If you don't like the charge just purchase early, how hard can it be.
Exactly, I think some are looking at this from the wrong angle. If you purchase earlier the tickets are a couple of quid cheaper. Where’s the problem?
Small related problem is that online option disappears something like 2 or 3 hours before. Not sure why you need to do that. If online you can pay 'less' its still stopping queuing at the ticket office.
So you’ve got days or weeks even to buy a ticket online but it’s a problem when it is taken away 3 hours before the game? It really isn’t even a small problem.
If you book online you get to select your seats, at the ticket office on the day you are allocated seats in the stand you want to sit, you may be asked what block you want if you are lucky. I can understand taking the tickets offline 2/3 hours before kick off as this could lead duplication.
If you don't like the charge just purchase early, how hard can it be.
Exactly, I think some are looking at this from the wrong angle. If you purchase earlier the tickets are a couple of quid cheaper. Where’s the problem?
Small related problem is that online option disappears something like 2 or 3 hours before. Not sure why you need to do that. If online you can pay 'less' its still stopping queuing at the ticket office.
So you’ve got days or weeks even to buy a ticket online but it’s a problem when it is taken away 3 hours before the game? It really isn’t even a small problem.
Quirk then !
My (small) point remains no need to turn off online prior to kick off if the driver is to reduce queues (unless there is a logistical reason) - that is all.
The scenario I had in mind was a late change in plans allowing someone to attend costs more when really no need to have any disincentive.
I had a message to say Paul Mullin had mine and I needed to go to Wrexham to collect. I got all the way there and he said he’d given it to Kyle Edwards…..Got to reading and he said Joe Gomes has it.
Not sure if your assumption that most of the walk up are new customers is correct. The extra income generated by this charge is around £100,000. Whether there is a loss of ticket sales because of it I suspect is very doubtful.
Unlikely. Even taking that figure as gross, that would require an average of 1,450 "late" over 18 matchday ticket sales per match at £3 a time. There is no surcharge on U18 tickets, which typically comprise at least a quarter of match ticket sales.
That figure rises to 1,739 average over 18 ticket sales if you take into account that the £3 is subject to VAT, so you have to raise £120,000 to generate £100,000.
If the club was selling an average of 2,500 tickets in the two hours before kick-off every game, you'd see massive queues because the infrastructure would struggle to cope with it. The queues would be a bigger deterrent than the price.
I thought I had remembered you saying that walk up was usually around 2,000. Sounds like my memory is wrong. Your estimate is better than mine, so what would you estimate it to be, so I can recalibrate my brain?
Think you are confusing two things - the walk-up and the home match ticket sales. Tickets on the day was maybe about 1,000 on average in L1 when I was involved in it, on a good day. Home match ticket sales - including advance sales - were obviously more than that, again on average. They were rubbish 2009-12, in part because we had 9/10,000 STs, whereas under RD this was 6,500 in L1.
As a rough exercise, based on 19/20 off the top of my head, 10,000 season tickets, 1,500 away fans, 1,500 comps, circa 5,000 match sales (historically a big number at Charlton so may not be correct).
Even then we could not be selling 50% of 5,000 over the counter in the last two hours before kick-off, given the print at home option. Indeed, counter sales overall won’t be anything like 50%. There are likely to be far fewer matchday sales overall because of print at home.
My guess is that on average the club is likely to sell 500-1,000 tickets in that two hour window, of which a quarter will be juniors. That would be 375-750 x 3 x 23 = roughly £25k - £50k less the VAT, so £21k-£42k ish.
However, you have to allow something for people put off by the extra charge. If you believe that £3 is no disincentive the financial logic would say add it to all prices from the start, but there would plenty of people complaining if the minimum adult ticket for SW was £29 - which it will be on the day. Tickets in the centre blocks will be £36.
