I expect there is a science to it but surely dropping the admission prices to £20 a game would entice more people in. More bums on seats equals more revenue does it not (if we serve decent food and get half decent staff). More bums on seats means better atmospheres (admittedly not always)
It might take a year or two to get the people in through the door but its an investment in the clubs future so it's not going to make money immediately.
I was sitting in the Lower West last night and noticed a bloke bearing a striking resemblance to John Candy up in the directors box. I'd not seen him before (not that I get to the Valley that often nowadays) but my impression was that I was looking at an American citizen. A potential investor perhaps?
I do not suppose for one minute we would walk straight into a newly built 40,000 seat stadium. I suspect in the time it would take to build it the new owners would do their best to have us promoted to the PL and then sections of the new ground would be closed until the demand is there to fill them.
It may even be a MK Dons scenario where the upper tier does not have the seats installed, well in certain areas anyway.
I expect there is a science to it but surely dropping the admission prices to £20 a game would entice more people in. More bums on seats equals more revenue does it not (if we serve decent food and get half decent staff). More bums on seats means better atmospheres (admittedly not always)
It might take a year or two to get the people in through the door but its an investment in the clubs future so it's not going to make money immediately.
You can buy an Adult match day ticket for £20 now.
So you just become Fulham, with a big away end and a place for tourists to watch games
I wouldn't knock the tourist demand - they're likely to be far less price-sensitive and 'opposition-sensitive' than the typical fan. Indeed it should be a market we actively target if/when we are in the Premiership and playing at the Peninsula.
I expect there is a science to it but surely dropping the admission prices to £20 a game would entice more people in. More bums on seats equals more revenue does it not (if we serve decent food and get half decent staff). More bums on seats means better atmospheres (admittedly not always)
It might take a year or two to get the people in through the door but its an investment in the clubs future so it's not going to make money immediately.
But if we don't own the ground we presumably won't get anything from advertising / catering etc ? ala Coventry ?
I expect there is a science to it but surely dropping the admission prices to £20 a game would entice more people in. More bums on seats equals more revenue does it not (if we serve decent food and get half decent staff). More bums on seats means better atmospheres (admittedly not always)
It might take a year or two to get the people in through the door but its an investment in the clubs future so it's not going to make money immediately.
You can buy an Adult match day ticket for £20 now.
I know. But in the Premiership you probably couldn't.
At present there isn't an attraction to the floating/plastics. You can't just drop the prices because of the 5 year season tickets suddenly becoming unfashionable as people will feel ripped off. But it makes sense to get people in the ground - lull them in with cheap tickets and then gradually increase the fan base and the prices to something sensible.
There are thousands of properties going up on and around the peninsula - this is a great time to capitalise on it by giving them good sensibly priced football on their doorstep.
I've said many times that the german model is the one to follow - cheap admission and make more of a day of it. They get great crowds, great atmospheres and less debt than most other football leagues.
As I have no issues with labouring a point that is why we need to ask both the current and any future owners questions about what the business plan is, etc
We don't need to find the answers ourselves. Sometimes asking the right questions is more powerful.
When we were in the premiership we sold out 28,000 every week. I understand we could easily have cleared over 30,000 every week.
As you say it is not yet a live issue but I should point out that we did NOT sell out 27,100 every week. Some of that shortfall may have been away fans not taking up full allocation. I'll leave Airman to advise on whether there was excess demand for 30,000 plus every week, but I'm a bit sceptical. I think the feeling was that if we could have taken the next building stage to 32,000 it would have been worthwhile but would still have taken a lot of hard graft by the marketing and sales team.
And we did not sell out our Wembley play off allocation either :-(. Sorry but its true. While I can hardly bear to look, I believe the Spanners have taken a bigger crowd to Wembley than we did that day.
Blimey did not realise that about the Play Off final, so if we had sold out, we would all have got sunstroke queuing for the tickets!!! My recollection is queuing for 5-7 hours and if someone had told me before hand I would have to queue for any ,longer than an hour I would have missed the final, so thankfully they did not.
Without having anything to justify it, my feeling is in the Prem we could regularly get 30,000, often get 35,000 and very occasionally 40,000 .... but that would require more away fans being allowed ... e.g. Man U and Liverpool (as its local for them), nothing wrong with a strong marketing effort, as long as we have the resources to manage it and not try and do it on the cheap, employing sports marketing people and utilising all media and all of our databases effectively.
I expect there is a science to it but surely dropping the admission prices to £20 a game would entice more people in. More bums on seats equals more revenue does it not (if we serve decent food and get half decent staff). More bums on seats means better atmospheres (admittedly not always)
It might take a year or two to get the people in through the door but its an investment in the clubs future so it's not going to make money immediately.
You can buy an Adult match day ticket for £20 now.
