Easyjet-style "yield Management"

[charisma_cider]

Maybe we should adopt Easyjet-style "yield management". With budget airlines, the prices start out low then get more dear as the date approaches. If not enough tickets are selling, the price stays low or can even fall - like a Ryanair sale. If the club gets cash in early from tickets then it sits in the bank earning interest for them (or, more likeley, cutting the overdraft)

Obviously it's not a clear-cut comparison. But a seat in the Dolman is a bit similar to a seat on an Airbus to Prague - you don't get anything if its empty and the marginal cost of filling it up is pretty small.

There's been a few comments on a ticket pricing system similar to that used by budget airlines being a possible answer to ticket pricing problems at Ashton Gate.

So what sort of price would you suggest as an "early bird" price? a 50% 30% 25% reduction? and would the reduction be relative to all brackets of ticket prices such as Adult/OAP/Student/U16 etc.

What affect would this have on season ticket prices? As a cheaper option of ticket could lead an ST to be seen as a poorer discount.

Not an impossible idea, but with an online ticket service that has already had complaints documented on this forum, & other ticket office complaints, further complication of the system is most probably going to lead to even more difficulties.

I personally don't think the budget airline price system would translate well into Stadium ticket pricing. For numerous reasons such as budgeting difficulties, etc.

Also with a plane ticket, You book the date you wish to travel in advance because you know the exact date you want to go. When purchasing a matchday ticket, if you miss the time when the tickets are being sold at £15, why not just wait until the next matchday when you can watch that match at a lower price?

[SyntaxtheRed]

This could work i reckon, don't base the price on the date but on how many tickets left, that way you can budget as you can say' we'll sell 1000 tix @ x amount then 1000 tix at y amount etc etc' up. Club could update official site daily with things like ' 250 tix left at early bird prices, get in quick'.

[charisma_cider]

This could work i reckon, don't base the price on the date but on how many tickets left, that way you can budget as you can say' we'll sell 1000 tix @ x amount then 1000 tix at y amount etc etc' up. Club could update official site daily with things like ' 250 tix left at early bird prices, get in quick'.

Yeah I see how that could work.

But if you think of it as an average ticket price, the club is still making less money unless the top tier of pricing is raised from what it is now. In which case it would be simpler to lower the current ticket price to what this average would be. Am I making sense with that..? :noexpression:

[SyntaxtheRed]

yeh your making sense. It probably would be better just to lower the average price. But then again people love to feel there getting a good deal so some kind of limited early bird ticketing system may have a place.

[mozo]

It would be a great improvement and would make it a lot easier for skint people like me to make every game.

[LouieDane]

This pricing system would probably make fans buy tickets earlier, but i'm not convinced we would get overall higher attendances

This is because the main point of the system is flogging all remaining seats for whatever you can get for them at the last minute, but if we did this people would buy LATER and so they could use the lower price and obviously the price couldn't go lower than that of an average game for a ST holder or noone would buy one

SO I do not think we could do it for every game, but maybe using it for uninviting league games to boost the attendances if ticket sales were low a couple of days before the game. Football is an elastic market, lower prices = higher volumes of sales, higher prices = lower attendances, Higher attendances > low attendances, SORT IT OUT CITY

[Blagdon red]

This is one of my pet subjects, and I'd love to see a club somewhere implement this pricing methodology one day - but it will need a lot of clever programming first, so it's not a quick overnight fix.

Just like with airlines, you wouldn't get cheap tickets late in the day (i.e. on the day of the match). The cheapest tickets would be available (in the 'worst' parts of the ground) a long way in advance, e.g. in City's case: back top corners of the Williams, 6 weeks in advance, say five quid... even a handful to drive demand at £1.99p!

As sales came in and the match day drew closer the algorithms on which the software was based would adjust the prices upwards (the aim being to sell the very last ticket to the least price-sensitive customer fairly close to the day of the match ... even as late as one minute to kick-off). Again software of this sort tracks past demand patterns and incorporates this in setting the ticket prices.

Football clubs are indeed like airlines and hotels in that they have a perishable inventory that can only be sold once (i.e. seats on a given flight, beds on a given night, seats for a given match). Once that event has passed, any unsold inventory cannot be put up for sale again. An unsold ticket is therefore a lost revenue opportunity that the club is never going to have again. It's not like a shop that has a poor day's sales one day, but can open up again next morning with all of its goods still available for sale.

From a purist view of such yield management pricing, long-term contracts, in this case season tickets, do queer the pitch a bit. However, other industries, notably the US commercial radio industry, successfully use a hybrid of long-term bookings and supply-and-demand-based sales to sell their perishable inventory of advertising slots.

Personally I'm convinced it would work. It just needs one of the chairmen at a ground that consistently has thousands of empty seats to be brave and give it a go.

The ultimate aim, of course, is to increase the overall yield from each matchday's sales, i.e. in City's case to make more from 20,000 tickets sold at a variety of prices (some lower than currently) than from 14,000 sold at the current prices. Once you'd begun to sell the ground out regularly at a price that matches demand, you then gradually try to up the prices and see what the market will take. But first you need to get 20,000+ people hooked on regularly going to games.

Two intangible bonuses of this approach would be (a) a full ground to inspire the team on the pitch and (b) it would shoot a hole right through the argument that 'football has priced out the working man', as the 'working man' would be able try his luck each time the 'loss leader' cheap tickets went on sale to try to get one of the few going ... there'd be no guarantee of the same person striking lucky every game, so those fans that want the security of knowing that they have their guaranteed season ticket seat for each match would not be attracted by this alternative purchase option - it would, however, give the hard-up occasional fan the chance to get a cheap ticket from time to time for a part of the ground that would otherwise remain empty.

I wonder who'll try it first?

[mozo]

This pricing system would probably make fans buy tickets earlier, but i'm not convinced we would get overall higher attendances

Were you unaware that many people are priced out of football?

It offers options too. Many people can't commit too far in advance but would find a balance that suited them.

If tickets were £15 in a months advance, City would have made more out of me last month than they did.

More fans, more money, more smiley faces...

...perhaps.

[Red Ferret]

If certain seats were sold at a certain price at a certain time then it would be tricky to get all the singers together....everyone would be all spread out according to their price bracket and what they are willing to pay

or something

[BigTone]

Michael O'Leary of Ryanair once said that if everyone bought a drink or food from the service trolley he wouldn,t need to charge a fare.

So lets put that into football: if everyone bought a pie or pasty at half time there wouldn't be a charge for a ticket and we'd make a fortune out of the sale of stomach pumps!!

[mozo]

Michael O'Leary of Ryanair once said that if everyone bought a drink or food from the service trolley he wouldn,t need to charge a fare.

Not bloody surprised at those prices!

Better off buying your own plane than eating and drinking on the flight...