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Post by hobbes on May 6, 2021 10:23:49 GMT
Don’t think I’m gonna bother. My lad has lost interest, my missus hates me being busy every other Saturday on top of the lads football on Sunday. I’ve got better things to do.
I’d rather go to games when I feel like it and pay on the gate. Don’t even care if that ends up costing more. I can justify going to a few more away games too if I miss some homes. Season tickets have become a fetish, they weren’t even a big deal till all seater stadia.
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Post by Lofty on May 6, 2021 11:12:32 GMT
I'm torn.
It needs to rise but who the fuck is paying more for more League Two bollocks.
Fucked it not raising them for 13/14. Wankers.
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Post by Neshead on May 6, 2021 11:59:37 GMT
Don’t think I’m gonna bother. My lad has lost interest, my missus hates me being busy every other Saturday on top of the lads football on Sunday. I’ve got better things to do. I’d rather go to games when I feel like it and pay on the gate. Don’t even care if that ends up costing more. I can justify going to a few more away games too if I miss some homes. Season tickets have become a fetish, they weren’t even a big deal till all seater stadia. My lad is similar, the damage done by 4 years of absolute shite has kicked the club in the balls. The lack of connection between the club and the fans can't be underestimated, when you see the likes of Leeds in the prem and Town in the championship its really hard to get any enthusiasm for yet another league 2 campaign. The cheap tickets don't interest me, it's a future millstone round the clubs neck, should be a tiered system where £149 gets you a ticket for the outer blocks and the shite seats and the price increases accordingly. And the fact a fair few of our postcodes touch the Leeds border, kids growing up arejt gonna watch that shite in the khazi league, they want top stars and premiership footballer. Only thing league 2 appeals to is beardy real ale twats who reminisce about proper football and how enthused they are about paying 8 quid for a pint of farmer browns hand pulled pisser juice.
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Post by Hoochy on May 6, 2021 12:26:36 GMT
Don’t think I’m gonna bother. My lad has lost interest, my missus hates me being busy every other Saturday on top of the lads football on Sunday. I’ve got better things to do. I’d rather go to games when I feel like it and pay on the gate. Don’t even care if that ends up costing more. I can justify going to a few more away games too if I miss some homes. Season tickets have become a fetish, they weren’t even a big deal till all seater stadia. My lad is similar, the damage done by 4 years of absolute shite has kicked the club in the balls. The lack of connection between the club and the fans can't be underestimated, when you see the likes of Leeds in the prem and Town in the championship its really hard to get any enthusiasm for yet another league 2 campaign. The cheap tickets don't interest me, it's a future millstone round the clubs neck, should be a tiered system where £149 gets you a ticket for the outer blocks and the shite seats and the price increases accordingly. And the fact a fair few of our postcodes touch the Leeds border, kids growing up arejt gonna watch that shite in the khazi league, they want top stars and premiership footballer. Only thing league 2 appeals to is beardy real ale twats who reminisce about proper football and how enthused they are about paying 8 quid for a pint of farmer browns hand pulled pisser juice. Tell me more about Farmer Brown.
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Post by Neshead on May 6, 2021 12:36:58 GMT
I think it will be £199 which is still incredibly cheap. It is but we’re unique in having had such cheap tickets for so long and we’re tight cunts in Bradford so any fair sized increase will be hard to swallow for a portion of a fan base already short on patience. A staged increase would be shrewd I think where we start small (maybe index linked) and, once we see this new regime start to bear fruit, we can go with a bigger one. Right now the product on offer isn’t worth shit and until it improves asking people to pay more for it could be seen as bad timing at best and an insult at worst. As easy as it is to pour scorn on people not wanting to pay more it wouldn’t hurt to handle this carefully. Hit people for £230 and we see no improvement or, worse, we go even further backwards and we could be in serious trouble. Sparks has to factor in whether or not he’s confident he can deliver on the increased expectation that a large percentage rise will bring. Maybe give people hope before charging them for it. This is the problem which the chirper posted about. When you drop your brand to business suicide levels it's damn near impossible to put them back up, even the mere mention of putting them up to £8.60 a game has people crying that they can't afford it and it's unfair on supporters.
