The missing thousands at Hillsborough

[flo]

2 hours ago, ZicoSterland2 said:

Just been reading about Real Betis in Spain they charge 74 euros for an under 14 season ticket. The benefits they gain are fans for life, merchandise , food and drink and a full ground. This season they have 14000 junior season ticket holders. Surely it would be better for Wednesday to charge say £115 for a under 14 ticket. Would help us reap the same benefits as Betis and invest in the clubs future.

Under 17 were 150 in the first phase and under 11s are 75 in the first phase. So they are not far off what you said. 

Edited April 29, 2019 by flo

[poite]

Problem is that you can almost guarantee that next season it will be cheaper to watch them in the premier league than it will be to watch us in the championship  

[bladeshater]

1 hour ago, poite said:

Problem is that you can almost guarantee that next season it will be cheaper to watch them in the premier league than it will be to watch us in the championship  

Wouldn't give a shiiiiite if we're tuppence to watch em in premier league 

[bradowl]

2 hours ago, poite said:

Problem is that you can almost guarantee that next season it will be cheaper to watch them in the premier league than it will be to watch us in the championship  

 

That shouldn't be a problem, I wouldn't watch them free, it's irrelevant to me what they charge. 

 

 

[pat blondeau]

24 minutes ago, bradowl said:

 

That shouldn't be a problem, I wouldn't watch them free, it's irrelevant to me what they charge. 

 

 

 

None of us on here would watch them for free but that’s not the point. There’s plenty of people that will watch them next season.

 

Wednesday should be trying to fill the empty seats and grow the club. There aren’t many clubs in the country with more empty seats for their home games than us.

 

And the posters who say ‘they’ll come back when we’re top of the league’.... Wednesday have never been top of a league in my lifetime. Bruce will need to work miracles to have us challenging for top 2 next year

[sonofbert2]

On 28/04/2019 at 18:40, owl-zat said:

 

Kop £21.96

 

North & Grandstand :-  £26.74

 

South Stand :-£30.65

 

I think if you went with £21.92, £26.76 and £30.60 then you might be onto something....

[james o connor]

8 hours ago, bradowl said:

 

That shouldn't be a problem, I wouldn't watch them free, it's irrelevant to me what they charge. 

 

 

Yes I agree , but it highlights what a rip off we are . No casual fan is going to spend 40 quid plus to watch 1 second tier match . 

[Inspector Lestrade]

8 hours ago, nilsson said:

 

None of us on here would watch them for free but that’s not the point. There’s plenty of people that will watch them next season.

 

Wednesday should be trying to fill the empty seats and grow the club. There aren’t many clubs in the country with more empty seats for their home games than us.

 

And the posters who say ‘they’ll come back when we’re top of the league’.... Wednesday have never been top of a league in my lifetime. Bruce will need to work miracles to have us challenging for top 2 next year

 

Very few clubs see a large rise in attendances unless they are challenging for promotion.

 

Bradford charge I believe very low prices and where it has attracted decent gates it hasn't help them rise through the leagues.  Once the prices do go up then there will be a big fall away in numbers.

 

If it was possible to fill every seat by cheap prices and still achieve success then surely Wednesday would do it (they would be silly not to do it), the reality, unfortunately, is that it doesn't work.   Success on the pitch sees attendances rise. 

[Guest addedtime]

8 hours ago, nilsson said:

 

None of us on here would watch them for free but that’s not the point. There’s plenty of people that will watch them next season.

 

Wednesday should be trying to fill the empty seats and grow the club. There aren’t many clubs in the country with more empty seats for their home games than us.

 

And the posters who say ‘they’ll come back when we’re top of the league’.... Wednesday have never been top of a league in my lifetime. Bruce will need to work miracles to have us challenging for top 2 next year

You must be young then. I remember us being the top team in England briefly in 1995!

[pat blondeau]

6 minutes ago, addedtime said:

You must be young then. I remember us being the top team in England briefly in 1995!

