As much as I love CAFC - at the moment I cannot justify £30 for a ticket. If I had known that before hand I would not have attended. I cant see any justification for a game like this to be worth £30...
I 'm a season ticket holder, but to be honest I would have willingly paid £30 for that yesterday, really entertaining game.But I can understand some people may just not be able to justify, its tough out there at the moment.
As much as I love CAFC - at the moment I cannot justify £30 for a ticket. If I had known that before hand I would not have attended. I cant see any justification for a game like this to be worth £30...
Id presume its pricing like that, which allows some of the deals throughout the season to happen. The pricing info would have been on the OS anyway, so its not asif they tricked people into turning up and paying extra
Nobody has to pay £30. There were plenty of seats at £20 and £25. I cannot see why someone who is price sensitive would choose to buy a top price seat.
On the whole it's a fine judgement whether these prices work and there isn't enough evidence either way, but there's no doubt they apply elsewhere.
Well, my daughter normally comes but was at a school fayre yesterday. I suspect not everyone shares my desire to escape as much of christmas as possible, hence reduced numbers.
Not what I got told at the ticket office to be told it was members and season ticket holders only and only allowed to sell me a ticket after I insisted looking back at my purchase history.....My opinion so please respect my view as I respect yours and the club.....but considering how much money I have given over the year ..t the moment I can't justify that amount.......still think 25 pounds for a fame of football is too much but unfortunatly times are what they so have to respect that but for me I won't pay that again so for me its Sky Sports News for me for now......not criticising any individual personally just my opinion......
You make a good point about the restrictions, which may have had some impact on the home ticket sales, depending on how sensibly they were applied. Also it's possible the £20 tickets sold out, but that could also have happened at normal prices so the cheapest ticket would be £22 anyway.
I tend to agree that £25 is expensive, but clubs will charge what people will pay. Overall I think our current match prices are about right, albeit not everyone will be able to afford them. Hence the cheaper games. I believe the minimum adult price at Millwall is £26.
I thought it was another dig, but I got the wrong end of the stick as Airman has just said he set the prices.l
Quite - I take the blame and the credit, but my job was to maximise the income, not the crowd, with the qualification that you have to increase paying support over time within that.
And this must be the most difficult balance, as we all want to see sell outs but the club need the income. I think you got this about right Airman to be fair.
Wish so much I could gave gone yesterday to the game but I now have a family that will always take first place. And i am not alone in the 30 something bracket (at least with my friends). I get to at best 10 home games in a season. This weekend was one I just could not for any money make. That said money is at this time hard to come by (I have a good job) and I do make more of an effort when it's cheaper.
The thing is though does it make it make right brighton sold out at 30 pounds so should we take a chance with Leeds/millwall and charge 35pounds
I reckon the extra fiver on the adult away price is probably worth £10k to the club, after VAT and allowing for concessions (£2 dearer) and U18/U11s staying the same.
However, if the average home ticket is £15 net, for argument's sake, you only have to price out 666 home fans to wipe out the gain in away revenue. If you price out another 300 you wipe out the gain from 3,000 home fans who still buy.
I think that would be a big risk if you went to £35 and it would also damage perceptions of the club, i.e. the "brand values" built up over many years.
So in that sense it wouldn't be right to charge £35. Ipswich is also £30, largely because it's on Boxing Day, so we'll have to see what happens with that.
The thing is though does it make it make right brighton sold out at 30 pounds so should we take a chance with Leeds/millwall and charge 35pounds
I reckon the extra fiver on the adult away price is probably worth £10k to the club, after VAT and allowing for concessions (£2 dearer) and U18/U11s staying the same.
However, if the average home ticket is £15 net, for argument's sake, you only have to price out 666 home fans to wipe out the gain in away revenue. If you price out another 300 you wipe out the gain from 3,000 home fans who still buy.
I think that would be a big risk if you went to £35 and it would also damage perceptions of the club, i.e. the "brand values" built up over many years.
So in that sense it wouldn't be right to charge £35. Ipswich is also £30, largely because it's on Boxing Day, so we'll have to see what happens with that.
I understand the 'season ticket value' argument but I think that over charging for a handful of games knowing that the crowd will be affected to justify the really cheap promotions is close to cheating.
I know there are benefits to having a season ticket and it's not all about price, but if the only way the club can ensure that the that season tickets work out cheaper is to charge £30 or £35 for some games knowing that very few will, actually, pay that then in the end the fans will see through it.
