22 thousand is a good crowd for us in the championship - we aren’t a Middlesbrough, Norwich or a Coventry even atm - we are a club who has played second fiddle to our nearest rivals for 15 years so a lot of the more floaty football attending support in the local area that may have gone to us will currently be going to millwall, palace and even Bromley and West Ham - it’s a bloody good crowd figure if you ask me and certainly better than the 4 or 5 thousand that was the norm in the same division when I started going - I don’t think we need to be constantly looking to pricing deals in order to drag people in - people will come if they want to - there’s loads on here that pick and choose yet r on here all the time like their lives depend on every result - it’s a good crowd and if crowds manage to average out at 20k across the season it will still be a good effort
We won’t average 20,000 based on Saturday. But there’s a long time for that to change.
Need relatively high prices if we are splashing the cash, playing championship football will contribute to higher pricing also. don’t mind playing a bit more if the level of spend is the same
Higher prices do not necessarily equal higher revenue because what you will do cannot be assumed to also be the behaviour of people less committed than you.
Nobody is saying the club should not maximise its revenue in the short, medium and long term. The debate is about how best to do that with 5,000 empty seats on Saturday.
Good. Agreed.
The reason I "benchmarked" was firstly to attempt to get a rational handle on whether I was right to be disappointed on hearing the attendance on Saturday. It's interesting that you confirm the sales fell off a cliff in the final days,
TBF, nobody should have really been surprised that we didn’t get more. The messages predicting ‘bumper crowds’ etc and best opening home game for 16 years possibly set the minimum number it was going to come out at. They were too cryptic, promising something on the headline but qualifying it within the text that to me didn’t necessarily support the claims. It will be interesting to see if pushing it over 21,675 to 21,778 was down to comps or not, though I doubt that was the case.
Let’s come back to this in October. The views of contributors to Charlton Life are highly unlikely to be representative of the marginal purchasers we need to increase take-up of the available seats.
We had about 18,500 home supporters according to the official attendance, which will include 11,250 season tickets and 500-1,000 comps, typically. So let’s say there were roughly 6,500 home ticket sales. Comps can be much higher, but I assume they weren’t for this game. They won’t be less than 500.
Rick up to 1000 comps seems a high proportion of the crowd, is this normal? and what sort of people get them? Just being nosey.
Let’s come back to this in October. The views of contributors to Charlton Life are highly unlikely to be representative of the marginal purchasers we need to increase take-up of the available seats.
We had about 18,500 home supporters according to the official attendance, which will include 11,250 season tickets and 500-1,000 comps, typically. So let’s say there were roughly 6,500 home ticket sales. Comps can be much higher, but I assume they weren’t for this game. They won’t be less than 500.
Rick up to 1000 comps seems a high proportion of the crowd, is this normal? and what sort of people get them? Just being nosey.
People that don’t pay and probably wouldn’t go unless the owners and ticket purchasing fans subsidise their free ticket ?
Let’s come back to this in October. The views of contributors to Charlton Life are highly unlikely to be representative of the marginal purchasers we need to increase take-up of the available seats.
We had about 18,500 home supporters according to the official attendance, which will include 11,250 season tickets and 500-1,000 comps, typically. So let’s say there were roughly 6,500 home ticket sales. Comps can be much higher, but I assume they weren’t for this game. They won’t be less than 500.
Rick up to 1000 comps seems a high proportion of the crowd, is this normal? and what sort of people get them? Just being nosey.
Comps covers a wide variety of categories. CACT have been allocated hundreds per match for many years, but I don’t know for sure if that applied on Saturday. They use them to support their business model. Central sponsors, local sponsors, players, officials, staff and their guests all add up, although may be shown as ST holders in the return. Boardroom guests, press will count too. That’s before any other initiatives that happen.
None o our group of adults and pensioners thought the increase in the season ticket price was untoward, especially as the rise to possible promotion place was well established. However the £32 that our one additional attendee coughed up in advance for Saturday made us all wince. More than £30 definitely feels like a step too far, irrespective of how much other clubs have been charging at this level for years. If the Meire tax still applies for later purchases then there can be little surprise that sales tailed off.