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Post by Neshead on May 6, 2021 12:38:23 GMT
My lad is similar, the damage done by 4 years of absolute shite has kicked the club in the balls. The lack of connection between the club and the fans can't be underestimated, when you see the likes of Leeds in the prem and Town in the championship its really hard to get any enthusiasm for yet another league 2 campaign. The cheap tickets don't interest me, it's a future millstone round the clubs neck, should be a tiered system where £149 gets you a ticket for the outer blocks and the shite seats and the price increases accordingly. And the fact a fair few of our postcodes touch the Leeds border, kids growing up arejt gonna watch that shite in the khazi league, they want top stars and premiership footballer. Only thing league 2 appeals to is beardy real ale twats who reminisce about proper football and how enthused they are about paying 8 quid for a pint of farmer browns hand pulled pisser juice. Tell me more about Farmer Brown. Lovely bloke, transgressed into the world of craft beer after realising you could charge 32 quid for a pint.
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Post by Dick on May 6, 2021 13:33:36 GMT
It is but we’re unique in having had such cheap tickets for so long and we’re tight cunts in Bradford so any fair sized increase will be hard to swallow for a portion of a fan base already short on patience. A staged increase would be shrewd I think where we start small (maybe index linked) and, once we see this new regime start to bear fruit, we can go with a bigger one. Right now the product on offer isn’t worth shit and until it improves asking people to pay more for it could be seen as bad timing at best and an insult at worst. As easy as it is to pour scorn on people not wanting to pay more it wouldn’t hurt to handle this carefully. Hit people for £230 and we see no improvement or, worse, we go even further backwards and we could be in serious trouble. Sparks has to factor in whether or not he’s confident he can deliver on the increased expectation that a large percentage rise will bring. Maybe give people hope before charging them for it. This is the problem which the chirper posted about. When you drop your brand to business suicide levels it's damn near impossible to put them back up, even the mere mention of putting them up to £8.60 a game has people crying that they can't afford it and it's unfair on supporters. We're stuck with our brand being the football club equivalent of Home Bargains. You go to Home Bargains, its not just the product that's cheap. The environment is cheap and tatty, the till area, the sticker of the policeman in the window, and there's a reason other than basic cost - its all done to appeal to the cheaper mindset. They could spend millions on dressing up the stores to look like a Waitrose, but then keep the cost of their products the same. The result would be their customer base would be put off by the new environment, by the look and feel as it wouldn't resonate with them, their spending habits, their lifestyles. It feels alien to them and they'd be uncomfortable with it. At the same time, the very high end shopper who normally goes to Waitrose would be put off by the low prices in a top-end looking store. It's similar with us - we could spend millions on the infrastructure, training ground, we could even be promoted once or twice etc - but to many we'll still be defined by cheap tickets only and attempts to put them up will be met with resistance. The mindset needs to change which in fairness, quite a few people are wanting to pay more. We're all beyond fed up of reading 'What do you expect for £139?' as an excuse for everything. Said many times - if cheap tickets were a great option more clubs would do it. I don't think any do - a few dabbled in line with a centenary or some sort of celebration but we're now defined by cheap season tickets. We just banked 14 years ago we could sell super cheap tickets as 'affordable football' and get out of L2 at the first attempt - instead we got lumbered with them and are no better off years later.
