The missing thousands at Hillsborough

[tarn owl]

3 hours 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.

 

 

 

 

Great post, can you please send Chansiri an email with this on and ask him for feedback. Considering 1 player on 30k a week is 1.56 million a year just in wages i think we can afford to lower prices. It would help massively if prices returned to sane levels again.

[room0035]

11 minutes ago, LondonOwl313 said:

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

Get rid of the waste of Abdi, Jones, Matias, JVA, Boyd these alone are probably in the region of £100k a week in salaries or £5m a season.

 

With season tickets on the Kop costing £455 the above players is the equivalent of selling nearly 11,000 tickets on the kop at early bird prices. 

 

Just let that sink in the money we have wasted on these players is the same revenue we get from selling out nearly the whole kop for the entire season.

[owl-zat]

My original post was about offering fans the chance to commit to game month by month at a price slightly higher than the season ticket price so for example £25 per game on the Kop thus giving people who cannot commit to a season ticket another option for cheaper tickets but the club could still keep it's POTG prices as it likes which on the majority is paid by the away fans.  

[tarn owl]

I honestly think it will take years to get the attendances higher. But if had to pick what areas they need to work on i would say

 

Win (get in the PL). Would see a surge of fans coming to Hillsborough just off being in the PL. Easier said than done of course.

sensible ticket prices, current prices are a joke and will wear away at fans over the years if not adressed now, just like lower prices would take time to entice new fans in, expensive tickets don't see fans disappear immediately, but over time. needs looking at now.

facilities and attractions, the fan parks they are doing is a good 1st step, but making the matchday a bit more of an event would be good, penistone road effects what they can do outside the ground, but they could use Hillsborough park on matchdays to create a mini festival with local stalls and businesses, would make people use their Saturdays to go to the game and the stalls.

Do free pint days for fans or free pie day or free travel day with trams. Make fans feel appreciated.

 

You could write a book about managing fans and how it differs to normal customers of a business. But if Chansiri starts there it would help.

[alanharper]

On 29/04/2019 at 17:40, flo said:

I don't spend anything at the ground other than the ticket and I'm not the only one. 

 

I haven't missed a home league game for over 24 years, missed a small handful (and never voluntarily) in the last 38 years, and I don't think I've ever once spent anything inside the ground on a matchday. Maybe when my dad bought me one of those blue and white quartered caps from the old club shop behind the South Stand in 1981, but that's it. Sure I've never spent a penny on food and drink in the ground in all that time, I even stopped buying programmes years ago. 

[Guest]

34 minutes ago, alanharper said:

 

I haven't missed a home league game for over 24 years, missed a small handful (and never voluntarily) in the last 38 years, and I don't think I've ever once spent anything inside the ground on a matchday. Maybe when my dad bought me one of those blue and white quartered caps from the old club shop behind the South Stand in 1981, but that's it. Sure I've never spent a penny on food and drink in the ground in all that time, I even stopped buying programmes years ago. 

 

Same, I used to buy the odd balti pie years ago when I was on the Kop (you can't get away from the trumpers so might as well join them) but don't even consider it nowadays. Had the odd pint at half-time but only when someone else goes to the bar before the half-time whistle.

[Guest]

8 hours 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.

 

 

 

 

 

You've obviously put some thought into this and make a lot of decent points but I am not sure your figures regarding the increase in casual walk ups are accurate. 

When we were a mid-table lower half team at this level before Chansiri took over prices were cheaper than they are now but the attendances were lower. Previous discounted games have had mixed results in terms of attendances increasing significantly with fans giving reasons for not going as midweek games not being ideal or opposition being unattractive. Others complain about us having too many price categories yet if we go for one price for each stand as you suggest I am sure some would then say I am not paying the same price to watch Millwall as I could to watch Villa.

 

In terms of your estimated losses for season tickets being reduced in price - I think you also need to consider that potentially less people would buy season tickets if match day prices were reduced to such an extent that a season ticket would only have an average cost saving of £2 per game in every stand. Under Chansiri season tickets have sold in greater number than any time since the PL era. This must in part be due to supporters deciding that having a season ticket at current prices is better value than they used to have in picking perhaps 10-15 games per season. The club have made no secret of the price strategy being used to drive increased season ticket sales and the number suggest in this respect it has worked. 

 

I don't think my season ticket at £24 per game is unreasonable and if I couldn't afford it I would go back to the Kop where I stood/sat for years, which at £21 per game is a fair price for Championship football nowadays.

In my opinion there doesn't need to be an early bird and phase 2/phase 3 pricing for season tickets, just have 1 price with a 5% discount for renewals and 10% if you have had a season ticket for 5+ consecutive seasons provided you renew by a specific early date.

 

That way there would be no need for the extortionate £40+ matchday prices in any stand. Just have 2 categories, A and B and price it around £24/27 Kop, £27/£30 North and £27/£30 South.

 

 

 

[fred mciver]

Also, offer free voting shares with 3 - year season tickets so we raise dosh and have a say in how club's run (like Paxo now).  

[asteener1867]

On 30/04/2019 at 10:11, 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 wonder how many would buy season tickets anyway, IF it was the same price as POTG?

I reckon a fair few would to guarantee the same seat...Away ticket priority etc

Now if you added futher incentives....all suggestions accepted....Does anyone reckon we would be that far off the current numbers?

POTG will kill us next season if it carries on the same, especially with Liverpool Man U City etc tipping up across the City.

Chansiri said that "We make little difference to the income"..So..why not suck it and see how many tip up at a reasonable price?

Fans buy season tickets based on other reasons than price alone, especially since it went "all seater"...sit together, away tickets priority, big home game priority discount on paraphanalia, Fans would still buy season tickets.

Look at POTG....theres nowt bar ..sitting there KNOWING your favourite football team has totally r*pped the p*ss...and it must be galling to hear the "WAWAW" song...freakin' empty load of cant that must sound!

Its time for a change..because its fast becoming time when those "disenchantised fans..we were "Looking after"..Might need to start looking after the club

Edited May 2, 2019 by asteener1867