Let’s say that puts 50 adult sales off per game (they know about the uplift and don’t set off - although I would expect a few people to balk at paying £29 at the ticket office) and the average net revenue without the £3 uplift is £19 - that’s £19 x 50 x 23 = about £22k lost, based on the cheapest tickets. In other words the net financial benefit of the £3 uplift would be very little.
Not that it impacts me - if I’m flying 3500m to a game, I’ll buy in advance - but why does the online system need to be disabled 3 hours before the game. If I’ve got print at home, or if they’ve moved to etickets, why take it offline?
Having said that, I know some venues stop selling tickets for concerts online some period before the show. It would only make sense if there are two ticketing systems that are not synchronized - but even them you’d be open to confusion any time both the box office and the online system were open at the same time
I could understand the surcharge to use the ticket office, but why force people to use that option if you don’t need to.
Not that it impacts me - if I’m flying 3500m to a game, I’ll buy in advance - but why does the online system need to be disabled 3 hours before the game. If I’ve got print at home, or if they’ve moved to etickets, why take it offline?
Having said that, I know some venues stop selling tickets for concerts online some period before the show. It would only make sense if there are two ticketing systems that are not synchronized - but even them you’d be open to confusion any time both the box office and the online system were open at the same time
I could understand the surcharge to use the ticket office, but why force people to use that option if you don’t need to.
I believe it’s because of the price change, which would also change online because it is drawn off the same dataset. Traditionally, the club bulk prints some tickets and sells them out of the Harvey Gardens ticket office, while it sells off the system behind the west stand.
Bear in mind this is Meire logic. You could continue to sell online, but it would be at the higher price, which would then be hard to justify. So you make it more difficult to buy in order to charge a price that deters you doing what you wouldn’t need to do without it.
Not that it impacts me - if I’m flying 3500m to a game, I’ll buy in advance - but why does the online system need to be disabled 3 hours before the game.
Because the prices change 3 hours before the game, and they don't have a mechanism in place to have that price update on the online sales system at the same time.
Not sure if your assumption that most of the walk up are new customers is correct. The extra income generated by this charge is around £100,000. Whether there is a loss of ticket sales because of it I suspect is very doubtful.
Unlikely. Even taking that figure as gross, that would require an average of 1,450 "late" over 18 matchday ticket sales per match at £3 a time. There is no surcharge on U18 tickets, which typically comprise at least a quarter of match ticket sales.
That figure rises to 1,739 average over 18 ticket sales if you take into account that the £3 is subject to VAT, so you have to raise £120,000 to generate £100,000.
If the club was selling an average of 2,500 tickets in the two hours before kick-off every game, you'd see massive queues because the infrastructure would struggle to cope with it. The queues would be a bigger deterrent than the price.
I thought I had remembered you saying that walk up was usually around 2,000. Sounds like my memory is wrong. Your estimate is better than mine, so what would you estimate it to be, so I can recalibrate my brain?
Think you are confusing two things - the walk-up and the home match ticket sales. Tickets on the day was maybe about 1,000 on average in L1 when I was involved in it, on a good day. Home match ticket sales - including advance sales - were obviously more than that, again on average. They were rubbish 2009-12, in part because we had 9/10,000 STs, whereas under RD this was 6,500 in L1.
As a rough exercise, based on 19/20 off the top of my head, 10,000 season tickets, 1,500 away fans, 1,500 comps, circa 5,000 match sales (historically a big number at Charlton so may not be correct).
Even then we could not be selling 50% of 5,000 over the counter in the last two hours before kick-off, given the print at home option. Indeed, counter sales overall won’t be anything like 50%. There are likely to be far fewer matchday sales overall because of print at home.
My guess is that on average the club is likely to sell 500-1,000 tickets in that two hour window, of which a quarter will be juniors. That would be 375-750 x 3 x 23 = roughly £25k - £50k less the VAT, so £21k-£42k ish.
However, you have to allow something for people put off by the extra charge. If you believe that £3 is no disincentive the financial logic would say add it to all prices from the start, but there would plenty of people complaining if the minimum adult ticket for SW was £29 - which it will be on the day. Tickets in the centre blocks will be £36.