I know. But in the Premiership you probably couldn't.
At present there isn't an attraction to the floating/plastics. You can't just drop the prices because of the 5 year season tickets suddenly becoming unfashionable as people will feel ripped off. But it makes sense to get people in the ground - lull them in with cheap tickets and then gradually increase the fan base and the prices to something sensible.
There are thousands of properties going up on and around the peninsula - this is a great time to capitalise on it by giving them good sensibly priced football on their doorstep.
I've said many times that the german model is the one to follow - cheap admission and make more of a day of it. They get great crowds, great atmospheres and less debt than most other football leagues.
Agree the German model is the way to go but I doubt you could compete by doing it unilaterally. Sky has corkscrewed the money towards players and agents and trying to do it differently would I suspect be doomed to failure.
I expect there is a science to it but surely dropping the admission prices to £20 a game would entice more people in. More bums on seats equals more revenue does it not (if we serve decent food and get half decent staff). More bums on seats means better atmospheres (admittedly not always)
It might take a year or two to get the people in through the door but its an investment in the clubs future so it's not going to make money immediately.
But if we don't own the ground we presumably won't get anything from advertising / catering etc ? ala Coventry ?
If we stay where we are, as we are we won't have a club for much longer so that's immaterial. We need investment.
If someone wants to buy us to take us to the "next level" then thats great. If that means we have to move to cope with the anticipated growth then so be it.
Who in their right mind would come in, take on the debt and stick to the status quo?
We won't be the first club to "sell out" to some corporate whoring and we won't be the last
How many were at the ground last night? Not even half of 40,000. We're a long, long way from even needing a ground that size.
Wouldn't mind ze Germans at all. They certainly know a thing or two about football as well as how to run a football club properly. Or any business for that matter.
When we were in the premiership we sold out 28,000 every week. I understand we could easily have cleared over 30,000 every week. Now factoring the fact that we could have a bit of money and therefore some named players and suddenly it's not impossible. I love the valley as much as the next person but if someone wants to come in potentially take us to a bigger ground and a bigger fan base......
At the end of the day nobody knows what is going to happen and all of this is pointless conjecture. Let's just wait and see what happens. As usual there is never a dull moment being a Charlton fan
As I said, we're a long, long way from that level.
This may of been mentioned on this thread previously, haven't got the time to read through it all, but I have heard that we may not of seen the last of Peter Varney and those he represents.
I expect there is a science to it but surely dropping the admission prices to £20 a game would entice more people in. More bums on seats equals more revenue does it not (if we serve decent food and get half decent staff). More bums on seats means better atmospheres (admittedly not always)
It might take a year or two to get the people in through the door but its an investment in the clubs future so it's not going to make money immediately.
I have no doubt West Ham will have to drop their prices if they want to fill the Olympic stadium, but the argument about ancillary revenues is a bit of a red herring. Notwithstanding any issues with the kiosks at The Valley, it remains the case and not only at Charlton that ticket revenue vastly outweighs additional spending at the ground. As I've said before, we used £1 per head average profit from additional spend as a rule of thumb, not just because many people don't spend any extra money but because there is a substantial cost of sale, which is not true on tickets. I'm not saying that these ancillary revenues are not worth having, but they are not going to offset a ticket price reduction large enough to generate significant extra sales by volume.
Obviously if the club had facilities to accommodate 10,000 away fans that would be significant revenue in the PL, but I wouldn't just assume that it would be acceptable to the police even on the peninsula. The main constraint on home sales was the need for segregation and therefore restricted sales. It is Charlton supporters who complained about fans of other PL teams sitting in home areas, which would certainly be the case if sales weren't restricted.
I'm not saying that these problems couldn't be overcome and I believe there is plenty of scope to develop additional home support over time, just that it's not as simple as assuming you can accommodate anyone who wants to come.
This may of been mentioned on this thread previously, haven't got the time to read through it all, but I have heard that we may not of seen the last of Peter Varney and those he represents.
From what I've heard Peter Varney and friends are involved.
When we were in the premiership we sold out 28,000 every week. I understand we could easily have cleared over 30,000 every week.
As you say it is not yet a live issue but I should point out that we did NOT sell out 27,100 every week. Some of that shortfall may have been away fans not taking up full allocation. I'll leave Airman to advise on whether there was excess demand for 30,000 plus every week, but I'm a bit sceptical. I think the feeling was that if we could have taken the next building stage to 32,000 it would have been worthwhile but would still have taken a lot of hard graft by the marketing and sales team.
And we did not sell out our Wembley play off allocation either :-(. Sorry but its true. While I can hardly bear to look, I believe the Spanners have taken a bigger crowd to Wembley than we did that day.
