Chris Heck - President of Business Operations

[Duncan Shaw]

As a matter of interest, does anyone know how many Claret members there are? I'm one, and am expecting a big increase in the membership fee this summer.

Yeah - me and my dad are members then we share another between the 3 kids. OK paying whatever it works out as - about £100 a season IIRC - so that we can all sit together and so on.

Hope it doesn't go up by much. It's affordable at the moment, but it is a big lump to find on top of tickets.

Me and my lad too, expires in June.  I reckon they will tier it too.

[Duncan Shaw]

We were in Barcelona for the long Easter weekend just gone and it really got me thinking about just how far we have to go, and also to what extent the top tiers are tourist clubs, to bridge the gap with the "elite"

The concierge at our hotel (yes get me) asked where I was from "London" (easier than explaining where Epsom is) my answer.  You Aresenal or Chelsea?  No Aston Villa.  Oh wow you doing very well this year, you like Emery?  Blah blah blah good chat about the Villa.  Anyway, then he said Barca are at home on Saturday, I can get you tickets if you want to go?  My wife said surely it's sold out?  He said we can always get tickets for tourists. 

Walking round on the Saturday there were obviously thousands of people who had just arrived in for the game, shirts everywhere, the club shops in the City rammed with people spending.  I know it's Barca and they are one of the very biggest, but that is the level that we will need to head towards to compete.  It just blew my mind a bit how far ahead of us this is. 

The likes of Heck know this and that will be his job to deliver it and if he does, it's going to be unpalatable at times for us Joe average punters who've been going down for years.

[chrisw1]

Nothing wrong with tourist and corporate fans.  If they'd built the new North we could have had 10k of them with little impact on the traditional match-going fans.  Obviously a bit of seat shifting in the Trinity but that will happen ultimately anyway.

[Des Little]

That is the head scratcher for me.  If he's chasing the tourist dollar, what better way to get it than build a new stand where they can all go, at inflated prices and having already spent in the club shop?  If he's waiting for miserable bastards like me to increase (or even begin) matchday spend then he's in for a very long wait.

[Villan82]

That is the head scratcher for me.  If he's chasing the tourist dollar, what better way to get it than build a new stand where they can all go, at inflated prices and having already spent in the club shop?  If he's waiting for miserable bastards like me to increase (or even begin) matchday spend then he's in for a very long wait.

I think it's a mix of he's played politics because it was Purslow's plan, he looks at what Chelsea squeeze out of a smaller ground than ours and he's just thinking of the accounts while he's here.

Should have gone ahead and built it. Would be ideal for where we could be two years from now.

[VillaTim]

Transfer the ticket to another reference and they send you an eticket which you can then share.

this is exactly what I do when I cannot make a game(usually midweek) works a treat.


UTV
The Doc

Do you sell it via online ticket agencies or just amongst mates .

[London Villan]

Don’t sell it, just between mates.

But if you wanted to you could sell them on that way.

[tomd2103]

Nothing wrong with tourist and corporate fans.  If they'd built the new North we could have had 10k of them with little impact on the traditional match-going fans.  Obviously a bit of seat shifting in the Trinity but that will happen ultimately anyway.

I just can't see it with the tourist angle unfortunately.  In this country, London is a global city with hundreds of thousands of tourists milling about who want to see a Premier League game.  Liverpool and Manchester United are the tourist attraction in those two cities.

I'm from Birmingham and I love our city, but we haven't got the volume of tourists in the city, let alone large numbers who want to watch a football game. 

HS2 and a city centre ground could change that I suppose, but at what price?

[London Villan]

Hasn’t stopped man city generating demand. Just got to win the league a few times.

[algy]

Nothing wrong with tourist and corporate fans.  If they'd built the new North we could have had 10k of them with little impact on the traditional match-going fans.  Obviously a bit of seat shifting in the Trinity but that will happen ultimately anyway.

I just can't see it with the tourist angle unfortunately.  In this country, London is a global city with hundreds of thousands of tourists milling about who want to see a Premier League game.  Liverpool and Manchester United are the tourist attraction in those two cities.

I'm from Birmingham and I love our city, but we haven't got the volume of tourists in the city, let alone large numbers who want to watch a football game. 

HS2 and a city centre ground could change that I suppose, but at what price?

I wonder if that's factored in to Heck's thinking.  That currently we don't have the booking of tourists coming to the club to justify a big expansion, and we need to concentrate on the marketing side of things first - the 150th anniversary and whatnot being part of that - to get that interest. Tourists aren't going to magically turn up just because we have a big stand.

I dunno, it's one possibility of many so may be something utterly different. Just a bit of random speculation.

[Sexual Ealing]

Sounds plausible to me algy!

[pauliewalnuts]

The easiest way to get people travelling out of their way to come and watch us is to stop being utterly mediocre for a long period of time.

Yes Manchester United and Liverpool are the tourist attraction in their cities but we would be the same in ours if we didn’t do stuff like go almost thirty years without winning anything.

[dave.woodhall]

Nothing wrong with tourist and corporate fans.  If they'd built the new North we could have had 10k of them with little impact on the traditional match-going fans.  Obviously a bit of seat shifting in the Trinity but that will happen ultimately anyway.

I just can't see it with the tourist angle unfortunately.  In this country, London is a global city with hundreds of thousands of tourists milling about who want to see a Premier League game.  Liverpool and Manchester United are the tourist attraction in those two cities.

I'm from Birmingham and I love our city, but we haven't got the volume of tourists in the city, let alone large numbers who want to watch a football game. 

HS2 and a city centre ground could change that I suppose, but at what price?

Take a walk round New Street and the surroundings on a Saturday afternoon and see the number of weekenders.

[PeterWithesShin]

Even when we were shit we had tourists. Oh the glory days of cheap tickets on Seatwave/Viagogo.

[Dogtanian]

Nothing wrong with tourist and corporate fans.  If they'd built the new North we could have had 10k of them with little impact on the traditional match-going fans.  Obviously a bit of seat shifting in the Trinity but that will happen ultimately anyway.

I just can't see it with the tourist angle unfortunately.  In this country, London is a global city with hundreds of thousands of tourists milling about who want to see a Premier League game.  Liverpool and Manchester United are the tourist attraction in those two cities.

I'm from Birmingham and I love our city, but we haven't got the volume of tourists in the city, let alone large numbers who want to watch a football game. 

HS2 and a city centre ground could change that I suppose, but at what price?

Take a walk round New Street and the surroundings on a Saturday afternoon and see the number of weekenders.

Sorry, but why do you say this?

Loads of people visit Birmingham and the midlands. They don’t carry big signs about proclaiming themselves as tourists.

We are hardly at the arse end of the earth. We’re like just over an hour away on a train, it’s nothing. It’s like saying people won’t bother going to Versaille because it’s not in the centre of Paris.

Edit: was replying to tomd not Dave!