Let’s say that puts 50 adult sales off per game (they know about the uplift and don’t set off - although I would expect a few people to balk at paying £29 at the ticket office) and the average net revenue without the £3 uplift is £19 - that’s £19 x 50 x 23 = about £22k lost, based on the cheapest tickets. In other words the net financial benefit of the £3 uplift would be very little.
Great detailed explanation there AB.
So it sounds like the only real benefits of the £3 uplift are non-financial, reducing the queues as much as possible to get everyone in the ground on time and reducing stress at the ticket office to a minimum.
Out of curiosity how many clubs do this in The Championship and League One? I appreciate you probably won't have the data for the other clubs but just curious as a long term ST holder, if this is standard practice, a division thing or just a Charlton thing?
Not sure if your assumption that most of the walk up are new customers is correct. The extra income generated by this charge is around £100,000. Whether there is a loss of ticket sales because of it I suspect is very doubtful.
Unlikely. Even taking that figure as gross, that would require an average of 1,450 "late" over 18 matchday ticket sales per match at £3 a time. There is no surcharge on U18 tickets, which typically comprise at least a quarter of match ticket sales.
That figure rises to 1,739 average over 18 ticket sales if you take into account that the £3 is subject to VAT, so you have to raise £120,000 to generate £100,000.
If the club was selling an average of 2,500 tickets in the two hours before kick-off every game, you'd see massive queues because the infrastructure would struggle to cope with it. The queues would be a bigger deterrent than the price.
I thought I had remembered you saying that walk up was usually around 2,000. Sounds like my memory is wrong. Your estimate is better than mine, so what would you estimate it to be, so I can recalibrate my brain?
Think you are confusing two things - the walk-up and the home match ticket sales. Tickets on the day was maybe about 1,000 on average in L1 when I was involved in it, on a good day. Home match ticket sales - including advance sales - were obviously more than that, again on average. They were rubbish 2009-12, in part because we had 9/10,000 STs, whereas under RD this was 6,500 in L1.
As a rough exercise, based on 19/20 off the top of my head, 10,000 season tickets, 1,500 away fans, 1,500 comps, circa 5,000 match sales (historically a big number at Charlton so may not be correct).
Even then we could not be selling 50% of 5,000 over the counter in the last two hours before kick-off, given the print at home option. Indeed, counter sales overall won’t be anything like 50%. There are likely to be far fewer matchday sales overall because of print at home.
My guess is that on average the club is likely to sell 500-1,000 tickets in that two hour window, of which a quarter will be juniors. That would be 375-750 x 3 x 23 = roughly £25k - £50k less the VAT, so £21k-£42k ish.
However, you have to allow something for people put off by the extra charge. If you believe that £3 is no disincentive the financial logic would say add it to all prices from the start, but there would plenty of people complaining if the minimum adult ticket for SW was £29 - which it will be on the day. Tickets in the centre blocks will be £36.
Let’s say that puts 50 adult sales off per game (they know about the uplift and don’t set off - although I would expect a few people to balk at paying £29 at the ticket office) and the average net revenue without the £3 uplift is £19 - that’s £19 x 50 x 23 = about £22k lost, based on the cheapest tickets. In other words the net financial benefit of the £3 uplift would be very little.
Great detailed explanation there AB.
So it sounds like the only real benefits of the £3 uplift are non-financial, reducing the queues as much as possible to get everyone in the ground on time and reducing stress at the ticket office to a minimum.
Out of curiosity how many clubs do this in The Championship and League One? I appreciate you probably won't have the data for the other clubs but just curious as a long term ST holder, if this is standard practice, a division thing or just a Charlton thing?
I’m always wary of the argument “other clubs do it”. No two clubs are the same - to some extent it is addressing a problem that Charlton don’t have, because we have a high percentage of season-ticket holders against overall home support.
