Well I for one think that Slater is genuinely offering us some education by presenting the Palace figures, and certainly I, and the Trust boys, will want to chew on them. Any sensible business wants to benchmark itself against other businesses in order to workk out if it is doing everything it can to optimise revenue and profit. Of course its important to pick a comparable business and, up until the Play off disaster, Palace has been the best benchmark. The figures are a bit of a shock to me because I was under the complacent assumption that we were doing better than Palace in all areas.
That of course is also why it is reasonable for Airman to criticise aspects of the Club's commercial performance. He's not doing it out of 'bitterness'. There is a benchmark. The key question then is, what were Palace doing better than us (other than a Cup run) and what can we learn from that?
Maybe it was some of the advertising campaigns that many on here were so quick to shoot down... I also thought their volunteers idea was a great one. Having people just around to help people out on days where a large number of new fans are about would improve the experience of those new fans and be totally free to the club. But that was poo pooed on here because everyone seemed to think that they weren't needed. It's not about the 10,000 that go every week, it's about the 10,000 that don't. They might benefit from knowing where to buy the best food and how to find the exit when 10,000 regulars are swarming passed at speed.
One area in which we do very, very badly is merchandising, so for example we appear to have got £150k profit from Just Sports last year as per VOTV, whereas many Championship clubs are well into seven figures in income.
Surely that isn't a like for like comparison eg merchandising income of £1m may still only generate 15% profit or £150k
True, but it's not 15 per cent of £1m, in many cases it's a lot more. I'm not saying that the Just Sports deal was right or wrong - I believe we've made a loss in this area in the past - but our sales are much lower than comparable clubs.
Hi Airman,
Any particular reason why our merchandise sales are so poor?
Largely guesswork, but a) matchday sales capacity, b) limited passive support and c) location (poor for non-matchday sales) would all be factors.
And that we don't sell what anybody wants to buy. I often go into the clubshop with the intention of buying something but just can't find anything I might remotely want.
And that we don't sell what anybody wants to buy. I often go into the clubshop with the intention of buying something but just can't find anything I might remotely want.
Whereas I never used to buy anything from the shop and now often find things I like. Different strokes for different folks. I don't want to buy a football shirt or something that blazes the club name, but I really like the new subtle ranges that just have the sword or something on them. There's also a much better range of baby stuff now which is handy as I am of the age where someone is popping one out every week.
Edited as I wrote pooping one out, and nothing in the club shop will help with that.
And that we don't sell what anybody wants to buy. I often go into the clubshop with the intention of buying something but just can't find anything I might remotely want.
Whereas I never used to buy anything from the shop and now often find things I like. Different strokes for different folks. I don't want to buy a football shirt or something that blazes the club name, but I really like the new subtle ranges that just have the sword or something on them. There's also a much better range of baby stuff now which is handy as I am of the age where someone is popping one out every week.
Edited as I wrote pooping one out, and nothing in the club shop will help with that.
I am at the age when the popping is of the clog variety!
Given that 94% of Championship clubs rely on an external shareholder to cover operating losses (see here http://addickschampionshipdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/looking-for-emergency-exit.html) and I suspect the other 6% are either living on parachute money and/or getting themselves relegated - it would appear that the only model for success in the Championship is finding yourself a sugar daddy - and to be honest other things such as merchandising and gate receipts are pretty marginal. And given the moral character of many club owners I wouldn't place too much faith in FFP which I suspect will favour those sugar daddies prepared to employ creative bookkeeping.
What is crazy is that because of the inflated fees we pay to Sky and others is that UK football as a whole could actually be very profitable and could support thriving lower divisions and the game at the grass roots structure - especially, if so much money was funnelled into players wages at the higher level and to the wannabees and used to bees at the Championship level. That the Football League and FA have allowed such a situation to develop really is little short of scandalous - and I for one think the time has come for the Government to strip them of their powers over our national game and pass them to new bodies who have the game's real interests at heart. On the other hand we could all sit and hope for a sugar daddy, who has made his money doing goodness knows what and how to come to our rescue.
It's hardly surprising that the focus for the club has been ticket sales at the expense, perhaps of merchandising and food etc. Bums on seats are all profit whereas the add ons have a much smaller profit percentage....
