Barnsley Ticket Price 'experiment'...

[dezgimed]

Nope, being a BCFC fan is a birthright not a choice.

Is this some spiritual father and son talk I don't understand?

I chose to be a City fan..

:noexpression:

[scumbag]

Care to enlighten me?

In reply to the FCF, CS said 800 ST's did not renew.Some people then said that figure included people who had transferred-Notice, some people, not the club and it's very simple.All the club has to do is say of the 800 quoted 250 transferred, so it's actually 550-Simple, but they haven't and only the club have the figures.That would still be dire news in a promotion season.

You still miss the point though-In a season when a club like Blackpool more than doubles it's ST's our goes up by 30% and it takes us until Xmas when we're at the top of the league to do it.At the same time, our POD collapses in % terms even though about 4/5 times more away fans turn up.

Explain that.

CS has confirmed it since then, sure if you use the search facility you will find the link.

it's easy to double your season tickets if you are blackpool, who didn't have many in the first place and have a very small ground to fill, not a fair comparision at all, very much more straw clutching as ever.

[scumbag]

plus there isn't actually much difference in their ST prices to ours, plus despite "doubling" their ST sales, they attedances are only up about 20%............the same amount as ours.......what does that tell you

[Bristol Boy]

CS has confirmed it since then, sure if you use the search facility you will find the link.

If you're convinced and it supports your argument, you show me because I can't remember any announcement along those lines or is it one like The Premier Club will be four to five times oversubscribed or the catering contract will pay for the new EE?

it's easy to double your season tickets if you are blackpool, who didn't have many in the first place and have a very small ground to fill, not a fair comparision at all, very much more straw clutching as ever.

They had about 3,000 and have more than doubled them to 7,500-That's almost what we had last season and if you want to get into an argument of what's a better acheivement then start to look at the population and the proximity of Top Class Premiership Football.Still, if you think that 10,000 is a cracking figure for BCFC then you even disagree with CS who said that anything less than 10,000 would be a disappointment.

[zookeeper]

Well, first of all let's deal with elasticity.

Consider what the attendance for the Barnsley game would have been at normal prices...

You thought 14k, I thought 12k. We had 14k the previous week for Cardiff who are a far more attractive game and it was closer to Xmas so call it 13k.

We halved prices for matchday tickets and told 6k which on that one game would make it perfectly elastic would it not?

Surely that result on it's own merits more experiment?

As I've said before I believe that within certain price regions the product is elastic. If it is discounted enough then more people would be attracted than the % change. I agree with that. However as there is limited supply we sell out and all though have a packed out ground make less money than before.

It is also goes back to what the season ticket holders will feel. Long term it piss out a very large stakeholder.

I have said that we should look at ways to fill spare capacity with future fans, but not by discounting everyones tickets!

Secondly, I don't think that's what it's all about anyway.

You can't run a business by purely looking at numbers, you have to understand the motivations of customers - in this case fans.

Of course you do. Why state the obvious?

A not for profit organisation does not aim to make PROFIT.

It's primary focus should not be on revenue, it should only be concerned about revenue insofar as it supports success on the pitch.

Given two ways to make the same revenue - low prices and more fans or high prices and less fans - the club should be picking the former because that is more conducive to success on the field and long term growth.

Now you can never prove that this is the case, the other scenario will always be a what if. But a football club, because it's primary goals should be about football not profit, should be starting from the point that gets more people through the door and working towards the other if it goes wrong, not the way we're doing it.

No the primary focus of a not for profit organisation is how to best use it's resources to maximise benefit from them. Gaining more revenue allows it to benefit more. I'm not talking about profit! I'm talking about revenue!

The club at the start of the season invested in a few high profile players and considerably increased the wage bil. That was in an attempt to get people to come and to have kept the prices the same would have meant that we would have needed to have increased our attendances by over 30%. Is that realistic?

[Nibor]

Yes indeed, and many will come whatever the price

Noone will come whatever the price. For every single person there is a price beyond which they can't afford it.

Nope, being a BCFC fan is a birthright not a choice. I can't remember my first City game - my first ever professional football game was at the Gas - but I still support City. We become fans for as many diverse reasons as there are fans - I don't think you can generalise.

So you were born a season ticket holder? I think you should try reading what I posted rather than what you think I posted.

