Would City games sell out with cheaper prices?

[onlyotib]

38 minutes ago, reddogkev said:

Bloody eck, I certainly mind paying £40 a ticket!  If a rich chairman / owner wants to pump millions into a club, that's fine if it's their decision, but the fans don't have to bankroll it!

On the flip side. U could pay £10 a ticket with no club backing and watch a team in the conference which are not going to achieve anything in the long run 

[Eddie Hitler]

21 minutes ago, CyderInACan said:

For it to be enforced it has to be legal - you can't just randomly create a parking zone at the drop of a hat can you? I'd imagine there's a lot of legal stuff to go through first and then it's not just a case of ticketing people etc. 

I was assuming that it would go through the council and we would have to pay for a warden's time as we pay for police time on matchday.  I wasn't envisaging Mark Ashton going out with a pot of paint and a high vis jacket.

My point was that the cost would be minimal and would not influence any decision upon ticket pricing.

[onlyotib]

1 hour ago, Monkeh said:

We don't pay 40 quid a ticket and we do have a chairman pumping millions in,  

Ye the point I'm trying to make is I don't mind paying over the top prices if we r trying to achieve something and the backing is there all in place

[SARJ]

2 hours ago, DaveF said:

Most of them would rather stay home and watch Sky Sports.

Sorry Dave mate but I call b*llocks on that. My own father, brother and several colleagues all love coming down the Gate but are unwilling to pay approx £30 a ticket for Championship level football, which I totally sympathise with. Make the tickets a tenner and you'd be getting 21k attendance each week easy, if not more.

Likewise I'd like to add that I sit in the unreserved area of the South Stand. It cost £350 for a ST roughly, which isn't too bad when you break it down. If it would have been £450-500 like other areas of the stadium I simply couldn't afford to attend, so in that respect you can add my name to the list of supporters who'd like cheaper prices. And no, I wouldn't rather sit at home and watch Sky Sports either. 

[gordie]

Be interesting to see how many we get against Derby it being mates rates, I know not everyone will be able to get it for a tenner but the majority will be able to I would have thought, at this moment in time even at a tenner I wouldn't think there would be more than 22000 there

[Monkeh]

25 minutes ago, onlyotib said:

Ye the point I'm trying to make is I don't mind paying over the top prices if we r trying to achieve something and the backing is there all in place

thats good for you but the day we start charging £40 a match is the day I'll start going to watch bath on a Saturday instead

[Snufflelufagus]

Derby game for season ticket holders is being 2 friends for £10 each. So that is very cheap. Surely if it was down to price then this game will sell out easily.

[DaveF]

26 minutes ago, SARJ said:

Sorry Dave mate but I call b*llocks on that. My own father, brother and several colleagues all love coming down the Gate but are unwilling to pay approx £30 a ticket for Championship level football, which I totally sympathise with. Make the tickets a tenner and you'd be getting 21k attendance each week easy, if not more.

Likewise I'd like to add that I sit in the unreserved area of the South Stand. It cost £350 for a ST roughly, which isn't too bad when you break it down. If it would have been £450-500 like other areas of the stadium I simply couldn't afford to attend, so in that respect you can add my name to the list of supporters who'd like cheaper prices. And no, I wouldn't rather sit at home and watch Sky Sports either. 

I've only ever had about 3 colleagues with any interest in going down the Gate

[BrightCiderLife]

26 minutes ago, SARJ said:

Sorry Dave mate but I call b*llocks on that. My own father, brother and several colleagues all love coming down the Gate but are unwilling to pay approx £30 a ticket for Championship level football, which I totally sympathise with. Make the tickets a tenner and you'd be getting 21k attendance each week easy, if not more.

Likewise I'd like to add that I sit in the unreserved area of the South Stand. It cost £350 for a ST roughly, which isn't too bad when you break it down. If it would have been £450-500 like other areas of the stadium I simply couldn't afford to attend, so in that respect you can add my name to the list of supporters who'd like cheaper prices. And no, I wouldn't rather sit at home and watch Sky Sports either. 

19k a week @ £30 each or 21k @ £10..? 

The choice is between £570,000 or £210,000.

The difference is £360k.

Had we done that just once last season we wouldn't have been able to sign Matty Taylor so I think Bristol Sport has got this one right. They're maximising the finances while ensuring that most fans who want to attend can attend. 

[reddogkev]

14 minutes ago, onlyotib said:

On the flip side. U could pay £10 a ticket with no club backing and watch a team in the conference which are not going to achieve anything in the long run 

Yep, you are right, but I feel the happy medium is somewhere in between those prices you've mentioned - and preferably not closer to the £40 mark!

