering your ownb herd and get volnteers to cook and serve the stuff.
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