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Post by hobbes on May 6, 2021 16:50:05 GMT
Neshead's tiered system is interesting. Loads of clubs have different prices for different parts of the ground. C and D block in the main stand should be more expensive than the top of the upper tier, and more expensive than F and especially B block where you get piss wet through cos the roof is so fucking high above you. Likewise the extremities of the kop should be cheaper than the middle blocks. That way if you're flush you can afford to sit in the best seats. if you're not but you still want to come you buy a cheaper seat. That's real life instead of the "Bradford is a working class city" bollocks. Bradford is a dump with no prospects and with a lot of poverty, but how many actual residents follow the club? How many current fans would be genuinely priced out? Our fanbase runs the whole spectrum, and there's plenty of brass sat in the stands most weeks. The club has become a charity for ne'er do wells and tight arses. I used to believe the idea that its better to have 10-15k paying less than 7-8k paying more. But its made no difference, we're still shit and getting passed by teams who get less than 3k attendances: www.worldfootball.net/attendance/eng-league-two-2019-2020/1/But the price of the season ticket isn't the problem though is it. Doesn't matter what we charge when we're so badly run.
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Post by hobbes on May 6, 2021 16:53:44 GMT
I just checked and Coventry had an average attendance in League 2 in 2018 of 9k. They're back in the Championship now.
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Post by Dick on May 6, 2021 17:19:00 GMT
Neshead's tiered system is interesting. Loads of clubs have different prices for different parts of the ground. C and D block in the main stand should be more expensive than the top of the upper tier, and more expensive than F and especially B block where you get piss wet through cos the roof is so fucking high above you. Likewise the extremities of the kop should be cheaper than the middle blocks. That way if you're flush you can afford to sit in the best seats. if you're not but you still want to come you buy a cheaper seat. That's real life instead of the "Bradford is a working class city" bollocks. Bradford is a dump with no prospects and with a lot of poverty, but how many actual residents follow the club? How many current fans would be genuinely priced out? Our fanbase runs the whole spectrum, and there's plenty of brass sat in the stands most weeks. The club has become a charity for ne'er do wells and tight arses. I used to believe the idea that its better to have 10-15k paying less than 7-8k paying more. But its made no difference, we're still shit and getting passed by teams who get less than 3k attendances: www.worldfootball.net/attendance/eng-league-two-2019-2020/1/But the price of the season ticket isn't the problem though is it. Doesn't matter what we charge when we're so badly run. There's a strong fanbase in the Aire Valley, up along the train line with disposable income - not millionaires or anything - but the ones who probably (used to) commute to Leeds on a morning to an office job with professional level wages. Not everyone in Bradford is poor.
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Post by tetchyarse on May 6, 2021 17:21:29 GMT
Again it's a Rhodes issue. If we'd stick a fiver a year on it from the beginning they'd be up to the £200ish mark now.
I'd still rather have 12,000 people paying £150 than 6000 people paying £300. The ground holds 25,000, it needs people in it. 5000 crowds were bad enough in the 90s when the ground had two sides and held 14,000 people, imagine it now. At least Covid social distancing wouldn't be an issue.
The cheap season tickets are a red herring. The cheap tickets aren't stopping us progressing, the fact we've had a succession of managers and CEOs who didn't know their arse from their elbow is why we're not progressing. It's not about revenue, 12,000 sales at £150 is more money than Tranmere get in despite them selling them at £350.
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Post by Lethal Jizzle on May 6, 2021 17:25:20 GMT
It's about time they put them up and hopefully they will, unfortunately on the back of this torrid last 4 years I doubt they will sell well. But if the club mean business why not offer a cash back for failure.
It's going to be a tough sell apart from those that will renew regardless of the terrible spectacle they watch repeatedly. But if Sparks is as ambitious as he says in then how about putting season tickets up to say £250 for adults and offering 10% back to season ticket holders if we don't get in the play offs. Would give us hope that the club is ambitious and going all out for promotion, then gives those looking for value for money a bit of a nudge.
If we're successful then we will go up a league with a good financial base and sell even more on the crest of a wave. Stay down and we won't be in any worse position than we are now.