 

For one week after 4 games. When was the last time we were top of a league for more than a few weeks or actually finished top of a league?

[the monk]

17 minutes ago, nilsson said:

 

For one week after 4 games. When was the last time we were top of a league for more than a few weeks or actually finished top of a league?

Bang on ,even when we have had a good side we are always chasing and never leading 

It's like we never have anything to get our teeth into

And the gaffer decides it's a good idea to charge 40+ for 2nd division footy

 

59 now probably had a s/t for 30 of those ,a few years ago I got fed up with the dross and didn't renew

I have picked my matches ever since and don't see that changing with the prices on offer 

 

And there are 3 of my mates exactly the same 

 

At the end of the day what is the point of selling a product that no one buys (potg)

 

No doubt some will say it's to sell more season tickets, if so why doesn't anyone else do it ?

 

[Guest LondonOwl313]

If you do the maths on this and working backwards, it's actually completely ridiculous what the prices are. I think a fair price which would entice casual fans to attend POTG is around £20-25 per game. So let's assume £18 on the Kop, £22 on the North and £25 on the South. Obviously season ticket prices need to offer some sort of discount on that, so let's say 10%.

 

Looking at season ticket prices, I don't think the cost for kids and pensioners is too bad. Under 11s is less than a fiver per game, under 17s is less than a tenner. Pensioners is about £15 per game - if I'm honest I think its kind of ridiculous they get a massive discount anyway as over 65s nowadays tend to be better off financially than younger people as baby boomers have good pensions, benefitted from owning a home, had a lifetime to save up etc, its not like it used to be 20-30 years ago where pensioners were poor. But anyway, the point is these prices all look reasonable it's just the adult prices which look too high.

 

Current adult season ticket prices are as follows:

Kop £505 (£22 per game)

North £615 (£26.70 per game)

South £705 (£30.65 per game)

 

For us to offer the POTG prices set out above and for season tickets to offer a 10% reduction on those prices, the new adult season ticket prices would have to be as follows:

Kop £370 (£16 per game) - reduction of 27% vs now

North £460 (£20 per game)  - reduction of 25% vs now

South £520 (£22.50 per game)  - reduction of 26% vs now

 

Then we need to have a look at how much it would cost to implement that. This season's average attendance is 24,350 - I'm going to assume there are around 20,000 season ticket holders, and I've seen stats which show in the championship the average number of away fans is in the 1000-1500 region with half a dozen teams bringing 2000+, so to make the numbers easy, let's say 1350 is the average number of away fans at Hillsborough. That leaves 3,000 home fans who are POTG. Then we need to know what % of fans attending matches are on adult tickets (i.e. 25-65 year olds) - not sure on this, but going to conservatively assume it's about 70% of fans (probably a bit less than that).

 

So given I'd leave concessions prices as they are, we can exclude those from the calculations and just look at the difference in adult prices. There are 14,000 adult season ticket holders (20,000 x 70%) currently paying on average around £600 per season (£8.4m). The average reduction in season ticket prices above is 26%, so it would cost us £8.4m x 26% = £2.2m in lower revenues to cut season ticket prices.

 

In addition, I'd guess that the average cost currently paid by adults who POTG is around £35 when you take into account all the categories, include games which are reduced to £20, the number of tickets given away for free and the overly complicated membership scheme. Again I'd leave the POTG prices for concessions as they are, and assume 70% of fans are adults. Under the new average price of around £22, the revenue lost over a season on the current 4,350 (home POTG plus away fans) who POTG would be (£35 - £22) x 4,350 x 70% x 23 games = £900,000.