Also, in the end the price determines other factors that reduce attendances. Not only would the average fan choose the £5 game or the £10 game because it's cheaper it will also guarantee a better atmosphere. Thus a top price game, that doesn't have any other incentive to attend, like being a derby or top (or bottom) of the table clash, will deter fans as they will expect a low crowd and less atmosphere.
In the end I suspect that the fairest way to do this is to have the same price for most (if not all) games except for discounts like football for a fiver. This then needs to be reflected in the price for a season ticket. I can't see why the club can't announce the prices for all the games in advance of the season starting. Thus you can compare the value of a season ticket, and decide of you want to pass on a handful of games and pay as you go - and pay less. It would also mean that the club could sell tickets for games much more in advance, than they do now and this would help cash flow.
In these tough economic times I'm not sure I approve of the idea that a community business would use such pricing policies to exclude many from some games to ensure that those buying a ticket many months in advance do not end up paying more. I know the club need to maximise revenue over both the short and the long term, but it just feels a little like cheating to me.
It was a joke saturday getting in 4 kids in front of me no older than 14 1 with a charlton scarf round his neck being asked for his red card number as this game was not general sale.
Sound commercial logic to me. Some games are more attractive than others so it is fair to charge more. Personally think the club are doing a good balancing act on this at the moment.
Sound commercial logic to me. Some games are more attractive than others so it is fair to charge more. Personally think the club are doing a good balancing act on this at the moment.
I agree and the club has been absolutely spot on for years. Thank you Airman. Now things have changed so we have no idea what will happen going forward.
I may be wrong but I seem to recall Napoli got relegated many moons ago for financial irregularities. The went to Serie C and they decided to charge a nominal fee of 1euro or something silly for fans and were getting 60-70,000 fans in.
They subsequently romped the league, generated stack of revenue from food, drinks and programme sales and now look at them
I got a ticket on the day for the covered end without having to show my card, £22 was better value on Sat than the £5 for Barnsley!
Looking at prices for a season ticket - the 12 match season ticket is £160, £13.34/game for £20 gate seats. At that rate you'd need 1/3 of all games at £5 to affect the overall value of a season ticket, so I'm not sure it's 'cheating' to have pricier games here & there. Season tickets would still be better value than gate sales without the six or so premium games, even with the £5er and 'perfect pair' discounts. I imagine the savings are a greater percentage for a full season tickets, and for more expensive seats.
Surely the pricing worked because the overall gate was equal? You can't just make 'all games the same and then some £5' becuase season tickets would have to be reduced otherwise the payments wouldn't balance out. To be honest I'm not really sure from reading all this what Airmans point as. Is it bad or good that away fans made up the difference? Does he think the game should have been cheaper even though he had a had in deciding it wouldn't be? Or have I completely missed the point?
Firstly, apologies re £20 tickets - should have said £22 as above.
I think Kings Hill Addick is misunderstanding my point - the assumption is that some games, being on a Saturday (or equivalent) against relatively attractive opposition, may be able to sustain a higher price and therefore increase revenue. Actually, if we sold 3,000 home tickets at the walk-up prices for Saturday that was the same as Blackburn and more than Hull - and easily more than usual for the midweek games.
The perception it was low is driven by 1) a perhaps false expectation that Brighton would be more attractive; 2) no bulk comps, reducing the overall crowd and 3) creative arithmetic around the Huddersfield crowd figure.
The point of this pricing is to try to drive additional revenue on the day, not simply justify season tickets. But nobody knows until we try it what the outcomes will be. It then becomes information that can be factored into the season-ticket calculations, but it's about match revenue first.
In the back of my mind was the idea that someone at board level might simply decide that next season all tickets should be dearer, except for occasional cheap matches, without doing any market testing. Prothero was already asking other people report back to him on other clubs' pricing before I left. And Millwall's pricing may well look attractive in the abstract - the point is the crowds they get with it.
Airman, as you know better than all of us, it's the medium/long term effect, that is as equally important.
Yes, we may earn slightly more by ramping up the prices to a sold out away end. But as this reduces the home attendees, over the medium term some of these fans will get out of the habit of going & won't return.
It may well be that the current board don't care, as they don't plan on being here in the medium/long term or alternatively, if we return to The Prem will be selling out again in any case, unless the prices are hiked ridiculously.
Airman, as you know better than all of us, it's the medium/long term effect, that is as equally important.
