£45m

[DeKuip]

I'm sure you are familiar with rudimentary price elasticity economics given several previous posts you've made.  One assertion that is an undeniable, stone-cold error when discussing price elasticity (which obviously we are) is to compare "Product A" (Villa tickets) at one price with a totally different "Product B" (Sutton Coldfield tickets) at another price, and use this comparison to conclude that a certain action on product A (Villa tickets) will or won't work.

This is like saying "BA wouldn't get any more business pricing flights to Vegas (no relation) at £2.10, because the number 69 bus charges that and they're hardly full"

I agree, it is a totally misleading comparison.

The products on offer are almost totally different.

And who'd want to sit on a 69 bus all the way to Vegas. Is that the one with Hollywood on the front?

[oldhill_avfc]

Season ticket prices and ticket bundles are good value compared with other premier league teams already, so I don't see a case for discounting them further.

Single match day tickets bought at 'the gate' are comparatively expensive and, I imagine, deter to some extent supporters who watch the odd match.

I think Dave Woodhall often points out the very long history of variable Villa support.  Gates varying by 15k for consecutive games was not uncommon even when we were the best team in Europe.

This was shown again last season when there was something riding on the match the support turned up - regardless of the opposition - arguably more people came to watch the Villa than in seasons where we had higher average attendances.   In a way I see this as reflecting the partnership model the German clubs have - the fans and the team sensed they were in it together - a true club spirit which I hadn't personally felt for many many years.

The opportunity as I see it to harness this club spirit and floating support.

My ideas are:-

(a) I know it's not the Lerner business model, but I would give season ticket holders of x (5?) years standing the opportunity to buy shares in the club.

(b) Secondly, I would offer season ticket holders a significant early renewal discount or a 3 or 5 year package to reward loyalty.

(c) I would allocate an area of unreserved seating to floating match day support.  You could either pay at the gate to get in or use an 'Oyster Card' system.  Cards could be given as gifts and topped up as required.   You could incentivise people to top up with special offers etc.  Use of the cards would be on a first come first served basis as in the old days of standing. 

(d) Keep the ticket bundles as is - they worked well last year.


   

[MarkM]

Drop ticket prices by a fiver and you might get a short term boost but long term attendances won't be affected. The club's finances will however.

Anyone who thinks this will either happen or would increase attendances enough to compensate the club financially if it did happen is living in cloud cuckoo land.

If you don't think it would pay for itself and you still want the club to do it then you're basically saying you want the team to be less competitive.

I understand the logic behind complaining about prices - it stops clubs getting carried away with increasing prices - but if you genuinely think a price decrease is either likely or plausible then you're quite simply crazy.

Lowering the ticket prices for all does not equate to more money into the club in terms of ticket revenue even with higher attendances.

Example:

Lets say our average price for a ticket is £30 and we sell on average 35,000 tickets that equates to: £1,050,000 per game.

If you lowered the pice to £25 per ticket you would generate [with 35k attending] £875,000 in ticket revenue per game. Which is a loss of £175,000 per game in ticket revenue

Now to make that short fall up we would need to sell an extra 7,000 tickets per game [£875,000 devided by £25 per ticket] meaning we would practically have to sell out every match [42,000] in order to generate the same ticket revenue as leaving the prices as they are.

As has been mentioned Randy is a business man and doing the maths on this does not really balance out.

And besides if cost was the prime factor in attendances our cup games would sell out every season as prices are very well priced [for early rounds] and we have plenty of empty seats.

[dave.woodhall]

My ideas are:-

(a) I know it's not the Lerner business model, but I would give season ticket holders of x (5?) years standing the opportunity to buy shares in the club.

(b) Secondly, I would offer season ticket holders a significant early renewal discount or a 3 or 5 year package to reward loyalty.

(c) I would allocate an area of unreserved seating to floating match day support.  You could either pay at the gate to get in or use an 'Oyster Card' system.  Cards could be given as gifts and topped up as required.   You could incentivise people to top up with special offers etc.  Use of the cards would be on a first come first served basis as in the old days of standing. 

(d) Keep the ticket bundles as is - they worked well last year.
   

There's some good ideas there, but (c) is a non-starter because any unreserved area has to be kept at 10% below capacity and the police/safety people aren't going to allow anything that encourages people to turn up and risk not getting into the match.

[oldhill_avfc]

My ideas are:-

(a) I know it's not the Lerner business model, but I would give season ticket holders of x (5?) years standing the opportunity to buy shares in the club.