 

So total lost revenue on current attendances from cutting prices would be £2.2m + £0.9m = £3.1m. But that assumes that the attendances don't increase with reduced prices. I think if the average POTG price was £20-25 per game, and the team was doing as well as it has been doing in recent seasons under both Carlos and Bruce, you'd see a big increase in attendances if the prices were reasonable. When we're winning games it gets people interested... I've heard so many people since Chansiri came in saying things like 'oh Wednesday are doing well, might have to go to some games... but it's £40 a ticket, actually on second thoughts I'm not bothered then'. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that if the team performed well that the number of POTG would go up significantly.

 

As the number of POTG is linked to both prices and how the team performs, I'd guess that under the new cheaper prices it could vary as follows:

 

Current under expensive prices = 3,000

1. Team playing badly/fighting relegation/losing most weeks = 2,000

2. Team lower mid table/average performances/nothing to play for = 4,000

3. Team challenging for play offs/decent performances = 7,000

4. Team near the top of the league/winning nearly every home game = 10,000

 

Under Bruce next season we're hoping that at a minimum it's going to be option 3, which would be a 4,000 increase in attendances with an outside chance of option 4 with a 7,000 increase in attendances. So assuming we cut prices, challenged for top 6 and got an extra 4,000 POTG, this would generate the following in additional revenue, assuming that the average price for concessions POTG would be roughly half the adult price:

 

23 x 4,000 x (£22 x 70% + 0.5 x £22 x 30%) = £1.7m

 

That would mean that if the team performs as expected, revenue overall would be down by £3.1m - £1.7m = £1.4m. But that's definitely a price worth paying to re-engage with fans. It's probably what Abdi is on a week, so just release him and existing fans can save a quarter of the cost on their season tickets and casual fans can turn up and watch the team whenever they feel like it. It's so simple.

 

I've made a lot of assumptions here but don't think I'm a million miles off.

 

 

 

 

[S36 OWL]

13 hours ago, poite said:

Problem is that you can almost guarantee that next season it will be cheaper to watch them in the premier league than it will be to watch us in the championship  

 

We are more expensive than some premier league team this season. 

[matthefish2002]

2 hours ago, addedtime said:

You must be young then. I remember us being the top team in England briefly in 1995!

 

I hate being pedantic but it was 1996 not 1995.

[room0035]

Each season we sell in the region of 18,000 - 20,000 season tickets or there abouts. Most of these are fans that go no matter the price good or bad, cheap or expensive they go and that is great.

 

But we have a stadium that holds 39,000+ when we are allowed but mostly around 35,000 we rarely get this and the local SYP don't allow it.

 

We as a club currently have a policy of charging anything from £30 to £46 for fans who wish to attend games from time to time as such each game we get the season ticket of 18-20,000 then we get the away support and the walk up fans only turn up for the good games. Hence the reason our gates all season have remained around the 22,000 - 24,000 bracket with the derby games and a few other upping the average. 

 

We can argue that its not fair on those buying season tickets or those that have the 2-5 year tickets to reduce the pay on the gate prices but simply put, if the prices stay the same and don't come down the attendances will only go up if we are challenging top 6 and if we are challenging we will probably be on sky more so fans will still stay at home and watch the games on tv. 

 

We as a club need to find a way to get more income into the club there is no sponsorship or naming rights that we know of and the 1867 farce will make nothing so what do we do - sell players we seem very bad at this and are going to lose a fortune in the summer with players that cost us 10's of millions free agents in the summer and the wages they have cost us too.

 

We have a chance to get a bigger fan base and grow over time with sensible pricing, as it not just the ticket people buy, they buy a program, food and drink and merchandise. More people in the ground on match day will generate more money in all areas my worry is the short sightedness of the club that upping prices is the only policy to get more revenue into the club.

 

 

[Guest addedtime]

49 minutes ago, matthefish2002 said:

 

I hate being pedantic but it was 1996 not 1995.

I had my doubts as I wrote it!

[poite]

1 hour ago, LondonOwl313 said:

If you do the maths on this and working backwards, it's actually completely ridiculous what the prices are. I think a fair price which would entice casual fans to attend POTG is around £20-25 per game. So let's assume £18 on the Kop, £22 on the North and £25 on the South. Obviously season ticket prices need to offer some sort of discount on that, so let's say 10%.