Yes, we may earn slightly more by ramping up the prices to a sold out away end. But as this reduces the home attendees, over the medium term some of these fans will get out of the habit of going & won't return.
It may well be that the current board don't care, as they don't plan on being here in the medium/long term or alternatively, if we return to The Prem will be selling out again in any case, unless the prices are hiked ridiculously.
But we don't yet know it reduces the home attendees, do we? It's only £2 difference in the upper north after all. If there had been the usual bulk comps to schools etc on Saturday, we'd have had over 20,000. If Huddersfield hadn't been adjusted it would have come out at 18,000 or probably less. Then the perception would have been different, but the revenue would have still been the same.
Sorry but I still don't understand what we are supposed to be agreeing with, worried about or debating in this thread. Whose perception is it that attendance were low on Saturday? I thought they were good until this thread seemed to imply they weren't. And now it seems that they were good because of the low level of freebies. Does Airman think a large number of comps is a good thing, a bad thing or indifferent and how does this opinion change on 'high value games'? Airman suggests that the board may change the prices of the tickets next year without doing any market research but then also notes that people are enquiring about the pricing structure at other clubs. Does this mean that Airman believes the experiences of our club are so different from others as to mean that comparisons have no value?
I really feel like the pricing structure and attendence os something we should all be concerned about but I just don't understand the point. Are there veiled warnings of future disasters concealed in this thread that I am not able to read?
Any answers would be greatly appreciated Yours faithfully Confused of Charlton.
Numbers of people in the ground. Numbers of people with tickets for the game (who may or may not be in the ground). Numbers of actual pounds brought in on match days.
There appears to be little consistent relationship between those forces above.
Everybody knows the best measure of actual attendance is the size of the prize for the Addicks Instant Jackpot draw.
In answer to DRF I am in favour of using comps but not for more attractive games. Market testing needs to be of our market, e.g. suppose we had adopted Millwall's minimum adult price of £26 on promotion to the Championship? Arguably the "product" is similar, but I think there would have been considerable resistance.
It's perfectly sensible to look at what similar clubs charge, providing you also look at the outcomes and why the Charlton market may be different.
If you go back to the Prem days we had a constant stream of people, Curbs among them, pointing at West Ham and Spurs in particular and questioning why we didn't charge the same as them. The simple answer was because we are not them and the risk as I see it is that another group of directors come in and make the same mistake.
All that said, the season tickets are too cheap in this division and the only question is how much they will go up.
Given the aim is to maximise revenue has any club looked into the use of the online pricing models used by Ryanair and their ilk which have exactly the same objective and despite all the jokes work pretty well?
Given the aim is to maximise revenue has any club looked into the use of the online pricing models used by Ryanair and their ilk which have exactly the same objective and despite all the jokes work pretty well?
Unreserved seating? Pay more if you want to bring a bag? Extra charge if the game has more than five minute injury time in total?
Comments
Id presume its pricing like that, which allows some of the deals throughout the season to happen. The pricing info would have been on the OS anyway, so its not asif they tricked people into turning up and paying extra
On the whole it's a fine judgement whether these prices work and there isn't enough evidence either way, but there's no doubt they apply elsewhere.
I tend to agree that £25 is expensive, but clubs will charge what people will pay. Overall I think our current match prices are about right, albeit not everyone will be able to afford them. Hence the cheaper games. I believe the minimum adult price at Millwall is £26.
brighton sold out at 30 pounds
so should we take a chance with Leeds/millwall and charge 35pounds
If they don't, we keep the ground in tact :-)
That said money is at this time hard to come by (I have a good job) and I do make more of an effort when it's cheaper.
However, if the average home ticket is £15 net, for argument's sake, you only have to price out 666 home fans to wipe out the gain in away revenue. If you price out another 300 you wipe out the gain from 3,000 home fans who still buy.
I think that would be a big risk if you went to £35 and it would also damage perceptions of the club, i.e. the "brand values" built up over many years.
So in that sense it wouldn't be right to charge £35. Ipswich is also £30, largely because it's on Boxing Day, so we'll have to see what happens with that.
I know there are benefits to having a season ticket and it's not all about price, but if the only way the club can ensure that the that season tickets work out cheaper is to charge £30 or £35 for some games knowing that very few will, actually, pay that then in the end the fans will see through it.