On the subject of pricing: £7.50 for a pint? Ruck Fight Off!!! Even if it were a freshly drawn flagon of the finest chestnut brown English ale served at the perfect cellar temperature they could still go poke it where the sun don't shine. For gassy or nitro'd corporate keg confection in a wiffy, floppy, plastic pot, spending that much is lunacy. Charging that much is a bold "EffYou you stupid alky tossers" I'd wager the price elasticity of demand for a passable beer is far greater than that for match tickets.
Need relatively high prices if we are splashing the cash, playing championship football will contribute to higher pricing also. don’t mind playing a bit more if the level of spend is the same
Higher prices do not necessarily equal higher revenue because what you will do cannot be assumed to also be the behaviour of people less committed than you.
Nobody is saying the club should not maximise its revenue in the short, medium and long term. The debate is about how best to do that with 5,000 empty seats on Saturday.
Good. Agreed.
The reason I "benchmarked" was firstly to attempt to get a rational handle on whether I was right to be disappointed on hearing the attendance on Saturday. It's interesting that you confirm the sales fell off a cliff in the final days, and it looked like (from comments from e.g Steve Brown) the club expected to reach 23-24k in which case we'd be close enough to Stoke and Boro to not be worth thinking about, and as a result , well on track. As it is, some disappointment seems reasonable, inside the Club, but as you indicate, it's all about what you do about it. I definitely agree with you that making it easier and cheaper to get there should be high on the agenda. It's another reason, apart from reasonable prices why German Bundesliga 2 has overtaken the Championship as the best attended second league in Europe.
When the Board set overall prices I am sure they will have to some extent benchmarked other club's prices. Of course, (@Chizz), I understand perfectly well that " no fan gives a flying fig how much they charge at Stoke, Middlesbrough, Blackburn, Watford or anywhere else.". The "competition" for fans' money, as others have said, is whatever else people can do with their time and money on the same day and time. But in the Boardroom, they most certainly consider the likes of Stoke and Boro as competitors -for the players they might wish to buy. Unfortunately we have the parachute clubs whom we cannot compete with, but we want to be as attractive as the others on wages. Put it this way, what would we say if the choice was 10% lower season tickets, but then we can't afford Harvey Knibbs, and he goes to Stoke?
That’s never going to be the choice, though, is it? Ten per cent off season tickets is about £300,000, before any offsetting from changes to sales. It’s disingenuous to pretend that these are the key differentials when your commercial income is a quarter or a fifth of the average in the division, the central revenue is eight figures and you can potentially sell a player for £10m.
And, again, the whole discussion is what prices maximise ticket revenue, not what changes are fair or desirable.
Fair enough, I knew I wasnt making a very financially precise point, it was rhetorical to remind people that we expect the Board to invest by financing short term loss for longer term gain. However you’ve also neatly benchmarked there our performance in the division re non-ticket commercial revenue, and it would be really interesting to read your eventual article on this, most of us will have no idea about these figures or the ways other clubs bring in significant revenue in this area.
None o our group of adults and pensioners thought the increase in the season ticket price was untoward, especially as the rise to possible promotion place was well established. However the £32 that our one additional attendee coughed up in advance for Saturday made us all wince. More than £30 definitely feels like a step too far, irrespective of how much other clubs have been charging at this level for years. If the Meire tax still applies for later purchases then there can be little surprise that sales tailed off.
On the subject of pricing: £7.50 for a pint? Ruck Fight Off!!! Even if it were a freshly drawn flagon of the finest chestnut brown English ale served at the perfect cellar temperature they could still go poke it where the sun don't shine. For gassy or nitro'd corporate keg confection in a wiffy, floppy, plastic pot, spending that much is lunacy. Charging that much is a bold "EffYou you stupid alky tossers" I'd wager the price elasticity of demand for a passable beer is far greater than that for match tickets.
Did you anticipate that the crowd for the season opener against Watford would be close to full capacity, or similar to the 25,700 attendance at the Wycombe semi-final?
Did you anticipate that the crowd for the season opener against Watford would be close to full capacity, or similar to the 25,700 attendance at the Wycombe semi-final?
