Ticketing

[Sova]

Reading all the negative comments about the increase in season ticket prices, I was thinking maybe we could start selling them in a different way. Why don't we sell them online like airlines? You could register with your name and e-mail address, and then you could be emailed your seat number (which you'd be able to choose, using a map of the ground on the site), which you would then just print off and take to the match. With your information details saved in the system, buying the next ticket would take a few seconds, and you wouldn't need to keep all your ticket stubs for priority games, because the computer would already have a record of your purchases. We could also have a sliding price scale, with, say, your first 5 games costing 25 quid each, the next five 20 quid, the next five 15 and the next five 10 (or whatever prices we chose). (The season ticket option would still be available as well.) You could book at any time -there'd be no need to wait until someone answered the phone. Another thing is you could include an advance programme purchasing option, allowing fans to purchase a programme in advance, which they would receive on showing their seat number at the turnstile. At least, most games they'd receive it...

[@owlstalk]

That's actually a flipping brilliant idea

Which is why it most likely won't happen unfortunately

[Sova]

That's actually a flipping brilliant idea

Which is why it most likely won't happen unfortunately

Thank you. I thought about it again last night. I would amend the pricing categories:

Cost of 1st 7 games: 100% of the nominal price (e.g. 25 / 20 / 15 quid)

Next game: Free

Cost of next 7 games: 80% of the nominal price (e.g. 20 / 16 / 12 quid)

Next game: Free

Cost of next 7 games: 60% of the nominal price (e.g. 15 / 12 / 9 quid).

That's the 23 home league games covered.

7 x 25 + 7 x 20 + 7 x 15 = 420

7 x 20 + 7 x 16 + 7 x 12 = 336

7 x 15 + 7 x 12 + 7 x 9 = 252

[Sova]

Continuing this theme, I would set the season ticket prices for the 25 / 20 / 15 quid categories (perhaps optimistically, I'd have these as the adult prices for the South Stand, North Stand and Kop/Family Enclosure respectively) at 400, 320 and 240 quid respectively. In other words, a season ticket would cost just under 70% of the total cost of full-price tickets for the season, and would get you 7 free games. The idea behind my previous post is that I reckon we have a fair number of 'floating fans' who probably go to 4-6 games a season. If they knew that going to an extra one or two they'd get a free game, I think plenty of them would. Also, even though the season ticket here isn't a bad deal, there will still be people who don't buy one because they can't afford it, or just don't want to commit themselves.

[Guest hayhurst]

Its a good idea but wouldn't current league regulations forbid it?

[Sova]

I've no idea! I don't know what those league regulations would be. At any rate, our board seems to look at the issue from the opposite angle. Their thinking appears to be that if we sell season tickets at a decent discount on ordinary tickets, then once the season ticket holders have been to enough matches to get their money's worth, they might not turn up. So if a season ticket effectively saves the season ticket holders 5 games, they stop going in March if the team's playing badly. If, however, the cost of a season ticket is barely any less than that of 23 ordinary tickets, the season ticket holders more or less have to turn up to every match otherwise they'll lose out. So the reasoning could be that although they might sell, say, only 12,000 tickets at the higher price, at least 10,000 of those would turn up every game, whereas if they sold, say, 15,000 at a lower price you might get only 7 or 8,000 of them turning up if we were doing badly.

Edited April 25, 2008 by Sova