 

Looking at season ticket prices, I don't think the cost for kids and pensioners is too bad. Under 11s is less than a fiver per game, under 17s is less than a tenner. Pensioners is about £15 per game - if I'm honest I think its kind of ridiculous they get a massive discount anyway as over 65s nowadays tend to be better off financially than younger people as baby boomers have good pensions, benefitted from owning a home, had a lifetime to save up etc, its not like it used to be 20-30 years ago where pensioners were poor. But anyway, the point is these prices all look reasonable it's just the adult prices which look too high.

 

Current adult season ticket prices are as follows:

Kop £505 (£22 per game)

North £615 (£26.70 per game)

South £705 (£30.65 per game)

 

For us to offer the POTG prices set out above and for season tickets to offer a 10% reduction on those prices, the new adult season ticket prices would have to be as follows:

Kop £370 (£16 per game) - reduction of 27% vs now

North £460 (£20 per game)  - reduction of 25% vs now

South £520 (£22.50 per game)  - reduction of 26% vs now

 

Then we need to have a look at how much it would cost to implement that. This season's average attendance is 24,350 - I'm going to assume there are around 20,000 season ticket holders, and I've seen stats which show in the championship the average number of away fans is in the 1000-1500 region with half a dozen teams bringing 2000+, so to make the numbers easy, let's say 1350 is the average number of away fans at Hillsborough. That leaves 3,000 home fans who are POTG. Then we need to know what % of fans attending matches are on adult tickets (i.e. 25-65 year olds) - not sure on this, but going to conservatively assume it's about 70% of fans (probably a bit less than that).

 

So given I'd leave concessions prices as they are, we can exclude those from the calculations and just look at the difference in adult prices. There are 14,000 adult season ticket holders (20,000 x 70%) currently paying on average around £600 per season (£8.4m). The average reduction in season ticket prices above is 26%, so it would cost us £8.4m x 26% = £2.2m in lower revenues to cut season ticket prices.

 

In addition, I'd guess that the average cost currently paid by adults who POTG is around £35 when you take into account all the categories, include games which are reduced to £20, the number of tickets given away for free and the overly complicated membership scheme. Again I'd leave the POTG prices for concessions as they are, and assume 70% of fans are adults. Under the new average price of around £22, the revenue lost over a season on the current 4,350 (home POTG plus away fans) who POTG would be (£35 - £22) x 4,350 x 70% x 23 games = £900,000.

 

So total lost revenue on current attendances from cutting prices would be £2.2m + £0.9m = £3.1m. But that assumes that the attendances don't increase with reduced prices. I think if the average POTG price was £20-25 per game, and the team was doing as well as it has been doing in recent seasons under both Carlos and Bruce, you'd see a big increase in attendances if the prices were reasonable. When we're winning games it gets people interested... I've heard so many people since Chansiri came in saying things like 'oh Wednesday are doing well, might have to go to some games... but it's £40 a ticket, actually on second thoughts I'm not bothered then'. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that if the team performed well that the number of POTG would go up significantly.

 

As the number of POTG is linked to both prices and how the team performs, I'd guess that under the new cheaper prices it could vary as follows:

 

Current under expensive prices = 3,000

1. Team playing badly/fighting relegation/losing most weeks = 2,000

2. Team lower mid table/average performances/nothing to play for = 4,000

3. Team challenging for play offs/decent performances = 7,000

4. Team near the top of the league/winning nearly every home game = 10,000

 

Under Bruce next season we're hoping that at a minimum it's going to be option 3, which would be a 4,000 increase in attendances with an outside chance of option 4 with a 7,000 increase in attendances. So assuming we cut prices, challenged for top 6 and got an extra 4,000 POTG, this would generate the following in additional revenue, assuming that the average price for concessions POTG would be roughly half the adult price:

 

23 x 4,000 x (£22 x 70% + 0.5 x £22 x 30%) = £1.7m

 

That would mean that if the team performs as expected, revenue overall would be down by £3.1m - £1.7m = £1.4m. But that's definitely a price worth paying to re-engage with fans. It's probably what Abdi is on a week, so just release him and existing fans can save a quarter of the cost on their season tickets and casual fans can turn up and watch the team whenever they feel like it. It's so simple.