Pricing is an Art not a science (supply and demand) . We could of increased or decreased and not had much difference in the attendance. Who really knows , but the revenue would have been effected. I thought the crowd was impressive and if we continue as we have started and the crowds grow then the pricing is spot on . The enjoyment I got on Saturday was very hard to put a price on but what I already know is that I would not miss the Leicester and Millwall games for love nor money. Maybe lots of us rich southern fans were either on holiday or being good modern fathers and husbands especially during the school holidays, so unable to attend .
Did you anticipate that the crowd for the season opener against Watford would be close to full capacity, or similar to the 25,700 attendance at the Wycombe semi-final?
Based on historical data, e.g the attendance last season v Orient (1st home game of the season) and v Stokke (1st home game of the last championship season) 21.5K on Saturday was a good gate and one most would have expected
Did you anticipate that the crowd for the season opener against Watford would be close to full capacity, or similar to the 25,700 attendance at the Wycombe semi-final?
Well I'm just a mug punter who was going on the noises from the club, on that basis I was expecting 23k and hoping for 24k.
I think the gate was overhyped by the club, partly in the belief this would lead to more sales, although they were probably surprised about the extent to which they stalled. There were about 18,500 home fans, including missing ticket holders, which is OK but not exceptional in my opinion. I think that number will most likely go down over the autumn unless we outperform expectations, but we’ll see.
By way of comparison, there were 15,500 home fans for Stoke in 2019 and 15,000 for Leicester in 2012, which was midweek. However, Championship attendances generally are up significantly since then.
The Millwall fixture tends not to be a strong performer at the turnstiles for all sorts of reasons we know, which is why I think prices around the £40 mark (for home fans) may be a mistake.
Football admission prices used to be just above the price of a pint (not a Greenwich Tourist price but a normal Spoons price about £2.50 ) . 1974 - General Admission price £40p adult. Its far outstripped inflation and is simply beyond the reach of an average wage earner. So my view is £25 would be a the max cost which is about 10x the price of a pint of Doombar in The Turnpike or Great Harry . Before anyone jumps dowm my throat just consider that not everyone earns 100k city money and Greenwich and the immediate population have a high number of average wage earners - NHS workers, Postmen, delivery drivers who earn 1/3 of this £100k figure.
Well yes obviously things were cheaper 50 years ago.
I saw that when Oasis did their Knebworth gigs in 1996 tickets were £22.50. If they do their rumoured 30 year anniversary gigs there next summer they'll probably 5-6 times that.
Did you anticipate that the crowd for the season opener against Watford would be close to full capacity, or similar to the 25,700 attendance at the Wycombe semi-final?
Well I'm just a mug punter who was going on the noises from the club, on that basis I was expecting 23k and hoping for 24k.
I think the gate was overhyped by the club, partly in the belief this would lead to more sales, although they were probably surprised about the extent to which they stalled. There were about 18,500 home fans, including missing ticket holders, which is OK but not exceptional in my opinion. I think that number will go down over the autumn unless we outperform expectations.
Sure, understand. Our average Championship attendance has typically hovered between 14,000 and 16,000, so I expect the numbers to dip!
The next two home fixtures are available via Sky’s red button, so fans can stream them online at little to no cost (ticket, travel, food, drink considered too). After that, we’ve got a run of Saturday 3pm home kickoffs, which should help bring more fans back to The Valley.
22 thousand is a good crowd for us in the championship - we aren’t a Middlesbrough, Norwich or a Coventry even atm - we are a club who has played second fiddle to our nearest rivals for 15 years so a lot of the more floaty football attending support in the local area that may have gone to us will currently be going to millwall, palace and even Bromley and West Ham - it’s a bloody good crowd figure if you ask me and certainly better than the 4 or 5 thousand that was the norm in the same division when I started going - I don’t think we need to be constantly looking to pricing deals in order to drag people in - people will come if they want to - there’s loads on here that pick and choose yet r on here all the time like their lives depend on every result - it’s a good crowd and if crowds manage to average out at 20k across the season it will still be a good effort
We won’t average 20,000 based on Saturday. But there’s a long time for that to change.
no, and if we average 18k that's still a good effort for us in the second division if we are floating around the lower end of the table - if we are pushing at the other end, i think we would
We only have one home match in Oct v Sheffield Wednesday, a 3pm KO that will be interesting time to see where the team & attendance are. I don't think we can use Watford as a barometer although I was surprised attendance wasn't 23-24K. Scanning the thread I do think lowering price at ends of ES & WS nearest JS to same as LC end makes sense. Club need to do more maybe season ticket holders & VG members could be given a discount to buy their "guests" tickets for lets say £20 for around 5 matches per season to encourage friends and family to come to the Valley, £32 is alot to ask a "neutral" or 'casual" to pay to see a home match. Also why aren't championship away tickets capped like in the Premier League for £30, which has been the case since 2016?