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Post by Neshead on May 6, 2021 17:57:28 GMT
Again it's a Rhodes issue. If we'd stick a fiver a year on it from the beginning they'd be up to the £200ish mark now. I'd still rather have 12,000 people paying £150 than 6000 people paying £300. The ground holds 25,000, it needs people in it. 5000 crowds were bad enough in the 90s when the ground had two sides and held 14,000 people, imagine it now. At least Covid social distancing wouldn't be an issue. The cheap season tickets are a red herring. The cheap tickets aren't stopping us progressing, the fact we've had a succession of managers and CEOs who didn't know their arse from their elbow is why we're not progressing. It's not about revenue, 12,000 sales at £150 is more money than Tranmere get in despite them selling them at £350. Problem with that mindset is as a business to move forward the £149 across the board limits our potential income. If money isn't the issue then make season tickets £100.
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Post by Hoochy on May 6, 2021 17:59:12 GMT
Neshead's tiered system is interesting. Loads of clubs have different prices for different parts of the ground. C and D block in the main stand should be more expensive than the top of the upper tier, and more expensive than F and especially B block where you get piss wet through cos the roof is so fucking high above you. Likewise the extremities of the kop should be cheaper than the middle blocks. That way if you're flush you can afford to sit in the best seats. if you're not but you still want to come you buy a cheaper seat. That's real life instead of the "Bradford is a working class city" bollocks. Bradford is a dump with no prospects and with a lot of poverty, but how many actual residents follow the club? How many current fans would be genuinely priced out? Our fanbase runs the whole spectrum, and there's plenty of brass sat in the stands most weeks. The club has become a charity for ne'er do wells and tight arses. I used to believe the idea that its better to have 10-15k paying less than 7-8k paying more. But its made no difference, we're still shit and getting passed by teams who get less than 3k attendances: www.worldfootball.net/attendance/eng-league-two-2019-2020/1/But the price of the season ticket isn't the problem though is it. Doesn't matter what we charge when we're so badly run. Pretty sure that was exactly the case when I first started going. The kop was cheaper because there were no seats but I'm sure the middle part of the main stand was more expensive than other parts.
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Post by tetchyarse on May 6, 2021 18:38:06 GMT
Again it's a Rhodes issue. If we'd stick a fiver a year on it from the beginning they'd be up to the £200ish mark now. I'd still rather have 12,000 people paying £150 than 6000 people paying £300. The ground holds 25,000, it needs people in it. 5000 crowds were bad enough in the 90s when the ground had two sides and held 14,000 people, imagine it now. At least Covid social distancing wouldn't be an issue. The cheap season tickets are a red herring. The cheap tickets aren't stopping us progressing, the fact we've had a succession of managers and CEOs who didn't know their arse from their elbow is why we're not progressing. It's not about revenue, 12,000 sales at £150 is more money than Tranmere get in despite them selling them at £350. Problem with that mindset is as a business to move forward the £149 across the board limits our potential income. If money isn't the issue then make season tickets £100. Most clubs in this league get 5000 on a good day, and when we were charging more we were getting 5000 too. If we'd stuck a fiver or a tenner a year on them then nobody would really notice, but to go from £149 to, say, £225 or £250 is a big jump. A big jump will make people reconsider buying one in a way a tenner wouldn't, even those who have the money would think twice. Selling 12,000 at £150 nets us £1.8m before tax, on-costs, etc. At £200 we'd have to sell 9000 to make the same amount of money. If £50 puts off 3000 people then we may as well have not bothered, or we might even lose money if some of those 3000 would have bought a pie or a programme. Tranmere charge £350 and have about 4500 season ticket holders, so they get less money in than we do despite charging a lot more. Which is why I think our issues are more about the fact we waste money on shit than the fact our tickets are too cheap.