And that we don't sell what anybody wants to buy. I often go into the clubshop with the intention of buying something but just can't find anything I might remotely want.
I agree with this. Despite attempts to find something of interest, there are all too often long queues that I can't be bothered to join, or/and nothing when I do look around that I want to part with my hard earned. I always had an excuse to part with cash in the Tuggy days.
And it appears that the difference between us and Palace was bums on seats and TV money as the money game from selling more tickets to more cup games and getting TV and prize money.
Also lounges, food and drink aren't merchandising but hospitality and catering and we don't have comparative figures for that.
Slater makes the point that Palarse's revenue in 2011/12 was 25 per cent higher than CAFC's in 2012/13 (you can't make a proper overall comparison with us in 2011/12, because we were in League One).
Palace's turnover jumped to £15,022,059 from £12,706,503 in 2011/12 - with the club citing the successful Carling Cup run to the semi-finals as the main reason. If so we might want to look at that as an exceptional event, although you'd think their 2012/13 revenue was fairly buoyant too.
Charlton's revenue in 2012/13 was £11.8m, although a small allowance should be made for the fact we were still charging League One season ticket prices.
What interests me from researching the data (although Slater doesn't mention it), is that Charlton's (League One) match receipts in 2011/12 were comparable (within £1m) or better than three quarters of Championship clubs - including Palace - despite many fewer away fans than in the second tier.
One area in which we do very, very badly is merchandising, so for example we appear to have got £150k profit from Just Sports last year as per VOTV, whereas many Championship clubs are well into seven figures in income.
It's a similar story in other commercial areas, although the data is difficult to isolate.
I don't say, by the way, that this is down to incompetence, there are other explanations, and also I would say that tickets out-performed what might be expected, but it does suggest to me that we're not going to address the club's ability to compete significantly by focusing on selling more tickets, even though it has knock-on benefits for other income.
I believe this has long been our problem. Our development has always been (or appeared to have been) focussed on matchday tickets. Kids for a quid, football for a fiver but not enough focus on the 'matchday experience'. When we have capacity crowds where were the extra shop staff outside the club shop giving out vouchers to entice people inside? Where were the additonal staff inside the shop to ensure that the queue wasn't so long that people gave up and left? Where were the extra staff selling food and drink inside the building to make sure that everyone got served at half time? Where was the pitch entertainment to make sure families got the best value for their ticket and kids didn't get bored? Where were the promos upselling STHs to meals in the lounge and post seats for the match (which would also free up their seat to resell)? All these things are really important if we want to get more money in, and more importantly, turn occasional fans in the STHs. Alot of these things could be happening every week but the focus is on simply getting bodies through the turnstiles.
There may be some truth in that, although if you mean pre-match entertainment etc then there was some effort in that direction at all the Football for a Fiver games and especially against Hartlepool, which was also discounted. Rightly or wrongly, the club's structure delivered a focus on selling extra tickets - the club development team - and we had no jurisdiction or authority to deal with "the matchday experience", which fell into other remits.
I'm sure that if you put that to relevant people they would say that the constraints of the infrastucture, i.e. size of the shop, number and capacity of refreshment outlets, safety certificate restrictions re queues were all limiting factors, but it does got back to the fact that marginal ticket revenue more or less flows straight through to the bottom line, whereas extra spend in other areas is significantly offset by additional cost of sale.
The fact that a good experience encourages a repeat ticket sale I well understand, but with the budgets in League One it may have been tough for managers to address.
This is one of the things that we could take from the USA perhaps? Sellers walking around the stands selling drinks or sweets etc to customers in their seats?
Slater makes the point that Palarse's revenue in 2011/12 was 25 per cent higher than CAFC's in 2012/13 (you can't make a proper overall comparison with us in 2011/12, because we were in League One).
Palace's turnover jumped to £15,022,059 from £12,706,503 in 2011/12 - with the club citing the successful Carling Cup run to the semi-finals as the main reason. If so we might want to look at that as an exceptional event, although you'd think their 2012/13 revenue was fairly buoyant too.
Charlton's revenue in 2012/13 was £11.8m, although a small allowance should be made for the fact we were still charging League One season ticket prices.