We only have one home match in Oct v Sheffield Wednesday, a 3pm KO that will be interesting time to see where the team & attendance are. I don't think we can use Watford as a barometer although I was surprised attendance wasn't 23-24K. Scanning the thread I do think lowering price at ends of ES & WS nearest JS to same as LC end makes sense. Club need to do more maybe season ticket holders & VG members could be given a discount to buy their "guests" tickets for lets say £20 for around 5 matches per season to encourage friends and family to come to the Valley, £32 is alot to ask a "neutral" or 'casual" to pay to see a home match. Also why aren't championship away tickets capped like in the Premier League for £30, which has been the case since 2016?
You can use Watford as a barometer on the basis they sold out the JSS and so will Sheff Weds and about half the teams in the league.
if we’ve sold about 11.5k season tickets and there’s about 3.5k in the JSS then those games you can expect about 15k before any match day sales.
If its the only home game in October then another 20k+ crowd wouldn’t be a surprise.
That’s never going to be the choice, though, is it? Ten per cent off season tickets is about £300,000, before any offsetting from changes to sales. It’s disingenuous to pretend that these are the key differentials when your commercial income is a quarter or a fifth of the average in the division, the central revenue is eight figures and you can potentially sell a player for £10m.
And, again, the whole discussion is what prices maximise ticket revenue, not what changes are fair or desirable.
Airman, Have I read that right? "Our commercial income is a quarter of the average for the division". This would seem to me to be a significant problem if true.
That’s never going to be the choice, though, is it? Ten per cent off season tickets is about £300,000, before any offsetting from changes to sales. It’s disingenuous to pretend that these are the key differentials when your commercial income is a quarter or a fifth of the average in the division, the central revenue is eight figures and you can potentially sell a player for £10m.
And, again, the whole discussion is what prices maximise ticket revenue, not what changes are fair or desirable.
Airman, Have I read that right? "Our commercial income is a quarter of the average for the division". This would seem to me to be a significant problem if true.
I would assume it includes sponsorship deals which leave us behind a number of clubs when you see some of the companies involved
That’s never going to be the choice, though, is it? Ten per cent off season tickets is about £300,000, before any offsetting from changes to sales. It’s disingenuous to pretend that these are the key differentials when your commercial income is a quarter or a fifth of the average in the division, the central revenue is eight figures and you can potentially sell a player for £10m.
And, again, the whole discussion is what prices maximise ticket revenue, not what changes are fair or desirable.
Airman, Have I read that right? "Our commercial income is a quarter of the average for the division". This would seem to me to be a significant problem if true.
Not necessarily, judging by the club shop on Saturday we could be going to make a play to corner the market in XXL to 4XXL replica shirts 😉
That’s never going to be the choice, though, is it? Ten per cent off season tickets is about £300,000, before any offsetting from changes to sales. It’s disingenuous to pretend that these are the key differentials when your commercial income is a quarter or a fifth of the average in the division, the central revenue is eight figures and you can potentially sell a player for £10m.
And, again, the whole discussion is what prices maximise ticket revenue, not what changes are fair or desirable.
Airman, Have I read that right? "Our commercial income is a quarter of the average for the division". This would seem to me to be a significant problem if true.
I’m approximating because I haven’t done the analysis, but we will be in the bottom six and there is a big gap to the top earners. That said, this is turnover not profit. It takes no account of costs, and clubs will have a wide variety of non-matchday operations and commercial deals, so it not easy to make comparisons. This is the last year for which we have published accounts. I’d expect Charlton to be sub £5m in 25/26 based on all previous performance, possibly well below that. The average in the table is £13m, so maybe a third of that?