Also, in the end the price determines other factors that reduce attendances. Not only would the average fan choose the £5 game or the £10 game because it's cheaper it will also guarantee a better atmosphere. Thus a top price game, that doesn't have any other incentive to attend, like being a derby or top (or bottom) of the table clash, will deter fans as they will expect a low crowd and less atmosphere.
In the end I suspect that the fairest way to do this is to have the same price for most (if not all) games except for discounts like football for a fiver. This then needs to be reflected in the price for a season ticket. I can't see why the club can't announce the prices for all the games in advance of the season starting. Thus you can compare the value of a season ticket, and decide of you want to pass on a handful of games and pay as you go - and pay less. It would also mean that the club could sell tickets for games much more in advance, than they do now and this would help cash flow.
In these tough economic times I'm not sure I approve of the idea that a community business would use such pricing policies to exclude many from some games to ensure that those buying a ticket many months in advance do not end up paying more. I know the club need to maximise revenue over both the short and the long term, but it just feels a little like cheating to me.
They subsequently romped the league, generated stack of revenue from food, drinks and programme sales and now look at them
Looking at prices for a season ticket - the 12 match season ticket is £160, £13.34/game for £20 gate seats. At that rate you'd need 1/3 of all games at £5 to affect the overall value of a season ticket, so I'm not sure it's 'cheating' to have pricier games here & there. Season tickets would still be better value than gate sales without the six or so premium games, even with the £5er and 'perfect pair' discounts. I imagine the savings are a greater percentage for a full season tickets, and for more expensive seats.
To be honest I'm not really sure from reading all this what Airmans point as. Is it bad or good that away fans made up the difference? Does he think the game should have been cheaper even though he had a had in deciding it wouldn't be? Or have I completely missed the point?
I think Kings Hill Addick is misunderstanding my point - the assumption is that some games, being on a Saturday (or equivalent) against relatively attractive opposition, may be able to sustain a higher price and therefore increase revenue. Actually, if we sold 3,000 home tickets at the walk-up prices for Saturday that was the same as Blackburn and more than Hull - and easily more than usual for the midweek games.
The perception it was low is driven by 1) a perhaps false expectation that Brighton would be more attractive; 2) no bulk comps, reducing the overall crowd and 3) creative arithmetic around the Huddersfield crowd figure.
The point of this pricing is to try to drive additional revenue on the day, not simply justify season tickets. But nobody knows until we try it what the outcomes will be. It then becomes information that can be factored into the season-ticket calculations, but it's about match revenue first.
In the back of my mind was the idea that someone at board level might simply decide that next season all tickets should be dearer, except for occasional cheap matches, without doing any market testing. Prothero was already asking other people report back to him on other clubs' pricing before I left. And Millwall's pricing may well look attractive in the abstract - the point is the crowds they get with it.
Yes, we may earn slightly more by ramping up the prices to a sold out away end. But as this reduces the home attendees, over the medium term some of these fans will get out of the habit of going & won't return.
It may well be that the current board don't care, as they don't plan on being here in the medium/long term or alternatively, if we return to The Prem will be selling out again in any case, unless the prices are hiked ridiculously.
Whose perception is it that attendance were low on Saturday? I thought they were good until this thread seemed to imply they weren't. And now it seems that they were good because of the low level of freebies.
Does Airman think a large number of comps is a good thing, a bad thing or indifferent and how does this opinion change on 'high value games'?
Airman suggests that the board may change the prices of the tickets next year without doing any market research but then also notes that people are enquiring about the pricing structure at other clubs. Does this mean that Airman believes the experiences of our club are so different from others as to mean that comparisons have no value?
I really feel like the pricing structure and attendence os something we should all be concerned about but I just don't understand the point. Are there veiled warnings of future disasters concealed in this thread that I am not able to read?
Any answers would be greatly appreciated
Yours faithfully
Confused of Charlton.
Numbers of people in the ground.
Numbers of people with tickets for the game (who may or may not be in the ground).
Numbers of actual pounds brought in on match days.
There appears to be little consistent relationship between those forces above.
Everybody knows the best measure of actual attendance is the size of the prize for the Addicks Instant Jackpot draw.
It's perfectly sensible to look at what similar clubs charge, providing you also look at the outcomes and why the Charlton market may be different.
If you go back to the Prem days we had a constant stream of people, Curbs among them, pointing at West Ham and Spurs in particular and questioning why we didn't charge the same as them. The simple answer was because we are not them and the risk as I see it is that another group of directors come in and make the same mistake.
All that said, the season tickets are too cheap in this division and the only question is how much they will go up.