Perhaps City have the tickets prices right for the level we are at, but if tickets could be lowered, we'd come closer to filling the gate each game.  Currently, the cheapest standard adult ticket for Burton next month (as an example) is £28 for the South Stand - which seems too high.

[RoystonFoote'snephew]

It depends what you mean by a sell out. Few sides in the Championship will fill the Atyeo. 

If we're talking the home stands, then City's average home support (after deducting the away following) is about 17,500. Given that we have a little over 13,000 season ticket holders, this suggests a walk-up of around 4,000. If you reduced ticket prices you might another 2,000 but I would doubt many more. 

[SARJ]

25 minutes ago, BrightCiderLife said:

19k a week @ £30 each or 21k @ £10..? 

The choice is between £570,000 or £210,000.

The difference is £360k.

Had we done that just once last season we wouldn't have been able to sign Matty Taylor so I think Bristol Sport has got this one right. They're maximising the finances while ensuring that most fans who want to attend can attend. 

Hear what you're saying in that financially it makes sense, but still, just goes to prove that football is a money making business these days.

Look at Bradford for example, multi-millionaire chairman who's focused on making the club 'great' rather than expanding his coffers. Replica kits are only £25, season tickets £100 and he's vowed to drop prices more the better the team do. He'd rather have a full stadium and great atmosphere and it seems to pay dividends, Bradford went to Wembley and only narrowly missed promotion. Certainly a team to watch for the future and I hope they succeed as it will force other clubs to follow suit.

[wendyredredrobin]

This season I bought a season ticket, (well 3 actually) but what kept me away quite a lot last year was not only the cost of single match tickets, but the fact that the remaing tickets available were all in rows 1 and 2 where you cant really see much for the money you pay. So galling to see all those empty seats with great views in the Upper West Stand.

Price reductions might bring a few fans back in the courss of time, but the top tier needs to be open more and the 2 or 3 rows in the front discounted.

Top six in the league will help to bring the fans back of course, but it does take time and performances to convert single game visitors into regular visitors and ultimately season card holders.

It is those that can only attend 10 or 15 games per season due to costs or other commitments that probably need encouragement.  May be a discount scheme based on number if tickets bought or perhaps a free purple and lime shirt once you have bought "x" tickets.

The only other thing I can think of is flexible pricing (like the airlines) but that would probably have a negative effect on both atendances and revenues.

I do know that Because of single match costs, I didn't buy 3 tickets for 8 or 9games last season that I otherwise would have and I bet there are a few thousand in the same boat.

[View from the Dolman]

8 minutes ago, SARJ said:

...Replica kits are only £25...

You might want to let Bradford themselves know that... http://bantams.clubstore.co.uk/bc-9062-ss-home-jsy-17-18

[old_eastender]

4 hours ago, reddogkev said:

The obvious part - general consensus is football tickets are too expensive (not just at City, I hasten to add).

Without checking for 100%, I'd say our average attendance must be approx. 19k.  It would be outstanding if we got to the stage where we frequently sold out Ashton Gate.

Why doesn't this already happen?  The Championship is a very high quality league, full of big teams and talented players.  I feel the City of Bristol, coupled with surrounding areas, should have enough people who support City to easily fill the ground for every league game.  So my question is, would cheaper match tickets (added to the much improved match-day experience) guarantee selling out each game?  And for those who mention buying season tickets or memberships, I'm only interested in the reduction of the actual league game ticket cost, and whether this would help us fill the stadium.

Imagine, for argument's sake, the price for each game was £20.00, would we always fill the ground, or is this just wishful thinking?

 

 

I think the attendances in the League Cup, when prices are just £10, tells you the answer is "no", we would not fill the ground if tickets are made cheaper.

No doubt if PoTD tickets had less of a mark-up over Season Ticket prices that would help sell some more, but moreover if we want a full ground we need a team that is winning on the pitch. The League One / Cup double season apart (when the ground was almost sold out every game at much reduced capacity), we have been starved of success, give us a side in the top six pushing for promotion to the PL, and then we will see 25,000 gates each week. 

[SARJ]

6 minutes ago, old_eastender said:

I think the attendances in the League Cup, when prices are just £10, tells you the answer is "no", we would not fill the ground if tickets are made cheaper.

All due respect but I don't think you can include League Cup games in this argument as they traditionally have low attendances, unless we draw a big team.

We need to focus on filling the Gate every week in the league.