We might get a lift from having put the retail cost of sale back in, but I can’t see it being huge and as above it’s not profit.
Charlton’s commercial income was £1.4m in 23/24 and £2.1m in 2019/20 (Championship season truncated by Covid).
We only have one home match in Oct v Sheffield Wednesday, a 3pm KO that will be interesting time to see where the team & attendance are. I don't think we can use Watford as a barometer although I was surprised attendance wasn't 23-24K. Scanning the thread I do think lowering price at ends of ES & WS nearest JS to same as LC end makes sense. Club need to do more maybe season ticket holders & VG members could be given a discount to buy their "guests" tickets for lets say £20 for around 5 matches per season to encourage friends and family to come to the Valley, £32 is alot to ask a "neutral" or 'casual" to pay to see a home match. Also why aren't championship away tickets capped like in the Premier League for £30, which has been the case since 2016?
You can use Watford as a barometer on the basis they sold out the JSS and so will Sheff Weds and about half the teams in the league.
if we’ve sold about 11.5k season tickets and there’s about 3.5k in the JSS then those games you can expect about 15k before any match day sales.
If it’s the only home game in October then another 20k+ crowd wouldn’t be a surprise.
It would surprise me because it’s a £40/£35/£30 Gold game, IIRC.
The cost of living is a interesting one, just because it costs over a mil to buy a house locally, doesnt mean that a big % of our fans own multi million pound houses or have great paying jobs in the city. They may well be struggling to make ends meet and the price of football is just one expense too much.
Theres a huge discrepancy in our fan bases ages, so the older crew have probably done well and seen great house prices increase over the last 3 decades and the youger lot possibly still at home on lower paid jobs.
I'd suggest disposable income is greater in Stoke and Middlesbrough than it is in many places south of Milton Keynes.
Potentially they are able to afford the higher prices and think £35 to get in is more acceptable than we do.
That’s never going to be the choice, though, is it? Ten per cent off season tickets is about £300,000, before any offsetting from changes to sales. It’s disingenuous to pretend that these are the key differentials when your commercial income is a quarter or a fifth of the average in the division, the central revenue is eight figures and you can potentially sell a player for £10m.
And, again, the whole discussion is what prices maximise ticket revenue, not what changes are fair or desirable.
Airman, Have I read that right? "Our commercial income is a quarter of the average for the division". This would seem to me to be a significant problem if true.
I’m approximating because I haven’t done the analysis, but we will be in the bottom six and there is a big gap to the top earners. That said, this is turnover not profit. It takes no account of costs, and clubs will have a wide variety of non-matchday operations and commercial deals, so it not easy to make comparisons. This is the last year for which we have published accounts. I’d expect Charlton to be sub £5m in 25/26 based on all previous performance, possibly well below that. The average in the table is £13m, so maybe a third of that?
We might get a lift from having put the retail cost of sale back in, but I can’t see it being huge and as above it’s not profit.
Charlton’s commercial income was £1.4m in 23/24 and £2.1m in 2019/20 (Championship season truncated by Covid).
Bristol City, not a parachute club, doing very well with commercial according to that.
The cost of living is a interesting one, just because it costs over a mil to buy a house locally, doesnt mean that a big % of our fans own multi million pound houses or have great paying jobs in the city. They may well be struggling to make ends meet and the price of football is just one expense too much.
Theres a huge discrepancy in our fan bases ages, so the older crew have probably done well and seen great house prices increase over the last 3 decades and the youger lot possibly still at home on lower paid jobs.
I'd suggest disposable income is greater in Stoke and Middlesbrough than it is in many places south of Milton Keynes.
Potentially they are able to afford the higher prices and think £35 to get in is more acceptable than we do.
One problem with this important background question is that we probably all have our own idea of what constitutes "disposable income ".