Nothing to do with having played at a higher level for longer than us then?

You've misread what I was saying.

Sigh - maximising revenue does not necessariy mean maximising profit. And anyway, I don't see why BCFC should be any different to any other business who's primiary aim is a return to shareholders by making a profit.

Quite simply because Bristol City should be something the whole community get to partake in not the privileged few who can afford it. I fully realise you can't understand that though.

But, let's set that aside, BCFC are not a profit making venture - they haven't been for many years - they need to increase their revenues to the point where they, at the very least, start to break even - stop whittering on about profit it's irrelevant to this discussion.

You really are working hard at misconstruing what I'm saying. There are many ways to break even and what I'm talking about is how you choose between them not the goal itself. I mentioned "Not for profit" organisations because that's the sort of decision making I think a football club should have, not the purely commercial viewpoint sipowicz was advocating or the confused and illogical one you seem to be advocating. You're refusing to acknowledge that there is any other way than the current prices.

Season ticket sales are higher than they have ever been - not just the last nine years, and the fact that you choose to ignore that fact because it doesn't "fit" does not make the fact go away.

I'm not ignoring it, it's just completely irrelevant to a discussion about whether a club should reduce match day prices no matter how many times you repeat it.

We won't agree, but I remain to be convinced that reducing ticket prices will be beneficial to the club in breaking even.

Yes well that is because you've taken the view that because our current ticket sales are better than anything in recent times the prices must be right so we shouldn't change them, and also taken the view that no other pricing scheme could be right because they can't be proven to be, then it will be hard to convince you of anything. It's a self supporting argument because it allows no possibility to prove otherwise.

[Nibor]

No the primary focus of a not for profit organisation is how to best use it's resources to maximise benefit from them. Gaining more revenue allows it to benefit more. I'm not talking about profit! I'm talking about revenue!

Not for profit organisations typically do NOT focus PRIMARILY on increasing revenue. They look first at their objectives and how to meet them.

With for profit organisations their first objective is always profit therefore they typically focus on revenue first.

It is the ethos behind the different types of organisation I am getting at.

The club at the start of the season invested in a few high profile players and considerably increased the wage bil. That was in an attempt to get people to come and to have kept the prices the same would have meant that we would have needed to have increased our attendances by over 30%. Is that realistic?

No it's not, but then in hundreds of posts on the ###### subject I have never once advocated prices staying the same as they were last season and nor has anyone else. Would you like to construct any more straw man arguments for me to comment on?

[Nibor]

As I've said before I believe that within certain price regions the product is elastic. If it is discounted enough then more people would be attracted than the % change. I agree with that. However as there is limited supply we sell out and all though have a packed out ground make less money than before.

Yes well we're an awful long way away from our "limited supply" so I really don't see how that argument stacks up.

I'm talking about a significant price cut in matchday tickets - maybe 25-30% - I think that would be near break even at worst and we'd not suffer from limited supply.

[Jacs]

And we sold 9,600, lost 800 of last seasons ST's and have just hit 10,000, two divisions & about 18 places higher for most of the season.Go figure.

Am very surprised to see that 800 season ticket holders didn't renew this season, although I have to confess that I was one of them.

I can't blame the price increase entirely, although that certainly was a factor, but thought there would be just a handful of us, not 800!

Was also surprised that I didn't receive a "why haven't you renewed your season ticket" call from the club as know they had done to people in previous years, especially as I had been a ST holder for the previous 10 seasons!

[cheese]

And we sold 9,600, lost 800 of last seasons ST's and have just hit 10,000, two divisions & about 18 places higher for most of the season.Go figure.

Am very surprised to see that 800 season ticket holders didn't renew this season, although I have to confess that I was one of them.

I can't blame the price increase entirely, although that certainly was a factor, but thought there would be just a handful of us, not 800!

Was also surprised that I didn't receive a "why haven't you renewed your season ticket" call from the club as know they had done to people in previous years, especially as I had been a ST holder for the previous 10 seasons!

Yes, but as Nibor has poinited out - this is not a discussion about ST sales. So the 800 become irrelevant in this context. Bristol Boy willbe upset!!

[cheese]

Noone will come whatever the price. For every single person there is a price beyond which they can't afford it.

Didn't realise Peter was a fan - but it's a long way to come from the States. I did like him in the Monkees though.