[ashton_fan]

We could sell out some games if the price was low enough, but the club would almost certainly get reduced income so what's the point? The objective for the business is to maximise income from the available capacity.

[Welcome To The Jungle]

4 minutes ago, ashton_fan said:

We could sell out some games if the price was low enough, but the club would almost certainly get reduced income so what's the point? The objective for the business is to maximise income from the available capacity.

Because your fellow supporters who love City just as much as you may be able to go more.

[BRISTOL86]

8 minutes ago, Welcome To The Jungle said:

Because your fellow supporters who love City just as much as you may be able to go more.

The club isn't a charity though, it's a business. They set prices in order to maximise revenue. 

They will have modelled various scenarios to ascertain the best price point for season tickets and pay on the day to balance the supply and demand and maximise revenue. 

For example 12000 STs at £350 is better than 16000 at £250. 

Now you could argue that intangible benefits accrue from increasing the ST holder base (and I'd agree) but only to a certain point. 

The trouble is that STs are already very well priced, and we still don't sell anywhere near enough to get sell outs. 

I expect the marginal gains of additional bums on seats do not outweigh the lost revenue from reducing current pricing, or we'd probably be doing it. 

[Maesknoll Red]

2 hours ago, Monkeh said:

thats good for you but the day we start charging £40 a match is the day I'll start going to watch bath on a Saturday instead

It'll get there, I can remember when a ticket in the Dolman went from £9 to £10, double figures, that felt like the beginning of the end!!  At £9 it seemed reasonable value at 10p a minute, but we still paid the tenner the next season, the way football is going, we're bound to be looking at £40 tickets before too long.

[Welcome To The Jungle]

9 minutes ago, BRISTOL86 said:

The club isn't a charity though, it's a business. They set prices in order to maximise revenue. 

They will have modelled various scenarios to ascertain the best price point for season tickets and pay on the day to balance the supply and demand and maximise revenue. 

For example 12000 STs at £350 is better than 16000 at £250. 

Now you could argue that intangible benefits accrue from increasing the ST holder base (and I'd agree) but only to a certain point. 

The trouble is that STs are already very well priced, and we still don't sell anywhere near enough to get sell outs. 

I expect the marginal gains of additional bums on seats do not outweigh the lost revenue from reducing current pricing, or we'd probably be doing it. 

Which is why the £179 ST price offered by promoted Huddersfield last season would be a good start and then keep general sale ticket prices proportionally the same. Now if Huddersfield can find a way to get the books to balance and get promoted, I'm sure our owner who has made billions in the financial sector can find a way, especially as our stadium probably produces more income off the pitch. Surely we can do better than Huddersfield! 

P.S. "A club is an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal." So the club isn't the business, it is the people. This has been forgotten largely in England where it would be more accurate to say most fans support football teams, rather than the club. 

[GrahamC]

1 hour ago, SARJ said:

Hear what you're saying in that financially it makes sense, but still, just goes to prove that football is a money making business these days.

Look at Bradford for example, multi-millionaire chairman who's focused on making the club 'great' rather than expanding his coffers. Replica kits are only £25, season tickets £100 and he's vowed to drop prices more the better the team do. He'd rather have a full stadium and great atmosphere and it seems to pay dividends, Bradford went to Wembley and only narrowly missed promotion. Certainly a team to watch for the future and I hope they succeed as it will force other clubs to follow suit.

That is all well and lovely but there are a couple of big differences here;

Bradford is poor, third world poor so everything is cheaper there (houses, wages etc).

They are in League One with a big ground they still cannot fill, so whilst their business model sort of works for them, it doesn't for us.

We are currently at about 75% of ground capacity, so a price reduction will not increase or even achieve the same income, whatever any of us think about ticket prices.

[SARJ]

3 minutes ago, GrahamC said:

That is all well and lovely but there are a couple of big differences here;

Bradford is poor, third world poor so everything is cheaper there (houses, wages etc).

They are in League One with a big ground they still cannot fill, so whilst their business model sort of works for them, it doesn't for us.

We are currently at about 75% ground capacity, so a price reduction will not increase or even achieve the same income, whatever any of us think about ticket prices.

Understood Graham.

But as this thread has developed, it comes down to 1 simple thing: would the club rather see a full stadium each week with low ticket prices, or a half empty stadium but good profits. Sadly, the latter is preferred by most clubs.

[View from the Dolman]

6 minutes ago, SARJ said:

Understood Graham.

But as this thread has developed, it comes down to 1 simple thing: would the club rather see a full stadium each week with low ticket prices, or a half empty stadium but good profits. Sadly, the latter is preferred by most clubs.

