St Prices

[Spud55]

Now we all know that ST prices have gone up somewhat, and many people are (understandably) upset by this) however after thinking about it for the last day or so, i'm not sure it's a bad thing. For the past god knows how long Sl has been saying that the club needs to stand on it's own two feet as he shouldn't be expected along with the rest of the board to stump up the million quid plus to service the loss that the club has been operating at for many years, now this money has to come from somewhere and if the club is to stand on it's own then it has to come from us.

Now i have no doubt that SL and the board will still be putting substantial amounts of their own money into the club, but the long term aim of any club has to be to support it's self, now if we want to actually sign some players then the rise HAD to be considerable, as it stood we were making a hefty loss in league 1, we wanted good players to get us out of that division and on the whole we got them, but it costs a fair whack more to get championship standard players, it also costs more to pay them and i can almost guarentee that because of Gj's and the clubs attempts to build that a fair few players brought in have promotion wage rises factored into contracts, so even before we start contemplating buying or signing anyone new there is going to be a considerable rise in operating costs of the club. So that accounts for a part of the rise already and how many would have been happy with a small rise but no increse in the quality of the squad ? i know i wouldn't.

So we also needed to raise money to pay for any new players that we want to bring in who will be on good wages, plus any fees paid to get these players, that is a considerable amount of money, and probably accounts for a large if not the most part of the rise in S/T costs and ticket costs in general.

The money you get just from being in the championship is not a lot, i'm not sure but iirc TV revenue is payed on a game by game basis, you get a bit in sponsorship money from CC and mabye some from sky but not a massive amount, now bieng optimistic we will have 8 games live on sky next season, say 4 home 4 away, that in it's self only amounts to about 340k, the away side gets 10k and the home gets about 75 iirc. In all probability unless we do especially well we'll probably be looking at the two Cardiff games and not too much more on Sky, which is less than 200k.

The last time we went up Prices were low, but then we also went on to spend a vast amount of money that we simply didn't have, and that hurt this club seriously and we didn't recover for a long while, we are not going to make that mistake again, we will spend what we have.

At some point being that we don't want to be like Leeds or any of the other whole host of big clubs that have over-extended themselfs and paid the price for it, like we did 10 years ago, we are going to have to foot the bill for the players we want and need to suceed at this level, these rises are designed the way i see it to build a stable starting block from where this club can move forward under it's own steam without having to rely on our board bailing the club out time and time again, at some point we are going to have to start paying for it and this seems as good a time as any for us to start, why exactly should we expect the board to fun the club while keeping prices for us low ? Sl and the board are trying to build city into a club which dosn't have to rely on anyone except the fans, for all we know Sl could die tomorrow and we suddenly no longer have a chairman prepaired to put in large amounts of money, and the club has to make massive sacrifices to simply survive, let alone stay in whichever division we are in, but if we build to a being a stable club then we can face any eventuality with a good chance of being able to see it off.

I truly feel for those priced out of watching City, i've missed large parts of the last 2 seasons due to work commitments and i hated it, but i'm getting round that now so after a break i can go back to having a S/T, but i still feel that if we want this club to really progress we will have to be able to survive and finance buying players without the board footing large parts of the bill themselfs. I have no doubt they will still invest heavily, but we are going to have to foot the bill also, after a fair few years of cheap tickets in relation to our wage strcture (which we all demand, we want good players and must accept that we will have to pay them good wages), we were always going to have to pay somtime, and that time is now.

anyway that my take on the matter, if we go out now and spend no money on players then i will be seriously annoyed but it seems like a statement of intent from the club, we mean business in the chapionship but aren't going to amble the future stability of the club on it.

[Bristol Boy]

Some very good points.

I think that the club, in hiking ticket prices-not just ST's- has acheived a number of things, good & bad:

• Raised expectation levels.
• Upset some long standing fans.
• Possibly reduced ST Sales.
• Reduced "Walk Up" Sales.
• Reduced Ticket Sales to Non ST's.
  • 
    
    
    • Declared an intention to go for it, from season one.
    • Given notice to the manager and players of that intention.
    • Declared Support for GJ and given him the wherewithall to fight on a relatively even playing field, save those teams with parachute payments

It may well be that we sell 10,000-We'll have to see, but we may sell the same number or less than last season at 7,600.No matter, because the revenue will still be about 30% higher if we sell the same number and we'll be able to sell more tkts to more away fans and that will also increase income.So, from a business point of view, it's not a massive problem if we don't exceed last seasons number or even fall short of it.