 

I've made a lot of assumptions here but don't think I'm a million miles off.

 

 

 

 

 

Dont put something like this in front of Chansiri - you'll confuse the hell out of him

 

Great post

Edited April 30, 2019 by poite

[londonowl]

1 hour ago, LondonOwl313 said:

If you do the maths on this and working backwards, it's actually completely ridiculous what the prices are. I think a fair price which would entice casual fans to attend POTG is around £20-25 per game. So let's assume £18 on the Kop, £22 on the North and £25 on the South. Obviously season ticket prices need to offer some sort of discount on that, so let's say 10%.

 

Looking at season ticket prices, I don't think the cost for kids and pensioners is too bad. Under 11s is less than a fiver per game, under 17s is less than a tenner. Pensioners is about £15 per game - if I'm honest I think its kind of ridiculous they get a massive discount anyway as over 65s nowadays tend to be better off financially than younger people as baby boomers have good pensions, benefitted from owning a home, had a lifetime to save up etc, its not like it used to be 20-30 years ago where pensioners were poor. But anyway, the point is these prices all look reasonable it's just the adult prices which look too high.

 

Current adult season ticket prices are as follows:

Kop £505 (£22 per game)

North £615 (£26.70 per game)

South £705 (£30.65 per game)

 

For us to offer the POTG prices set out above and for season tickets to offer a 10% reduction on those prices, the new adult season ticket prices would have to be as follows:

Kop £370 (£16 per game) - reduction of 27% vs now

North £460 (£20 per game)  - reduction of 25% vs now

South £520 (£22.50 per game)  - reduction of 26% vs now

 

Then we need to have a look at how much it would cost to implement that. This season's average attendance is 24,350 - I'm going to assume there are around 20,000 season ticket holders, and I've seen stats which show in the championship the average number of away fans is in the 1000-1500 region with half a dozen teams bringing 2000+, so to make the numbers easy, let's say 1350 is the average number of away fans at Hillsborough. That leaves 3,000 home fans who are POTG. Then we need to know what % of fans attending matches are on adult tickets (i.e. 25-65 year olds) - not sure on this, but going to conservatively assume it's about 70% of fans (probably a bit less than that).

 

So given I'd leave concessions prices as they are, we can exclude those from the calculations and just look at the difference in adult prices. There are 14,000 adult season ticket holders (20,000 x 70%) currently paying on average around £600 per season (£8.4m). The average reduction in season ticket prices above is 26%, so it would cost us £8.4m x 26% = £2.2m in lower revenues to cut season ticket prices.

 

In addition, I'd guess that the average cost currently paid by adults who POTG is around £35 when you take into account all the categories, include games which are reduced to £20, the number of tickets given away for free and the overly complicated membership scheme. Again I'd leave the POTG prices for concessions as they are, and assume 70% of fans are adults. Under the new average price of around £22, the revenue lost over a season on the current 4,350 (home POTG plus away fans) who POTG would be (£35 - £22) x 4,350 x 70% x 23 games = £900,000.

 

So total lost revenue on current attendances from cutting prices would be £2.2m + £0.9m = £3.1m. But that assumes that the attendances don't increase with reduced prices. I think if the average POTG price was £20-25 per game, and the team was doing as well as it has been doing in recent seasons under both Carlos and Bruce, you'd see a big increase in attendances if the prices were reasonable. When we're winning games it gets people interested... I've heard so many people since Chansiri came in saying things like 'oh Wednesday are doing well, might have to go to some games... but it's £40 a ticket, actually on second thoughts I'm not bothered then'. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that if the team performed well that the number of POTG would go up significantly.