What interests me from researching the data (although Slater doesn't mention it), is that Charlton's (League One) match receipts in 2011/12 were comparable (within £1m) or better than three quarters of Championship clubs - including Palace - despite many fewer away fans than in the second tier.
One area in which we do very, very badly is merchandising, so for example we appear to have got £150k profit from Just Sports last year as per VOTV, whereas many Championship clubs are well into seven figures in income.
It's a similar story in other commercial areas, although the data is difficult to isolate.
I don't say, by the way, that this is down to incompetence, there are other explanations, and also I would say that tickets out-performed what might be expected, but it does suggest to me that we're not going to address the club's ability to compete significantly by focusing on selling more tickets, even though it has knock-on benefits for other income.
I believe this has long been our problem. Our development has always been (or appeared to have been) focussed on matchday tickets. Kids for a quid, football for a fiver but not enough focus on the 'matchday experience'. When we have capacity crowds where were the extra shop staff outside the club shop giving out vouchers to entice people inside? Where were the additonal staff inside the shop to ensure that the queue wasn't so long that people gave up and left? Where were the extra staff selling food and drink inside the building to make sure that everyone got served at half time? Where was the pitch entertainment to make sure families got the best value for their ticket and kids didn't get bored? Where were the promos upselling STHs to meals in the lounge and post seats for the match (which would also free up their seat to resell)? All these things are really important if we want to get more money in, and more importantly, turn occasional fans in the STHs. Alot of these things could be happening every week but the focus is on simply getting bodies through the turnstiles.
There may be some truth in that, although if you mean pre-match entertainment etc then there was some effort in that direction at all the Football for a Fiver games and especially against Hartlepool, which was also discounted. Rightly or wrongly, the club's structure delivered a focus on selling extra tickets - the club development team - and we had no jurisdiction or authority to deal with "the matchday experience", which fell into other remits.
I'm sure that if you put that to relevant people they would say that the constraints of the infrastucture, i.e. size of the shop, number and capacity of refreshment outlets, safety certificate restrictions re queues were all limiting factors, but it does got back to the fact that marginal ticket revenue more or less flows straight through to the bottom line, whereas extra spend in other areas is significantly offset by additional cost of sale.
The fact that a good experience encourages a repeat ticket sale I well understand, but with the budgets in League One it may have been tough for managers to address.
This is one of the things that we could take from the USA perhaps? Sellers walking around the stands selling drinks or sweets etc to customers in their seats?
Or even Bournemouth, who were doing this last week.
The devil, as ever, is in the detail. Turnover is not a great way of comparing financial performance, particularly if your cost structures are different (e.g. Just Sport pay us a net commission which reduces the turnover and the cost of sales in comparison to a club that runs its own shop).
It seems to me that the best way of boosting bottom line performance is bums on seats, as your operating costs are pretty much the same so each extra ticket is pure profit. I think the commercial team did a good job on this last year with the promotions they ran, but I assume its a bit early in the season to be running these again. Something similar in terms of bundling tickets up for future games or 3 for 2 offers etc would boost attendance and add to profit if managed properly.
However, the surest way to increase attendance is to start winning your home games!
Slater makes the point that Palarse's revenue in 2011/12 was 25 per cent higher than CAFC's in 2012/13 (you can't make a proper overall comparison with us in 2011/12, because we were in League One).
Palace's turnover jumped to £15,022,059 from £12,706,503 in 2011/12 - with the club citing the successful Carling Cup run to the semi-finals as the main reason. If so we might want to look at that as an exceptional event, although you'd think their 2012/13 revenue was fairly buoyant too.
Charlton's revenue in 2012/13 was £11.8m, although a small allowance should be made for the fact we were still charging League One season ticket prices.
What interests me from researching the data (although Slater doesn't mention it), is that Charlton's (League One) match receipts in 2011/12 were comparable (within £1m) or better than three quarters of Championship clubs - including Palace - despite many fewer away fans than in the second tier.
One area in which we do very, very badly is merchandising, so for example we appear to have got £150k profit from Just Sports last year as per VOTV, whereas many Championship clubs are well into seven figures in income.
It's a similar story in other commercial areas, although the data is difficult to isolate.
