Agreed. I just can't see how any possible barriers (clearly not insurmountable) to opening it could outweigh the benefits, both long and short term.
Re the benefits. financially only, I'm talking about here. After all expenses. 1. EFL take 50% of all gate money. From all 4 clubs. 2. All 4 clubs get a share of the rest ACCUMULATED. 12.5 % in effect of all monies from all 4 semis. . As it was explained, as I see it for example. Barnsley get 1000 fans in the north stand @ £20 each. we will generate £2.5k. For ourselves. But the expense of stewarding. Gatemen. Possibly extra police. Means imo, they may lose money. By opening it. Get 2k in. might just cover the expense. Imo. But any number (barring 1 man and his dog) would create a better atmosphere for the team. Which I'm all for btw. And would risk losing money.
After what our CEO said about getting as many of our fans in the ground as we can, if we don't announce this morning we've opened the North Stand, it will be disappointing. You'd be surprised how many will have held off getting a ticket waiting for tickets in there.
46 tickets left in the single. No couples of families can buy tickets now (unless they're happy to sit away from each other) 4 days left and 3000 seats sat empty and cordoned off in the north stand. Makes no sense at all to leave it closed unless the short term is all we are thinking about
Hadn't seen that. Just based that on what was said in a meeting with him. They also said they were exploring opening the stand if/when we sold out Oakwell, if timescales allowed, but it's going to be dependent on SAG approval.
Too many obstacles to open the North to hone fans.. for example stewarding, syp would need to authorise it. Everyone who has bought singles would want to move seats to sit with there mates if we were opening it we should have done it by now and people gave had enough time to buy tickets.
The club should have an idea of demand for extra tickets. Hopefully ticketmaster are able to provide web metrics on the drop off rate of people visiting the site (allowing for dot counters), there’ll be the enquiries to the ticket office and the speed of sales in the two blocks they opened up yesterday (which sold out in the day but not exactly in minutes) The question is how many couples and families are still trying? Tickets have been on sale for some time now. I’m sure they’ll open the north stand if the demand is there, but if you’re only going to get dozens in, it’s not worth it
Yeah I’ve just counted 43 single seats scattered everywhere, mainly east upper. They won’t make more money this week by opening the north but the memories generated might give longer term benefit - and the ill will I suspect they’d get if they don’t might take a bit to overcome. Maybe it has already been agreed with the police, security, Bolton and efl etc that we won’t be segregating the north stand though, so it might not be as easy as some suggest. They might also not have enough staff - remember last time they did it the east stand was closed so there were plenty of hands spare. I’d hope they might try to sort it though, and make some kind of announcement either way.
I don't think its going to happen. They would surely be on sale by now if they were planning on opening it up. It seems like madness to me that we do have demand and we will have 2.5k empty seats on the night.
I reckon there would be demand, it's been prettty much all singles available all weekend. If there's 3 or 4 of you, you'd watch it on telly round one of your houses or in the pub rather than all be spread out all over. Get the North stand open, we'll sell more.
I think this is the main thing now. Either open up the North stand (or another block or two in the West) or confirm that it's not possible and we're down to the last couple of dozen tickets. To be honest, if the North Stand isn't an option, they should've announced it yesterday.
We wouldn’t be having this conversation if that West Stand was fit for purpose, the sooner it gets replaced the better, can’t believe it’s 2023 & it’s still in a sorry state!
Yep. Thought for a while, given the inability to use a chunk of the North stand for most games, and the closed blocks of the West, we're getting a 17k capacity stadium for the price of a 23k capacity.
This ^ with bells on. They go on about not needing to do anything drastic with the stadium because the demand isn't there, but we are only ever one big game or a cup tie away from this being a problem. The West stand is no longer fit for purpose.