The official ONS definition (used by governments) is as follows:
The amount of money that individuals in the household sector can spend or save after income distribution measures (for example, taxes, social contributions and benefits) have taken effect
The snag with it is that housing costs are not included in that definition. There's probably an analysis somewhere that attempts to address that yawning gap in comparable data, which I will look for later. However, based on this definition, there are regional comparisons available, although I was not able to drill down as far as the municipal areas of Stoke or Middlesbrough, and when it came to Charlton, which narrow area would we even choose? I asked for Kent, but it is lumped into a wider "South East" category, and for the others we have "West Midlands" and "North East". The figures for these four regions tell a pretty clear story though:
London £32,330 South- east £26,058
West Midlands £19,480 North-east £18,338
and finally Claude magicked up a number for Stoke, specifically : £15,900
as for Middlesbrough, it was the football ground where visiting Chelsea supporters were seen in their coaches, waving £20 notes at the Boro fans and shouting "Loadsamoney". That would've been, what, 1988?
All data from 2022, but nothing much will have changed, the gap will only have widened. A lot of levelling up to do....
That’s never going to be the choice, though, is it? Ten per cent off season tickets is about £300,000, before any offsetting from changes to sales. It’s disingenuous to pretend that these are the key differentials when your commercial income is a quarter or a fifth of the average in the division, the central revenue is eight figures and you can potentially sell a player for £10m.
And, again, the whole discussion is what prices maximise ticket revenue, not what changes are fair or desirable.
Airman, Have I read that right? "Our commercial income is a quarter of the average for the division". This would seem to me to be a significant problem if true.
I’m approximating because I haven’t done the analysis, but we will be in the bottom six and there is a big gap to the top earners. That said, this is turnover not profit. It takes no account of costs, and clubs will have a wide variety of non-matchday operations and commercial deals, so it not easy to make comparisons. This is the last year for which we have published accounts. I’d expect Charlton to be sub £5m in 25/26 based on all previous performance, possibly well below that. The average in the table is £13m, so maybe a third of that?
We might get a lift from having put the retail cost of sale back in, but I can’t see it being huge and as above it’s not profit.
Charlton’s commercial income was £1.4m in 23/24 and £2.1m in 2019/20 (Championship season truncated by Covid).
Our turnover will almost certainly be in the bottom six or eight of the Championship for this season. And this should be considered alongside Player Sales revenue as well as owners appetite and ability to fund losses. For that gives the complete picture of the cashflow going into the club and therefore what the club can afford for the playing budget - same for the competition as the wage bill has a very strong correlation with final league position.
We know that the Championship is a harsh environment where often one club a season runs into difficulty as the owner loses interest or ability to finance losses, often due to mistakes over time. There's a long list of owners writing down accumulated losses of anything up to £200M in order to handover the club.
As you correctly state, CAFC commercial revenue is way, way lower than a typical Championship club so how quickly might this be addressed? Hefty increases in lounge pass prices have occurred over the last couple of seasons with the Vista lounge now costing £2,000 per season + VAT. Individual match passes aren't cheap! How much might our commercial sponsorship increase given our location and new Championship status? And what of the bars and catering where many fans object to the queues etc.?
Taking a broader view of the revenue together with our emergence form nigh on a decade in League One, one wonders whether we might look at the question posed differently. In other words, "No, prices should not be dropped - instead the club should look at improving the performances and results on the pitch for this and next season". That might sound obvious, but how many additional seats will be sold should we become a top eight contender? What will it take to retain our best players, AND to acquire even more talent next summer? The Enterprise Value of CAFC will rise significantly should we establish ourselves in the top eight simply because of increased revenue streams, massive increased value of the players and proximity to the EPL. And that could well equate to significantly more access to capital?
Perhaps we might then look at the gates as a symptom / outcome of all the other decisions, rather than a variable to be studied in isolation? All things being even, we may well hit sell out games in the home areas simply by pushing on. And with Nathan Jones and others at the helm, we certainly have people who have made this journey before. As you state, the average gate for this season will evolve so we shouldn't look at just one game. But let's instead look at the development of the performances and results under this new ownership, and see how far / how fast we might climb both the league and the revenue tables over the next year or two.
Comments
However the £32 that our one additional attendee coughed up in advance for Saturday made us all wince.
More than £30 definitely feels like a step too far, irrespective of how much other clubs have been charging at this level for years.
If the Meire tax still applies for later purchases then there can be little surprise that sales tailed off.
On the subject of pricing: £7.50 for a pint? Ruck Fight Off!!!
Even if it were a freshly drawn flagon of the finest chestnut brown English ale served at the perfect cellar temperature they could still go poke it where the sun don't shine.