I don't say, by the way, that this is down to incompetence, there are other explanations, and also I would say that tickets out-performed what might be expected, but it does suggest to me that we're not going to address the club's ability to compete significantly by focusing on selling more tickets, even though it has knock-on benefits for other income.
I believe this has long been our problem. Our development has always been (or appeared to have been) focussed on matchday tickets. Kids for a quid, football for a fiver but not enough focus on the 'matchday experience'. When we have capacity crowds where were the extra shop staff outside the club shop giving out vouchers to entice people inside? Where were the additonal staff inside the shop to ensure that the queue wasn't so long that people gave up and left? Where were the extra staff selling food and drink inside the building to make sure that everyone got served at half time? Where was the pitch entertainment to make sure families got the best value for their ticket and kids didn't get bored? Where were the promos upselling STHs to meals in the lounge and post seats for the match (which would also free up their seat to resell)? All these things are really important if we want to get more money in, and more importantly, turn occasional fans in the STHs. Alot of these things could be happening every week but the focus is on simply getting bodies through the turnstiles.
There may be some truth in that, although if you mean pre-match entertainment etc then there was some effort in that direction at all the Football for a Fiver games and especially against Hartlepool, which was also discounted. Rightly or wrongly, the club's structure delivered a focus on selling extra tickets - the club development team - and we had no jurisdiction or authority to deal with "the matchday experience", which fell into other remits.
I'm sure that if you put that to relevant people they would say that the constraints of the infrastucture, i.e. size of the shop, number and capacity of refreshment outlets, safety certificate restrictions re queues were all limiting factors, but it does got back to the fact that marginal ticket revenue more or less flows straight through to the bottom line, whereas extra spend in other areas is significantly offset by additional cost of sale.
The fact that a good experience encourages a repeat ticket sale I well understand, but with the budgets in League One it may have been tough for managers to address.
This is one of the things that we could take from the USA perhaps? Sellers walking around the stands selling drinks or sweets etc to customers in their seats?
I can hear the "SIT DOWN" shouts to the sellers walking up and down the stairs in the stand already.
The devil, as ever, is in the detail. Turnover is not a great way of comparing financial performance, particularly if your cost structures are different (e.g. Just Sport pay us a net commission which reduces the turnover and the cost of sales in comparison to a club that runs its own shop).
It seems to me that the best way of boosting bottom line performance is bums on seats, as your operating costs are pretty much the same so each extra ticket is pure profit. I think the commercial team did a good job on this last year with the promotions they ran, but I assume its a bit early in the season to be running these again. Something similar in terms of bundling tickets up for future games or 3 for 2 offers etc would boost attendance and add to profit if managed properly.
However, the surest way to increase attendance is to start winning your home games!
"This is one of the things that we could take from the USA perhaps? Sellers walking around the stands selling drinks or sweets etc to customers in their seats? "
I can just imagine it, "When I was young" being drowned out by the cries of "Sit Daahhnn!"
Slater makes the point that Palarse's revenue in 2011/12 was 25 per cent higher than CAFC's in 2012/13 (you can't make a proper overall comparison with us in 2011/12, because we were in League One).
Palace's turnover jumped to £15,022,059 from £12,706,503 in 2011/12 - with the club citing the successful Carling Cup run to the semi-finals as the main reason. If so we might want to look at that as an exceptional event, although you'd think their 2012/13 revenue was fairly buoyant too.
Charlton's revenue in 2012/13 was £11.8m, although a small allowance should be made for the fact we were still charging League One season ticket prices.
What interests me from researching the data (although Slater doesn't mention it), is that Charlton's (League One) match receipts in 2011/12 were comparable (within £1m) or better than three quarters of Championship clubs - including Palace - despite many fewer away fans than in the second tier.
One area in which we do very, very badly is merchandising, so for example we appear to have got £150k profit from Just Sports last year as per VOTV, whereas many Championship clubs are well into seven figures in income.
It's a similar story in other commercial areas, although the data is difficult to isolate.
I don't say, by the way, that this is down to incompetence, there are other explanations, and also I would say that tickets out-performed what might be expected, but it does suggest to me that we're not going to address the club's ability to compete significantly by focusing on selling more tickets, even though it has knock-on benefits for other income.