(b) Secondly, I would offer season ticket holders a significant early renewal discount or a 3 or 5 year package to reward loyalty.

(c) I would allocate an area of unreserved seating to floating match day support.  You could either pay at the gate to get in or use an 'Oyster Card' system.  Cards could be given as gifts and topped up as required.   You could incentivise people to top up with special offers etc.  Use of the cards would be on a first come first served basis as in the old days of standing. 

(d) Keep the ticket bundles as is - they worked well last year.
   

There's some good ideas there, but (c) is a non-starter because any unreserved area has to be kept at 10% below capacity and the police/safety people aren't going to allow anything that encourages people to turn up and risk not getting into the match.

I see there might be some safety issues which is a pity - perhaps the seating could be allocated - bit I still think there is a type of supporter who turns up at either short notice or only attends a small number of games.  We should look for ways of getting these people into the ground as easy and as often as possible.

[mrastonvilla]

My ideas are:-

(a) I know it's not the Lerner business model, but I would give season ticket holders of x (5?) years standing the opportunity to buy shares in the club.

(b) Secondly, I would offer season ticket holders a significant early renewal discount or a 3 or 5 year package to reward loyalty.

(c) I would allocate an area of unreserved seating to floating match day support.  You could either pay at the gate to get in or use an 'Oyster Card' system.  Cards could be given as gifts and topped up as required.   You could incentivise people to top up with special offers etc.  Use of the cards would be on a first come first served basis as in the old days of standing. 

(d) Keep the ticket bundles as is - they worked well last year.
   

There's some good ideas there, but (c) is a non-starter because any unreserved area has to be kept at 10% below capacity and the police/safety people aren't going to allow anything that encourages people to turn up and risk not getting into the match.

I like the idea of C also, like a floating half season ticket. Maybe you could sell it so that people could redeem the credit for tickets prior to the matches they want and give the opportunity to do this before tickets go on general sale.

Although some restriction would have to be in place to prevent people just picking the cat A matches which are easier to sell anyway!

[pauliewalnuts]

Lowering the ticket prices for all does not equate to more money into the club in terms of ticket revenue even with higher attendances.

Whilst there is no guarantee on anything, you've chosen an example with figures which suit your argument, but you could also have chosen figures which do show higher revenue, so they don't really show anything.

I'd imagine the club have access to all sorts of historical figures and statistics which would enable them to make a pretty accurate calculation on this. We don't have access to them, so any calculation of that type is just guesswork.

[pauliewalnuts]

One thing I would say is that with ticket revenue representing an ever decreasing percentage of total income for clubs, it would be nice if, with the new enormous television revenue coming in, they all did something for the fans for a change - ie use it to subsidise tickets to a much greater degree, something a bit clever to think about ensuring there is a decent future generation of fans to come week in, week out, rather than just a nation of people who watch it on the telly.

That won't happen, though, what will happen is that the extra cash will go straight into the pockets of players and agents.

You could make an argument that this money helps clubs buy more and more of the best talent worldwide, but it doesn't really. For clubs other than the handful in the elite, what it ultimately translates to is bog standard average players picking up ever more money.

[MarkM]

Lowering the ticket prices for all does not equate to more money into the club in terms of ticket revenue even with higher attendances.

Whilst there is no guarantee on anything, you've chosen an example with figures which suit your argument, but you could also have chosen figures which do show higher revenue, so they don't really show anything.

I'd imagine the club have access to all sorts of historical figures and statistics which would enable them to make a pretty accurate calculation on this. We don't have access to them, so any calculation of that type is just guesswork.

Its not guesswork to do a simple sum: Reduce prices and you will need to sell x number more to generate the same revenue

[pauliewalnuts]

Lowering the ticket prices for all does not equate to more money into the club in terms of ticket revenue even with higher attendances.

Whilst there is no guarantee on anything, you've chosen an example with figures which suit your argument, but you could also have chosen figures which do show higher revenue, so they don't really show anything.

I'd imagine the club have access to all sorts of historical figures and statistics which would enable them to make a pretty accurate calculation on this. We don't have access to them, so any calculation of that type is just guesswork.

Its not guesswork to do a simple sum: Reduce prices and you will need to sell x number more to generate the same revenue

I know, and I don't disagree with the fact you need to sell more if you reduce the price.

My issue is that you've chosen arbitrary figures to prove that the revenue would fall well short, where it proves nothing at all, because you don't know if the figures are correct.