However, from a morale & footballing standpoint, not having more home support will work to the away teams advantage and players who experienced the highs of the large attendances during the run in may find a more sparsely populated AG off putting.

Fans may choose to follow City away from AG and not at home, which will be appreciated by the players, but not the financiers, as City derive no revenue from that at all.

The fact that this hike follows a period of stability/stagnation, is irrelevant because the club did not progress for eight years in terms of it's League status therefore, why should failing players & managers earn more and why should long suffering supporters pay more?

That the club loses money isn't a shock and the best way to make a small fortune out of football is to start with a large one.Many clubs are supported by benefactors-I'm not just talking about the obvious one in Chelsea, but Bolton, Wigan, Middlesboro, Reading & Blackburn.

Players should be paid for performance, not past acheivements, so a promotion bonus spread over the next season, not a wage rise without that milestone being acheived, would be more cost effective and benefit cash flow.I'm against paying our existing players more on the basis that they're now Championship players-With respect to them all, we won't know that until Aug/Sept time.

Of course, if we improve on them, I fully understand and support the need to pay more for new & better players.

The discussion will go on but 30-40% in one fell swoop is just plain wrong and does not indicate a club in touch or indeed appreciative with it's fans.Couple that with the decision to have unallocated seating that ousts ST holders in the Atyeo and it's just plain unfeeling.

[Guest]

Some very good points.

I think that the club, in hiking ticket prices-not just ST's- has acheived a number of things, good & bad:

• Raised expectation levels.
• Upset some long standing fans.
• Possibly reduced ST Sales.
• Reduced "Walk Up" Sales.
• Reduced Ticket Sales to Non ST's.
  • 
    
    
    • Declared an intention to go for it, from season one.
    • Given notice to the manager and players of that intention.
    • Declared Support for GJ and given him the wherewithall to fight on a relatively even playing field, save those teams with parachute payments

It may well be that we sell 10,000-We'll have to see, but we may sell the same number or less than last season at 7,600.No matter, because the revenue will still be about 30% higher if we sell the same number and we'll be able to sell more tkts to more away fans and that will also increase income.So, from a business point of view, it's not a massive problem if we don't exceed last seasons number or even fall short of it.

However, from a morale & footballing standpoint, not having more home support will work to the away teams advantage and players who experienced the highs of the large attendances during the run in may find a more sparsely populated AG off putting.

Fans may choose to follow City away from AG and not at home, which will be appreciated by the players, but not the financiers, as City derive no revenue from that at all.

The fact that this hike follows a period of stability/stagnation, is irrelevant because the club did not progress for eight years in terms of it's League status therefore, why should failing players & managers earn more and why should long suffering supporters pay more?

That the club loses money isn't a shock and the best way to make a small fortune out of football is to start with a large one.Many clubs are supported by benefactors-I'm not just talking about the obvious one in Chelsea, but Bolton, Wigan, Middlesboro, Reading & Blackburn.

Players should be paid for performance, not past acheivements, so a promotion bonus spread over the next season, not a wage rise without that milestone being acheived, would be more cost effective and benefit cash flow.I'm against paying our existing players more on the basis that they're now Championship players-With respect to them all, we won't know that until Aug/Sept time.

Of course, if we improve on them, I fully understand and support the need to pay more for new & better players.

The discussion will go on but 30-40% in one fell swoop is just plain wrong and does not indicate a club in touch or indeed appreciative with it's fans.Couple that with the decision to have unallocated seating that ousts ST holders in the Atyeo and it's just plain unfeeling.

I feel another petition coming on; its not nice to have someone else sat in your seat is it; not much time so it seems like its take it or leave it for now

[wayne allisons tongues]

Done some calcs and if we had 7800 st holders last year and with say on averge 30% increase in prices then i think we only need 5720 st holders to break even.

7800 at £275 atyeo price = 2145000

5720 at £375 atyeo price = 2145000

Which means the club in theory can lose 2080 st holders at present and still make same money as last year roughly. Just a comparision only with other stands the figures may go slightly up or down. But i cannot see 2080 people not renewing or 26% of fans or 1 in 4.