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Post by tetchyarse on May 6, 2021 18:43:05 GMT
Neshead's tiered system is interesting. Loads of clubs have different prices for different parts of the ground. C and D block in the main stand should be more expensive than the top of the upper tier, and more expensive than F and especially B block where you get piss wet through cos the roof is so fucking high above you. Likewise the extremities of the kop should be cheaper than the middle blocks. That way if you're flush you can afford to sit in the best seats. if you're not but you still want to come you buy a cheaper seat. That's real life instead of the "Bradford is a working class city" bollocks. Bradford is a dump with no prospects and with a lot of poverty, but how many actual residents follow the club? How many current fans would be genuinely priced out? Our fanbase runs the whole spectrum, and there's plenty of brass sat in the stands most weeks. The club has become a charity for ne'er do wells and tight arses. I used to believe the idea that its better to have 10-15k paying less than 7-8k paying more. But its made no difference, we're still shit and getting passed by teams who get less than 3k attendances: www.worldfootball.net/attendance/eng-league-two-2019-2020/1/But the price of the season ticket isn't the problem though is it. Doesn't matter what we charge when we're so badly run. Pretty sure that was exactly the case when I first started going. The kop was cheaper because there were no seats but I'm sure the middle part of the main stand was more expensive than other parts. Trouble is, with an half-empty ground you just buy a seat in the cheap bit and move to an empty seat in the expensive bit. Who's going to stop you? Even on a really good day we have 10,000 empty seats to choose from. It's not like in the Premier League days when the tiered prices worked. I used to sit bang middle bottom tier Kop and paid more for it, but it's not like there were any spare seats.
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Post by Hobhead on May 6, 2021 18:57:39 GMT
Problem with that mindset is as a business to move forward the £149 across the board limits our potential income. If money isn't the issue then make season tickets £100. Most clubs in this league get 5000 on a good day, and when we were charging more we were getting 5000 too. If we'd stuck a fiver or a tenner a year on them then nobody would really notice, but to go from £149 to, say, £225 or £250 is a big jump. A big jump will make people reconsider buying one in a way a tenner wouldn't, even those who have the money would think twice. Selling 12,000 at £150 nets us £1.8m before tax, on-costs, etc. At £200 we'd have to sell 9000 to make the same amount of money. If £50 puts off 3000 people then we may as well have not bothered, or we might even lose money if some of those 3000 would have bought a pie or a programme. Tranmere charge £350 and have about 4500 season ticket holders, so they get less money in than we do despite charging a lot more. Which is why I think our issues are more about the fact we waste money on shit than the fact our tickets are too cheap. You only have to look at what we’ve done with our cup, transfer and sell-on windfalls. However we generate money we have a history of squandering it so it stands to reason that raising season ticket prices, in and of itself, isn’t the answer. Get our shit together then raise the prices.
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Post by hobbes on May 6, 2021 19:02:21 GMT
Most of our fan base lives in pretty posh/perfectly decent areas:
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Post by mikehunt on May 6, 2021 20:00:22 GMT
Pretty sure that was exactly the case when I first started going. The kop was cheaper because there were no seats but I'm sure the middle part of the main stand was more expensive than other parts. Trouble is, with an half-empty ground you just buy a seat in the cheap bit and move to an empty seat in the expensive bit. Who's going to stop you? Even on a really good day we have 10,000 empty seats to choose from. It's not like in the Premier League days when the tiered prices worked. I used to sit bang middle bottom tier Kop and paid more for it, but it's not like there were any spare seats. Stick the cheap tickets in the Bradford end and they can’t move. They get their low cost football and you can do more expensive things in the rest of the ground.
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Post by tetchyarse on May 6, 2021 20:32:07 GMT
Trouble is, with an half-empty ground you just buy a seat in the cheap bit and move to an empty seat in the expensive bit. Who's going to stop you? Even on a really good day we have 10,000 empty seats to choose from. It's not like in the Premier League days when the tiered prices worked. I used to sit bang middle bottom tier Kop and paid more for it, but it's not like there were any spare seats. Stick the cheap tickets in the Bradford end and they can’t move. They get their low cost football and you can do more expensive things in the rest of the ground. That's not a bad shout, really, and wojld solve the issue of 200 away fans making more noise than the rest of the ground. Our fans could well afford to pay more. Question is, would they? £149 to watch Gareth Evans- who won't be getting paid buttons, either- is a rip off, never mind £249.
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