You could just as easily choose other figures which show the contrary happening.

[dave.woodhall]

My ideas are:-

(a) I know it's not the Lerner business model, but I would give season ticket holders of x (5?) years standing the opportunity to buy shares in the club.

(b) Secondly, I would offer season ticket holders a significant early renewal discount or a 3 or 5 year package to reward loyalty.

(c) I would allocate an area of unreserved seating to floating match day support.  You could either pay at the gate to get in or use an 'Oyster Card' system.  Cards could be given as gifts and topped up as required.   You could incentivise people to top up with special offers etc.  Use of the cards would be on a first come first served basis as in the old days of standing. 

(d) Keep the ticket bundles as is - they worked well last year.
   

There's some good ideas there, but (c) is a non-starter because any unreserved area has to be kept at 10% below capacity and the police/safety people aren't going to allow anything that encourages people to turn up and risk not getting into the match.

I see there might be some safety issues which is a pity - perhaps the seating could be allocated - bit I still think there is a type of supporter who turns up at either short notice or only attends a small number of games.  We should look for ways of getting these people into the ground as easy and as often as ipossible.

In all walks of life people do less at short notice now - witness how we struggled to sell the extra tickets for Wigan. Those who only attend a few games tend to pick the big ones, and quite honestly after years of being asked where the ticket office/Trinity Road/ground is, they can stay at home. We do, though, need to turn fans into supporters and I've said that for years.

[Dave Cooper please]

I like the idea of C also, like a floating half season ticket. Maybe you could sell it so that people could redeem the credit for tickets prior to the matches they want and give the opportunity to do this before tickets go on general sale.

Although some restriction would have to be in place to prevent people just picking the cat A matches which are easier to sell anyway!

Easy to do at lower division or non-league clubs where they will realistically never sell-out the ground, but not really practical at clubs which sometimes do reach capacity.

[cheltenhamlion]

Perhaps we could do 3 game bundles as an exampe though. Redeemable throughout the season in specific areas of the ground excluding top category matches.

You give the club a couple of weeks notice prior to a game you want to attend.

[Villadroid]

Although it seems counter-intuitive I don't think cutting the price of tickets is necessarily a good idea.

History seems to suggest that no matter how good Villa's team happens to be, the biggest factor for predicting the size of the crowd is the opposition and even charging higher prices does not seem to deter customers when the big boys are in town. Decline in Villa's football product over the last few years has failed to make the sort of differences to the club's income which would suggest those cuts have been damaging to the business.

Crowds have held up surprisingly well.

Modern Premiership football has become a prestige purchase and the bourgeoisisation seems all but complete. I am not sure clubs actually want to attract customers whose spending-power is so limited, that a few quid is a deal-breaker.

Cutting prices would be tantamount to announcing that Villa are downgrading their product, so it would seem wiser for them to hold price increases below inflation which would lower the cost but without the risk of declaring themselves the Premiership's Ryanair.

The substantial increases in revenue for next season and beyond, is another step towards creating a virtual Premiership franchise system as the financial gap between even ordinary Premiership clubs and the Championship clubs widens to a gulf.

With the top five or six Premiership clubs out of sight financially, as far as Villa are concerned, and finding themselves in the dog eat dog battle to maintain their elite status, I think Villa will see any extra monies they get as insulation, rather than largesse to be distributed amongst the fans for no positive effect.

They would be better off investing money in improving the match-day experience for their prosperous bourgeois customers and charging them more for the privilege.

We might dream of the huge crowds of the early post-WW2 years, but it doesn't look like we are heading in that direction.

Quite the opposite in fact.

 

[Dave Clark Five]

My ideas are:-

(a) I know it's not the Lerner business model, but I would give season ticket holders of x (5?) years standing the opportunity to buy shares in the club.

(b) Secondly, I would offer season ticket holders a significant early renewal discount or a 3 or 5 year package to reward loyalty.

(c) I would allocate an area of unreserved seating to floating match day support.  You could either pay at the gate to get in or use an 'Oyster Card' system.  Cards could be given as gifts and topped up as required.   You could incentivise people to top up with special offers etc.  Use of the cards would be on a first come first served basis as in the old days of standing. 

(d) Keep the ticket bundles as is - they worked well last year.

 

I like the idea of (b). This was what I did at Edgbaston, with the added benefit that I officially turn into a cricketing old fart within that period, although not sufficiently old enough to be a footballing old fart for some reason.