For gassy or nitro'd corporate keg confection in a wiffy, floppy, plastic pot, spending that much is lunacy. Charging that much is a bold "EffYou you stupid alky tossers"
I'd wager the price elasticity of demand for a passable beer is far greater than that for match tickets.
@PragueAddick
@Airman Brown
Who really knows , but the revenue would have been effected.
I thought the crowd was impressive and if we continue as we have started and the crowds grow then the pricing is spot on . The enjoyment I got on Saturday was very hard to put a price on but what I already know is that I would not miss the Leicester and Millwall games for love nor money.
Maybe lots of us rich southern fans were either on holiday or being good modern fathers and husbands especially during the school holidays, so unable to attend .
By way of comparison, there were 15,500 home fans for Stoke in 2019 and 15,000 for Leicester in 2012, which was midweek. However, Championship attendances generally are up significantly since then.
The Millwall fixture tends not to be a strong performer at the turnstiles for all sorts of reasons we know, which is why I think prices around the £40 mark (for home fans) may be a mistake.
I saw that when Oasis did their Knebworth gigs in 1996 tickets were £22.50. If they do their rumoured 30 year anniversary gigs there next summer they'll probably 5-6 times that.
if we’ve sold about 11.5k season tickets and there’s about 3.5k in the JSS then those games you can expect about 15k before any match day sales.
If its the only home game in October then another 20k+ crowd wouldn’t be a surprise.
Charlton’s commercial income was £1.4m in 23/24 and £2.1m in 2019/20 (Championship season truncated by Covid).
The Spanners, on the other hand...
The amount of money that individuals in the household sector can spend or save after income distribution measures (for example, taxes, social contributions and benefits) have taken effect
The snag with it is that housing costs are not included in that definition. There's probably an analysis somewhere that attempts to address that yawning gap in comparable data, which I will look for later. However, based on this definition, there are regional comparisons available, although I was not able to drill down as far as the municipal areas of Stoke or Middlesbrough, and when it came to Charlton, which narrow area would we even choose? I asked for Kent, but it is lumped into a wider "South East" category, and for the others we have "West Midlands" and "North East". The figures for these four regions tell a pretty clear story though:
London £32,330
South- east £26,058
North-east £18,338
and finally Claude magicked up a number for Stoke, specifically : £15,900
as for Middlesbrough, it was the football ground where visiting Chelsea supporters were seen in their coaches, waving £20 notes at the Boro fans and shouting "Loadsamoney". That would've been, what, 1988?
All data from 2022, but nothing much will have changed, the gap will only have widened. A lot of levelling up to do....
We know that the Championship is a harsh environment where often one club a season runs into difficulty as the owner loses interest or ability to finance losses, often due to mistakes over time. There's a long list of owners writing down accumulated losses of anything up to £200M in order to handover the club.
As you correctly state, CAFC commercial revenue is way, way lower than a typical Championship club so how quickly might this be addressed? Hefty increases in lounge pass prices have occurred over the last couple of seasons with the Vista lounge now costing £2,000 per season + VAT. Individual match passes aren't cheap! How much might our commercial sponsorship increase given our location and new Championship status? And what of the bars and catering where many fans object to the queues etc.?
Taking a broader view of the revenue together with our emergence form nigh on a decade in League One, one wonders whether we might look at the question posed differently. In other words, "No, prices should not be dropped - instead the club should look at improving the performances and results on the pitch for this and next season". That might sound obvious, but how many additional seats will be sold should we become a top eight contender? What will it take to retain our best players, AND to acquire even more talent next summer? The Enterprise Value of CAFC will rise significantly should we establish ourselves in the top eight simply because of increased revenue streams, massive increased value of the players and proximity to the EPL. And that could well equate to significantly more access to capital?
Perhaps we might then look at the gates as a symptom / outcome of all the other decisions, rather than a variable to be studied in isolation? All things being even, we may well hit sell out games in the home areas simply by pushing on. And with Nathan Jones and others at the helm, we certainly have people who have made this journey before. As you state, the average gate for this season will evolve so we shouldn't look at just one game. But let's instead look at the development of the performances and results under this new ownership, and see how far / how fast we might climb both the league and the revenue tables over the next year or two.