I believe this has long been our problem. Our development has always been (or appeared to have been) focussed on matchday tickets. Kids for a quid, football for a fiver but not enough focus on the 'matchday experience'. When we have capacity crowds where were the extra shop staff outside the club shop giving out vouchers to entice people inside? Where were the additonal staff inside the shop to ensure that the queue wasn't so long that people gave up and left? Where were the extra staff selling food and drink inside the building to make sure that everyone got served at half time? Where was the pitch entertainment to make sure families got the best value for their ticket and kids didn't get bored? Where were the promos upselling STHs to meals in the lounge and post seats for the match (which would also free up their seat to resell)? All these things are really important if we want to get more money in, and more importantly, turn occasional fans in the STHs. Alot of these things could be happening every week but the focus is on simply getting bodies through the turnstiles.
There may be some truth in that, although if you mean pre-match entertainment etc then there was some effort in that direction at all the Football for a Fiver games and especially against Hartlepool, which was also discounted. Rightly or wrongly, the club's structure delivered a focus on selling extra tickets - the club development team - and we had no jurisdiction or authority to deal with "the matchday experience", which fell into other remits.
I'm sure that if you put that to relevant people they would say that the constraints of the infrastucture, i.e. size of the shop, number and capacity of refreshment outlets, safety certificate restrictions re queues were all limiting factors, but it does got back to the fact that marginal ticket revenue more or less flows straight through to the bottom line, whereas extra spend in other areas is significantly offset by additional cost of sale.
The fact that a good experience encourages a repeat ticket sale I well understand, but with the budgets in League One it may have been tough for managers to address.
Surely those responsible are being paid to come up with solutions, not problems or excuses?
The match day experience is simply poor, especially when compared to other sports.
I know it is slightly taking the thread away from the subject but this is the only thread disussing the programme. Can I say how much I really enjoying reading the interview with Dean Kiely? I was really shocked to read that he considered that Curbs had lost interest in the club in that last season and as a result had no interest in helping Deono back into the starting 11 after a potentially career-ending injury. Now I know there may be a bit of sour grapes and I remember that season that Myhre had come from third choice to be brilliant and probably didn't deserve to lose his place but Deano seemed to take it as a personal slight from a club that he loved and felt badly let down by Curbs. Well worth a read.
I always find the club shop to be a strange bag of onions. nowhere near big enough for the potential of matchdays, but not really viable any other day of the week. The last thing I want to do on a matchday is queue up for 10 mins to get in, hussle & bussle around everyone like a last minute closing down sale and if I find something I wish to buy, spend a further 20 mins queueing up to pay for it. I know the alternative is to simply shop online, but I'm a bit old fashioned that I like to see what I'm buying, check out the quality and (if a clothing item) try it on.
As I don't go to away games these days, I can't compare our shop to other clubs of a similar size. Is it about average? maybe someone here can answer that?
Sorry if this is taking it a bit off topic..................
Slater makes the point that Palarse's revenue in 2011/12 was 25 per cent higher than CAFC's in 2012/13 (you can't make a proper overall comparison with us in 2011/12, because we were in League One).
Palace's turnover jumped to £15,022,059 from £12,706,503 in 2011/12 - with the club citing the successful Carling Cup run to the semi-finals as the main reason. If so we might want to look at that as an exceptional event, although you'd think their 2012/13 revenue was fairly buoyant too.
Charlton's revenue in 2012/13 was £11.8m, although a small allowance should be made for the fact we were still charging League One season ticket prices.
What interests me from researching the data (although Slater doesn't mention it), is that Charlton's (League One) match receipts in 2011/12 were comparable (within £1m) or better than three quarters of Championship clubs - including Palace - despite many fewer away fans than in the second tier.
One area in which we do very, very badly is merchandising, so for example we appear to have got £150k profit from Just Sports last year as per VOTV, whereas many Championship clubs are well into seven figures in income.
It's a similar story in other commercial areas, although the data is difficult to isolate.
I don't say, by the way, that this is down to incompetence, there are other explanations, and also I would say that tickets out-performed what might be expected, but it does suggest to me that we're not going to address the club's ability to compete significantly by focusing on selling more tickets, even though it has knock-on benefits for other income.
