These £5 ticket deals

[Dude]

Dont forget that the clubs main source of income now is season tickets and gate receipts. They simply cant afford to discount tickets too far. Our prices compare very favourably with other clubs in the championship. A few £5 matches like the Leeds game are fine to boost interest but any more and it will invitably lead to having to get rid of our best players to make ends meet.

It should not be forgotten that 500 x £5 = £2,500; 1,000 x £5 = £5,000 and 10,000 x £5 = £50,000. If you multiply £50,000 by the number of home league games in a season - ie 23, unless we are in the Premiership - you get £1,150,000 and over ten years that's £11,500,000 (unless we are in the Premiership).

[dml1954]

It should not be forgotten that 500 x £5 = £2,500; 1,000 x £5 = £5,000 and 10,000 x £5 = £50,000. If you multiply £50,000 by the number of home league games in a season - ie 23, unless we are in the Premiership - you get £1,150,000 and over ten years that's £11,500,000 (unless we are in the Premiership).

Our average home attendance so far is 21300. Assuming that we have about 12000 season ticket holders and an average match ticket price is around £20, then at that price each home game is generating £186000 in extra revenue for the club i.e. £4,278,000 over a 23 game season. Even allowing for 3 games a season at the £5 offer, thats still £3,859,500 extra. Using your figures above that is over £2,700,000 more than having the £5 offer for every game. Quite simply a club like ours can not afford to give away that amount of income every year.

Also adult season ticket holders in the Ninian stand who buy early in March pay £399 or £17.35 per game. Why should they continue to pay this amount when they can see that other people who are buying the tickets on a game by game basis are getting in for £5 a game. Most would stop buying the season tickets and the whole system would fall apart. The club relys heavily on early season ticket purchases to fund it through the summer months and assist with player recruitment. Its great to have the stadium full again but the only sustainable way to do this is to play good football and have success like we are at the moment, with the occassional 'special offer' matches and the ground will soon fill up again, making everyone happy. Once we are in the Premier League with all the TV revenue there will be much more scope to reduce prices if needs be and fill the stadium.

[Dude]

Our average home attendance so far is 21300. Assuming that we have about 12000 season ticket holders and an average match ticket price is around £20, then at that price each home game is generating £186000 in extra revenue for the club i.e. £4,278,000 over a 23 game season. Even allowing for 3 games a season at the £5 offer, thats still £3,859,500 extra. Using your figures above that is over £2,700,000 more than having the £5 offer for every game. Quite simply a club like ours can not afford to give away that amount of income every year.

Also adult season ticket holders in the Ninian stand who buy early in March pay £399 or £17.35 per game. Why should they continue to pay this amount when they can see that other people who are buying the tickets on a game by game basis are getting in for £5 a game. Most would stop buying the season tickets and the whole system would fall apart. The club relys heavily on early season ticket purchases to fund it through the summer months and assist with player recruitment. Its great to have the stadium full again but the only sustainable way to do this is to play good football and have success like we are at the moment, with the occassional 'special offer' matches and the ground will soon fill up again, making everyone happy. Once we are in the Premier League with all the TV revenue there will be much more scope to reduce prices if needs be and fill the stadium.

But have you factored in the sales of food and drink? Say the crowd was boosted by 7,000 by the £5 ticket price (as it was last Tuesday). Say 2,000 had three pints of beer and 3,000 had two pints and 1,000 had tea/coffee. Then again 1,500 had pies, 2,500 a plate of chips and 1,000 had other eatables. Then there's program sales say 2,000. I reckon a conservative estimate is gross (not net) revenue of from these sources would be around £20,000 to £30,000 a match. over a 23 game season that equates to close to a million. And if we go on a cup run - well, you can do the math! Makes economic sense to me.