 

As the number of POTG is linked to both prices and how the team performs, I'd guess that under the new cheaper prices it could vary as follows:

 

Current under expensive prices = 3,000

1. Team playing badly/fighting relegation/losing most weeks = 2,000

2. Team lower mid table/average performances/nothing to play for = 4,000

3. Team challenging for play offs/decent performances = 7,000

4. Team near the top of the league/winning nearly every home game = 10,000

 

Under Bruce next season we're hoping that at a minimum it's going to be option 3, which would be a 4,000 increase in attendances with an outside chance of option 4 with a 7,000 increase in attendances. So assuming we cut prices, challenged for top 6 and got an extra 4,000 POTG, this would generate the following in additional revenue, assuming that the average price for concessions POTG would be roughly half the adult price:

 

23 x 4,000 x (£22 x 70% + 0.5 x £22 x 30%) = £1.7m

 

That would mean that if the team performs as expected, revenue overall would be down by £3.1m - £1.7m = £1.4m. But that's definitely a price worth paying to re-engage with fans. It's probably what Abdi is on a week, so just release him and existing fans can save a quarter of the cost on their season tickets and casual fans can turn up and watch the team whenever they feel like it. It's so simple.

 

I've made a lot of assumptions here but don't think I'm a million miles off.

 

 

 

 

 

I think these maths work on a lower than realistic target price.

 

POTD target price should be average £22 kop, £25 North, £28 South. These are competitive prices in the Championship and the club can't be responsible for pricing everybody in. There will always be those that can't afford the prices wherever they are set.

 

Using your own maths, getting the 10% S/T saving would then have a lower cost implication meaning the revenue would only fall be around £1.8m across S/T's and POTD, £300k of which is VAT.

 

(Some) of this revenue can be recouped from those who attend purely based on the lower POTD prices but if it leads to lower ST Sales, that offset has to be considered but even a modest increase of 1000 POTD based on prices at £22, £25 & £28 would bring about £500k of Nett revenue into the club.

 

My own view is that the club could get the S/T prices to somewhere around £450 Kop, £520 North, £580 South and POTD at £22/£25/£28 at a cost of below £1m and that is a relatively small cost to pay for the benefits the lower prices bring.

[PortlandOwl]

They have to do more next season to attract the casual / occasional supporter because at the moment they are at risk of becoming extinct at the current prices.

[Guest LondonOwl313]

1 hour ago, londonowl said:

 

I think these maths work on a lower than realistic target price.

 

POTD target price should be average £22 kop, £25 North, £28 South. These are competitive prices in the Championship and the club can't be responsible for pricing everybody in. There will always be those that can't afford the prices wherever they are set.

 

Using your own maths, getting the 10% S/T saving would then have a lower cost implication meaning the revenue would only fall be around £1.8m across S/T's and POTD, £300k of which is VAT.

 

(Some) of this revenue can be recouped from those who attend purely based on the lower POTD prices but if it leads to lower ST Sales, that offset has to be considered but even a modest increase of 1000 POTD based on prices at £22, £25 & £28 would bring about £500k of Nett revenue into the club.

 

My own view is that the club could get the S/T prices to somewhere around £450 Kop, £520 North, £580 South and POTD at £22/£25/£28 at a cost of below £1m and that is a relatively small cost to pay for the benefits the lower prices bring.

I just started from the assumption that most Sheffield folk would be happy to pay £20-25 to watch a game of football and then worked back from there, obviously can play around with the numbers. Also forgot about VAT which makes it even easier to reduce prices.

 

Think what it shows is that revenue doesn’t seem to be all that sensitive to price, as £1-2m here and there isn’t a huge amount of money in football. Would rather we focused on cutting unnecessary player expenditure and filling out the stadium with lower pricing