I believe this has long been our problem. Our development has always been (or appeared to have been) focussed on matchday tickets. Kids for a quid, football for a fiver but not enough focus on the 'matchday experience'. When we have capacity crowds where were the extra shop staff outside the club shop giving out vouchers to entice people inside? Where were the additonal staff inside the shop to ensure that the queue wasn't so long that people gave up and left? Where were the extra staff selling food and drink inside the building to make sure that everyone got served at half time? Where was the pitch entertainment to make sure families got the best value for their ticket and kids didn't get bored? Where were the promos upselling STHs to meals in the lounge and post seats for the match (which would also free up their seat to resell)? All these things are really important if we want to get more money in, and more importantly, turn occasional fans in the STHs. Alot of these things could be happening every week but the focus is on simply getting bodies through the turnstiles.
There may be some truth in that, although if you mean pre-match entertainment etc then there was some effort in that direction at all the Football for a Fiver games and especially against Hartlepool, which was also discounted. Rightly or wrongly, the club's structure delivered a focus on selling extra tickets - the club development team - and we had no jurisdiction or authority to deal with "the matchday experience", which fell into other remits.
I'm sure that if you put that to relevant people they would say that the constraints of the infrastucture, i.e. size of the shop, number and capacity of refreshment outlets, safety certificate restrictions re queues were all limiting factors, but it does got back to the fact that marginal ticket revenue more or less flows straight through to the bottom line, whereas extra spend in other areas is significantly offset by additional cost of sale.
The fact that a good experience encourages a repeat ticket sale I well understand, but with the budgets in League One it may have been tough for managers to address.
This is one of the things that we could take from the USA perhaps? Sellers walking around the stands selling drinks or sweets etc to customers in their seats?
Comments
I also thought their volunteers idea was a great one. Having people just around to help people out on days where a large number of new fans are about would improve the experience of those new fans and be totally free to the club. But that was poo pooed on here because everyone seemed to think that they weren't needed. It's not about the 10,000 that go every week, it's about the 10,000 that don't. They might benefit from knowing where to buy the best food and how to find the exit when 10,000 regulars are swarming passed at speed.
Edited as I wrote pooping one out, and nothing in the club shop will help with that.
What is crazy is that because of the inflated fees we pay to Sky and others is that UK football as a whole could actually be very profitable and could support thriving lower divisions and the game at the grass roots structure - especially, if so much money was funnelled into players wages at the higher level and to the wannabees and used to bees at the Championship level. That the Football League and FA have allowed such a situation to develop really is little short of scandalous - and I for one think the time has come for the Government to strip them of their powers over our national game and pass them to new bodies who have the game's real interests at heart. On the other hand we could all sit and hope for a sugar daddy, who has made his money doing goodness knows what and how to come to our rescue.
Also lounges, food and drink aren't merchandising but hospitality and catering and we don't have comparative figures for that.
It seems to me that the best way of boosting bottom line performance is bums on seats, as your operating costs are pretty much the same so each extra ticket is pure profit. I think the commercial team did a good job on this last year with the promotions they ran, but I assume its a bit early in the season to be running these again. Something similar in terms of bundling tickets up for future games or 3 for 2 offers etc would boost attendance and add to profit if managed properly.
However, the surest way to increase attendance is to start winning your home games!
All true
I can just imagine it, "When I was young" being drowned out by the cries of "Sit Daahhnn!"
Didn't the shop run out of Gnomes as well.
Thanks for the translation - it was much needed!
Damned if you do Damned if you don't
The match day experience is simply poor, especially when compared to other sports.
Can I say how much I really enjoying reading the interview with Dean Kiely?
I was really shocked to read that he considered that Curbs had lost interest in the club in that last season and as a result had no interest in helping Deono back into the starting 11 after a potentially career-ending injury. Now I know there may be a bit of sour grapes and I remember that season that Myhre had come from third choice to be brilliant and probably didn't deserve to lose his place but Deano seemed to take it as a personal slight from a club that he loved and felt badly let down by Curbs.
Well worth a read.
As I don't go to away games these days, I can't compare our shop to other clubs of a similar size. Is it about average? maybe someone here can answer that?
Sorry if this is taking it a bit off topic..................