[BLUETIT]

But have you factored in the sales of food and drink? Say the crowd was boosted by 7,000 by the £5 ticket price (as it was last Tuesday). Say 2,000 had three pints of beer and 3,000 had two pints and 1,000 had tea/coffee. Then again 1,500 had pies, 2,500 a plate of chips and 1,000 had other eatables. Then there's program sales say 2,000. I reckon a conservative estimate is gross (not net) revenue of from these sources would be around £20,000 to £30,000 a match. over a 23 game season that equates to close to a million. And if we go on a cup run - well, you can do the math! Makes economic sense to me.

They only get a SMALL percentage of food & drink money, the bulk goes to Compass

[joecity]

They only get a SMALL percentage of food & drink money, the bulk goes to Compass

We should bring that in house as it were. The standard is piss poor anyway it's not as if the club couldn't do it themselves.

[emjayblue]

We should bring that in house as it were. The standard is piss poor anyway it's not as if the club couldn't do it themselves.

The Clubs hierarchy attempted to do this but Compass wouldn't budge. Their 10 yr contract is due to expire next year. It has been a real money spinner for them. This deal was the only way we could pay for the fit out of the catering facilities at the time.

[dml1954]

But have you factored in the sales of food and drink? Say the crowd was boosted by 7,000 by the £5 ticket price (as it was last Tuesday). Say 2,000 had three pints of beer and 3,000 had two pints and 1,000 had tea/coffee. Then again 1,500 had pies, 2,500 a plate of chips and 1,000 had other eatables. Then there's program sales say 2,000. I reckon a conservative estimate is gross (not net) revenue of from these sources would be around £20,000 to £30,000 a match. over a 23 game season that equates to close to a million. And if we go on a cup run - well, you can do the math! Makes economic sense to me.

Catering and other ancillary sales obviously increase the higher the attendance, so you are technically correct in stating that the more £5 offer games we have, the higher the attendances would be and therefore more money would be taken in the stadium. However, even if having the £5 offer increases attendances from around the usual 18000-19000 level to over 25000, the increased sales in the stadium would come nowhere near making up the loss in gate receipts by reducing the prices - you are losing an average of £15 per ticket (£100000 a game using the above figures). The club couldnt afford to lose that much revenue over a season without cutting the playing staff and being less ambitious.

[BLUETIT]

Catering and other ancillary sales obviously increase the higher the attendance, so you are technically correct in stating that the more £5 offer games we have, the higher the attendances would be and therefore more money would be taken in the stadium. However, even if having the £5 offer increases attendances from around the usual 18000-19000 level to over 25000, the increased sales in the stadium would come nowhere near making up the loss in gate receipts by reducing the prices - you are losing an average of £15 per ticket (£100000 a game using the above figures). The club couldnt afford to lose that much revenue over a season without cutting the playing staff and being less ambitious.

Plus, the queues would be so long with all these new whippersnappers, that the regulars wouldn't bother

[Cyclops]

Catering and other ancillary sales obviously increase the higher the attendance, so you are technically correct in stating that the more £5 offer games we have, the higher the attendances would be and therefore more money would be taken in the stadium. However, even if having the £5 offer increases attendances from around the usual 18000-19000 level to over 25000, the increased sales in the stadium would come nowhere near making up the loss in gate receipts by reducing the prices - you are losing an average of £15 per ticket (£100000 a game using the above figures). The club couldnt afford to lose that much revenue over a season without cutting the playing staff and being less ambitious.

I believe your figures may be skewed. I've prepared an elaborate spreadsheet of attendances, catering and ancillary sales, cost of tickets (broken down by stands; season ticket holders and walk-ups) and our break-even figures over the last 25 years. I then extrapolated the figures onto extremely complex pie-charts and graphs. They provide definitive proof that season tickets should average £457.97 over all catergories and the club should offer the £99 for 6 matches deal, but at a different rate of £124.56 for 8 matches and repeat the £5 experiment - except at £6.75 for FIVE games in the season.

Your error seems to be the assumption that the gift tickets should be locked at £5. Increase that by a mere £2.50 and it changes the whole picture.