[Official Site] EARLY BIRD PERIOD EXTENDED

EARLY BIRD PERIOD EXTENDED
Club News

Barnsley FC would like to confirm that the 22/23 season ticket early bird deadline has been extended until 31 May 2022.

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Common sense has prevailed at last.

 

Should be till start of season,no one paying full price in 2022

 

But then everyone would renew closer to the start of the season, which impacts the transfer budget. Then people would complain that we've not signed players.

 

We have one of the fairest prices in the EFL.

Burton Albion, just as one example in our division next season, are charging £384 as their early bird price. It's £134 for under 14s (ours are a tenner).

Portsmouth, they're charging £389 early bird, an 11-year-old would pay £90.

Don't start me on Charlton. Some of theirs, which are the equivalent of an upper tier east stand seat at Oakwell are north of £600. I thought I was checking out seats at the Emirates initially.

 

Then it would be a just in time bird offer, rather than early bird...

 

Then we can all renew the day before the first home game and the club can spend the summer missing out on transfer targets because they have very little money coming in.

 

Charge a tenner for a season ticket & somebody would complain.

 

No, as you just keep in place a much earlier date when seats are reserved until. The overwhelming majority of season ticket holders would renew by then if they intended to rather than risk losing their seat.
I would love to see the numbers on how many people actually pay the "full price" I still think we would have more chance of selling more tickets if we left the price at the lower level.

 

I agree with everything you have said and we do have some of the best pricing in the EFL. However I still think increasing the price after a certain point is stupid and probably holds us back from selling more tickets.
Yes everyone else does it and they also charge silly prices so I'm glad we don't do that and I appreciate it it, genuinely.
Doesn't mean we can't do even better.

 

It's called an early bird offer. To allow the club to budget for next season.
Anyone that thinks it's unreasonable won't buy one anyway. With the options of 2/3 months interest free. Or 10 months with interest. I don't see a major issue. The folk that are waiting for the strategy to be laid out in full. will have several days to make their mind up. Some may not like whatever is said and not renew. Fair do's.
Wendy put their early bird on offer before xmas. Giving the fans a few weeks at best. Now that is taking the piss.
Those that pay full price will be well aware of the terms and should not complain. Imo.
If you pay by credit card it can take up to 6 weeks to come out of your account. If paid in full, by direct debit interest free.

 

Yorkshire get nearly all their income from domestic cricket tickets through T20 sales. They do a very well-priced season ticket of £80 for the 7 home games and that goes on sale as soon as the fixtures for the forthcoming Summer are known in January time. They keep the price the same right up to the start of the T20 games commencing in late May.

They don't lose out on the timing of their income as nearly everybody who is renewing does so pretty much straight away in order to get the seats they want for the Roses match. But new people continue to be attracted to buy the season tickets - three friends of mine got theirs for the first time last week. Little or no damage to the timing of renewal income and more income overall - win-win.

The other thing is that the Yorkshire style pricing shows some thought is being made in terms of a time horizon of more than one year - some (if not all) of the new people will renew again next year (and possibly) at an earlier juncture and might also bring along more new friends, growing income further.

The football early bird pricing, particularly with such a steep rise thereafter, would therefore seem to me to be a bit short-sighted - yes, it may get a small sum in earlier than might otherwise be the case for one year but in turn seems to mitigate against the maximisation of that income and partially stymy the longer-term income growth potential.

I raise this 'cos I just think as a supporter I really do want the club I support to maximise it's attendances and income and therefore be as competitive as possible. I have no personal agenda - after help from people on here and at the club and the changes to the Board, I'll make my final decision as to whether to renew in the next day or two. I'm just wrestling with the one issue that is still troubling me, namely the club's differential offer of refunds and other perks to those who could pay cash in April as opposed to those who needed to use the advertised but non-existent instalment approach.

I agree with the point that our ST prices relative to most other clubs is good (here's to a tad more entertainment next season though) and the 3 month payment plan, now it is available, is also a good option.

 

I'm not sure how much of Yorkshire income does come via the T/20 ticket sales. (smaller counties might benefit from it more than the Test venues)

Also Yorkshire DO have an early bird system which comes quite early. I think it's normally the calendar end of the year.

Yorkshire Also has significant sponsorship, unlike Barnsley football club.

Yorkshire also pre-sell International tickets for international matches months in advance.

 

Got a ticket for day three of the NZ test months ago, as you say.

 

With respect, I don't agree with most of that. The vast majority of Yorkshire's domestic ticket income comes from T20. The early bird applies to club memberships which have been falling sharply over the years - it does not apply to the T20 only season tickets. As I said, you can still buy a T20 season ticket for £80 as we sit here today.

I think you'll find that Yorkshire's sponsorships aren't vastly in excess of Barnsley's - Yorkshire report all their commercial income, including merchandising, together whilst Barnsley separate this out and the Yorkshire sponsorship is swollen in years when they have international matches.

They do sell international tickets in advance but, of course, are not guaranteed an international match every year but still manage to keep the T20 season tickets the same price. The vast majority of Yorkshire's income from international matches goes straight to paying the debts owed to the Graves family/financing the new stand anyway.

 

https://yorkshireccc.com/the-club/annual-reports

If you take 2018. it's just less than 1 million for Domestic and hospitality.
Commerical was almost 2.3 million.
I didn't choose 2020 or 2019 because one was a covid year and one was an Ashes year.

 

As I said, very hard to delineate the county numbers from international ones in Yorkshire's accounts but to get a feel for how relatively small a part the county element is take a look at their total spend on cricket staff salaries which is only £2.5m.

The same applies on commercial but even then Barnsley's equivalent was somewhere between £1.3m and £2.1m, depending on how much of 'other' income is related. Then apply the fact that Yorkshire's accounts show at least £800k expenses to generate that £2.3m whereas Barnsley probably have 2 men/women and a dog in their function, the net contribution is not far different.

None of which detracts from my original central point which is that keeping more accessible pricing for longer would seem to me to be a better way to grow short and medium-term ticket income.