Which clubs are making "good profits"?

[Welcome To The Jungle]

2 minutes ago, GrahamC said:

That is all well and lovely but there are a couple of big differences here;

Bradford is poor, third world poor so everything is cheaper there (houses, wages etc).

They are in League One with a big ground they still cannot fill, so whilst their business model sort of works for them, it doesn't for us.

We are currently at about 75% ground capacity, so a price reduction will not increase or even achieve the same income, whatever any of us think about ticket prices.

Can I suggest then almost every team, in almost every city, in almost every country in the world where you can get tickets cheaper than Ashton Gate. Such teams include Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund etc etc. But, I hear you say, these teams have other incomes from TV and sponsorship meaning they can afford it. Well, Huddersfield did it, and are dropping some prices below the £100 mark for a ST. Bradford are doing it who still encounter many of the same costs and your argument that everything is cheaper up North doesn't explain Leeds United or Sheffield Wednesday does it! 

Ticket prices in the UK are stunningly overpriced bar a handful of cases. We are no exception. Being average in a horrendous system doesn't make it right does it?

[Kingswood Robin]

3 hours ago, onlyotib said:

On the flip side. U could pay £10 a ticket with no club backing and watch a team in the conference which are not going to achieve anything in the long run 

Flip it over again and you could be paying £40 a match to a team that won't achieve anything in the long run.

If it's cheaper we all get to share the pain.

[semblar]

I'll keep things in percentage terms, as there are a mix of kids and concessions that affect the total...also I'll ignore the home/away split and assume that you get the same ratio of food/drink/programme sales.

We currently average 19k or so attendance. Moving to a 27k attendance is a 42% uplift. To match the income in isolation you can drop the price by almost 30%. Sounds ok in principle...

There are two main problems with this kind of analysis though, even ignoring the broad assumptions above.

1. the 19k average included the near sellouts. We can't just add 8k to each gate, especially considering the Atyeo is away only now.

2. This leaves nowhere to go for the club if they want to use success as the driver for increased matchday revenues... other than raising the prices again. As things stand, there is enough space for a good run and (hopefully!) attractive football to pull more people in. If the club lowered prices to the point where AG was full every match, where would we be able to put the additional fans who are success-driven rather than price-driven? There is a far larger capacity to try to lower prices to increase attendances with the rugby, as there was a 13.7k average last season so room to increase the attendance an still have space for success to bring in higher crowds

[Kingswood Robin]

5 minutes ago, Welcome To The Jungle said:

Can I suggest then almost every team, in almost every city, in almost every country in the world where you can get tickets cheaper than Ashton Gate. Such teams include Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund etc etc. But, I hear you say, these teams have other incomes from TV and sponsorship meaning they can afford it. Well, Huddersfield did it, and are dropping some prices below the £100 mark for a ST. Bradford are doing it who still encounter many of the same costs and your argument that everything is cheaper up North doesn't explain Leeds United or Sheffield Wednesday does it! 

Ticket prices in the UK are stunningly overpriced bar a handful of cases. We are no exception. Being average in a horrendous system doesn't make it right does it?

A good point well made sir.

I had a "discussion" about parking charges with a chap from Leeds while in Ilfracombe recently. I commented that I thought the prices were a bit of a rip off. He declared (like they do in Yorkshire) that it wasn't, because it was cheaper than parking in central Leeds. I replied that just because it wasn't as big a rip off as up in gods country, it didn't mean it wasn't still a rip off. Surprisingly he had no response.  

[Super]

Said it lots of times our prices are disgraceful as many other clubs are.

[BRISTOL86]

1 hour ago, Welcome To The Jungle said:

Which is why the £179 ST price offered by promoted Huddersfield last season would be a good start and then keep general sale ticket prices proportionally the same. Now if Huddersfield can find a way to get the books to balance and get promoted, I'm sure our owner who has made billions in the financial sector can find a way, especially as our stadium probably produces more income off the pitch. Surely we can do better than Huddersfield! 

P.S. "A club is an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal." So the club isn't the business, it is the people. This has been forgotten largely in England where it would be more accurate to say most fans support football teams, rather than the club. 

Not entirely comparable circumstances. Huddersfield's expectations did not match ours in the Championship. They were as stunned as anyone that they performed the way they did. Simply put our level of investment in the team could not survive if we halved the cost of our STs.

They are able to offer that deal in the Premiership because of the windfall that has come with promotion.

As much as I sympathise with your romantic view of the footballing world, it's a business, pure and simple. 

'Club' is just a word in the company name.