I hate it on here when fans talk sense..... but I'll keep banging on....

Hand on heart, can you really... and I mean really, come up with a reason why the club should not TRY the reduced s/t incentive for one year?
From what I have read in all the relevant posts I think there would be very little or no opposition to trying it.
In summary, tickets based on approx £150 to 200 for adults, the appropriate concessions, a good marketing strategy to promote said tickets well in advance of the new season, NOT JUST A FLYER THANKING EVERYONE FOR LAST SEASON'S SUPPORT AND PLEASE WILL YOU CONSIDER RENEWING NEXT, thousands of extra income from food, drink, programmes, draw tickets, club shop sales, kids involved for the first time and hopefully for future years, the new fan base, player reaction and belief when playing in front of a big crowd (Wembley twice for example).
The main thing, AFFORDABILITY.
Do it once, for the first time, and I believe you'll get the repeat business.

 

I think you'd get something official back along the lines of:

- Not willing to risk a shortfall, if there is a lack of sales, who's going to subsidise it etc..
- Club shop isnt ours
- Food isnt ours

 

You could even look to build safeguards into it to indemnify yourself.

 

I can think of a reason - CBA. Same as owt else.

 

Can't Bugger Aardvarks...not sure what that's got to do with owt.

 

You can in a Tory constituency apparently.

 

They were going to stop you when it was a Labour constituency but now it's tory you can do what you like apparently.

 

I thought the same but then look at it logically. You would have to charge full price to start with and offer refunds like Wolves and Hartlepool have done in recent times, who's going to shell out top whack straight away? You can't go the other way and add money onto a ST price.

Personally l don't think we would struggle to sell them but the club never comes out with an amount they get from ST sales, they sometimes give us the amount sold. It would be good if they came out and said we get x amount every year through ST sales we would have to sell approximately x amount at the reduced rate to achieve that figure.. at least we would have an idea. I'd imagine it would need to be around 16-17k at £175 ish, judging on just under 10k ST holders who are mainly made up of kids and OAP's.

 

It might tempt me, I get to something like 6 to 10 games a season so it would probably save me money and might induce me to go more often.

 

The less they disclose the easier it is to hide and make excuses.

 

Its not just a straightforward calculation. Additional fans = additional stewards and police costs, etc, but it should be possible those in to the calculations.

 

Would the police cost increase that much? it's the home crowd that would increase not the away support, we have games designated non-police games and it's not due to the numbers of the home support it's due to the risk of the away support. Obviously stewarding costs would go up but only to steward the other end of the West, don't we already have stewards on all the gangways and fronts of the stands in the East, Ponty & one side of the West? A lot of these costs would be offset against programme sales, car parking, beer sales (if they are ours) increase in club shop sales etc etc. I'm sure they could factor everything in.

 

How many additional fans would realistically buy a season ticket? If we halved the price of the season tickets, we'd need to sell double the volume to cover the revenue that the current season ticket price brings in alone. Add to that, the 'additional' season ticket purchases are likely to come from the fans that buy tickets on a game by game basis. I'm not sure what proportion of revenue comes from match day sales, in comparison to season tickets, but I'd imagine that it's still pretty substantial, and match day sales would become next to none (excluding away fans) if we reduced season ticket prices.

As mentioned by a few others, more fans come with more costs (policing, stewarding, etc). Considering we outsource our catering, and by the sounds of it, our club shop, I doubt we'd see a material benefit in revenue due to a few more thousand fans turning up.

I understand not everybody can afford to purchase a season ticket at the current price, but, in my opinion, the price is more than reasonable. In the past few days we've had fans complaining that we've posted a loss last season - that wouldn't be improved by reducing season ticket prices. I'm all for seeing Oakwell packed, but I'd rather see us compete and progress, as we are doing at the minute.

 

Agree with that. imho our fanbase would be better served with more group-match tickets like we did earlier on this year and a rethink on match day pricing.

 

We are making losses now - we would have to significantly increase attendances to even come close to breaking even.

 

Good point but encouraging people to attend more games - maybe buying food/drinks and a program - both of which I might be tempted to do if it cost me a lot less to get in - has got to be a benefit. And we'd generate a better atmosphere.

 

Given the current restrictions in place I dont believe we have the home capacity to make it viable.