We were quite a long way short of selling out every week in the Premier League, although we worked hard to fill the ground as possible (for example selling 4-5,000 tickets @ £10 for Wigan/Blackburn to schools and football teams in 2005/06. When the board made the Man United and Chelsea tickets £45 we failed to sell them out. Prior to the groups initiative there was quite a lot of dumping of free tickets via the community scheme (I use the term advisedly because it wasn't a controlled process and tended to be last minute). Our gates were also underpinned by attractively priced season tickets.
However, we did well out our Wembley allocation and these were on restricted sale once Sunderland had sold out. As CASC officials Rock Spectacle and I sold the last few on the Saturday morning from a mobile ticket office in Harvey Gardens because the club itself was closed.
I stand corrected; but Sunderland took more than us, did they not? If so how come they had a bigger allocation?
If we had 32,000 capacity in 2004, what do you reckon about ability to sell that out on a regualr basis?
The difference between the two allocations wasn't substantial and from memory Charlton argued against it, but the club sought and received one batch of extra tickets. I think we had 33,000 in the end, although I've seen it rounded up to 35,000. The allocations were made by the Football League in advance of the tickets being sold, so they are not based on anything except home attendances and expectations.
I really dislike these myths because someone - not you, Prague - asserts this as fact with apparent authority and then it becomes established and the subject of criticism.
We sold out. We could have sold more tickets. Take it from someone who was there and was closely involved, despite not being an employee at the time.
On that Saturday morning we had collections and a very small number of the most expensive tickets with no credit card facility; the difficulty was that we had to differentiate between our supporters and Sunderland fans.
This may of been mentioned on this thread previously, haven't got the time to read through it all, but I have heard that we may not of seen the last of Peter Varney and those he represents.
From what I've heard Peter Varney and friends are involved.
I think not.
Also from all I heard last night although something may well be on the horizon it is nowhere near as imminent as is being suggested.
Comments
One of Bruce Arena and one of someone called Tina Arena
I always reckoned that a bigger capacity would of been largely taken up by a bigger away allocation in the Prem so...
Manure
ManC
Liverpool
Everton
Newcastle
Arse
Chelski
Wet Spam
Spuds
Easily sell out 32,000 for those so 45% of our home games. As far as home support there was no need for expansion even in the Prem.
It might take a year or two to get the people in through the door but its an investment in the clubs future so it's not going to make money immediately.
It may even be a MK Dons scenario where the upper tier does not have the seats installed, well in certain areas anyway.
At present there isn't an attraction to the floating/plastics. You can't just drop the prices because of the 5 year season tickets suddenly becoming unfashionable as people will feel ripped off. But it makes sense to get people in the ground - lull them in with cheap tickets and then gradually increase the fan base and the prices to something sensible.
There are thousands of properties going up on and around the peninsula - this is a great time to capitalise on it by giving them good sensibly priced football on their doorstep.
I've said many times that the german model is the one to follow - cheap admission and make more of a day of it. They get great crowds, great atmospheres and less debt than most other football leagues.
We don't need to find the answers ourselves. Sometimes asking the right questions is more powerful.
Without having anything to justify it, my feeling is in the Prem we could regularly get 30,000, often get 35,000 and very occasionally 40,000 .... but that would require more away fans being allowed ... e.g. Man U and Liverpool (as its local for them), nothing wrong with a strong marketing effort, as long as we have the resources to manage it and not try and do it on the cheap, employing sports marketing people and utilising all media and all of our databases effectively.
If someone wants to buy us to take us to the "next level" then thats great. If that means we have to move to cope with the anticipated growth then so be it.
Who in their right mind would come in, take on the debt and stick to the status quo?
We won't be the first club to "sell out" to some corporate whoring and we won't be the last
If you can't beat them..........
Obviously if the club had facilities to accommodate 10,000 away fans that would be significant revenue in the PL, but I wouldn't just assume that it would be acceptable to the police even on the peninsula. The main constraint on home sales was the need for segregation and therefore restricted sales. It is Charlton supporters who complained about fans of other PL teams sitting in home areas, which would certainly be the case if sales weren't restricted.
I'm not saying that these problems couldn't be overcome and I believe there is plenty of scope to develop additional home support over time, just that it's not as simple as assuming you can accommodate anyone who wants to come.
From what I've heard Peter Varney and friends are involved.
i love your work fella
I really dislike these myths because someone - not you, Prague - asserts this as fact with apparent authority and then it becomes established and the subject of criticism.
We sold out. We could have sold more tickets. Take it from someone who was there and was closely involved, despite not being an employee at the time.
On that Saturday morning we had collections and a very small number of the most expensive tickets with no credit card facility; the difficulty was that we had to differentiate between our supporters and Sunderland fans.
Also from all I heard last night although something may well be on the horizon it is nowhere near as imminent as is being suggested.
Another US connection?