Equally, you can use the argument back to the club. “Other clubs” open their ticket office fully to the public five days a week; ours says it’s not necessary/possible/desirable, which is essentially a staffing cost argument.
As others have said, the Meire price structure and policies haven’t been changed. It’s unlikely they are all the optimum for the club and over time you would hope they would all be re-examined.
In the clubs defence Sheffield Wednesday is the first home match in the TS era they had the opportunity to sell tickets for. I would expect by the end of the season a lot of the poor Meire decisions to be removed.
I have reason to worry that they will send mine to the wrong address. My address on the system was wrong when I bought the ticket but I didn't realise until I received the confirmation email which stated that as the address it would be sent to. I immediately changed my address on the system and sent an email (got no reply). They have since sent me leaflets and the like in the post to this address but no idea if they will get it right for the ST.
You should have received an email giving you the chance to update your address.
I have phoned the ticket office and purchased 2 tickets for the Sheffield Wednesday match. It was a tough decision as it would have been far easier to watch from home. But with our Tom being his first match with a good crowd to welcome him to The Valley I just have to be there. I’m hoping to convince one of my mates to become an Addick. Let’s so also hope the lads put on a show.
There was a note attached saying that they were surprised that I had bought 9000 and nobody else had bought any, but that the computer system couldn't be wrong
Comments
My (small) point remains no need to turn off online prior to kick off if the driver is to reduce queues (unless there is a logistical reason) - that is all.
The scenario I had in mind was a late change in plans allowing someone to attend costs more when really no need to have any disincentive.
Season tickets
- The club has sold more than 9,000 season tickets, click here to purchase your season ticket for the 2021/22 season
- The club has begun distributing season tickets and they will begin to arrive this week
https://www.cafc.co.uk/news/view/60fedb5dd1704/key-timings-for-match-tickets-charltontv-passes-and-kit-reveals
As a rough exercise, based on 19/20 off the top of my head, 10,000 season tickets, 1,500 away fans, 1,500 comps, circa 5,000 match sales (historically a big number at Charlton so may not be correct).
Even then we could not be selling 50% of 5,000 over the counter in the last two hours before kick-off, given the print at home option. Indeed, counter sales overall won’t be anything like 50%. There are likely to be far fewer matchday sales overall because of print at home.
However, you have to allow something for people put off by the extra charge. If you believe that £3 is no disincentive the financial logic would say add it to all prices from the start, but there would plenty of people complaining if the minimum adult ticket for SW was £29 - which it will be on the day. Tickets in the centre blocks will be £36.
Let’s say that puts 50 adult sales off per game (they know about the uplift and don’t set off - although I would expect a few people to balk at paying £29 at the ticket office) and the average net revenue without the £3 uplift is £19 - that’s £19 x 50 x 23 = about £22k lost, based on the cheapest tickets. In other words the net financial benefit of the £3 uplift would be very little.
I could understand the surcharge to use the ticket office, but why force people to use that option if you don’t need to.
Bear in mind this is Meire logic. You could continue to sell online, but it would be at the higher price, which would then be hard to justify. So you make it more difficult to buy in order to charge a price that deters you doing what you wouldn’t need to do without it.
So it sounds like the only real benefits of the £3 uplift are non-financial, reducing the queues as much as possible to get everyone in the ground on time and reducing stress at the ticket office to a minimum.
Out of curiosity how many clubs do this in The Championship and League One? I appreciate you probably won't have the data for the other clubs but just curious as a long term ST holder, if this is standard practice, a division thing or just a Charlton thing?
Equally, you can use the argument back to the club. “Other clubs” open their ticket office fully to the public five days a week; ours says it’s not necessary/possible/desirable, which is essentially a staffing cost argument.
No price for girls?
There was a note attached saying that they were surprised that I had bought 9000 and nobody else had bought any, but that the computer system couldn't be wrong
Girls would have the same price as boys I assume.