Chris Heck - President of Business Operations

[paul_e]

but if, for example, GA+ means a seat is worth double what it was we only need to sell 51% of them for it to be a financial benefit. The club will know the exact percent of GA+ they need to sell and clearly the Terrace View and Lower Grounds surpassed that last season, which is why we've added more options this year. There is a finite amonut that can be converted (and I suspect we're close to the limit already) before it becomes a loss but the club will have all the data they need to be able to predict that.

[AV82EC]

Having a look at what’s left for Everton there’s probably about 400-500 GA+ tickets available at various price points. If as has been estimated we have about 5k Hosp and GA+ spaces I’m not sure Heck will be overly concerned about 10% empty at this early stage. If that remains the case he may have to rethink but I’m not sure it’s been the disaster some are making out. Obviously I’d rather those tickets were sold to someone who’s going to turn up week in week out rather than a day tripper on a jolly but welcome to modern football is shit episode 3245.

[Pat Mustard]

but if, for example, GA+ means a seat is worth double what it was we only need to sell 51% of them for it to be a financial benefit. The club will know the exact percent of GA+ they need to sell and clearly the Terrace View and Lower Grounds surpassed that last season, which is why we've added more options this year. There is a finite amonut that can be converted (and I suspect we're close to the limit already) before it becomes a loss but the club will have all the data they need to be able to predict that.

The issues is this season though that who is going to buy any of the GA+ seats when there are games where regular seats won;t be selling out?  Other than those who have already committed to season tickets in there (as it is the only way to get one now), if it were me I would just buy a regular seat and so those places are generating £0.

Another issue for me then is the intangible losses the club potentially incurs.  In the Premier League every place in the table is worth something like £1.5 million, and if you are competing for European places it could be 10s of millions depending on where you end up.  For that reason alone I'd say surely we want the ground full and noisy as often as possible?  For the sake of an extra £4 million we could already be losing £1-2 million in reduced income from other games, but then also risking the prize money that comes from finishing further up the table.  We only need to finish a couple of places lower and suddenly Heck's £400 million income target is £100 million away, not £4 million.

[Ads]

It's difficult to know on the GA+ as nobody knows how many GA+ season ticket holders there are, nobody knows the precise number of all the GA+ and Corporate offerings, nobody knows the occupancy, so you just have anecdotal speculating.

Looking at Everton, there's a handful left of some offerings, plenty of others and some sold out. We equally cannot be sure whether they're not additional, as we were adding 1500 seats. We know they're aggressive in their selling of some packages too which may indicate a desperation on part of the club, the fool selling the package for commission or both.

It's really opaque and I don't quite understand the confidence particularly one way or the other to suggest we're losing revenue from empty seats, as the net gain may well be there. It may not. But I'd probably lean towards suggesting selling 50 out of 100 GA+ is probably a net gain than selling 100 GA.

The Aston is sold out at £750 a go- H
The Cornerflag has ~ 70 spots left at £264- H
Sports Bar has 5 left at £288 - H
Gas Lamp has 18 left at £264. This looks about 90%+ full - H
82 Lounge has about 40 at £488 - H
Lion and Star has 70 left at £264 - H
McGregors has 11 left at £504. This looks 90%+ full - H
Villains has 9 left at £456, again 90%+ full - H

Cells is sold out at £100 - GA+
Lower Grounds has 102 at £146 - GA+
Terrace View has 74 left at £120 - GA+

Only a few of the Hospitality ones can you make out occupancy, the rest is tricky as you don't know how many are allocated to an area.

There's 399 there, but some are approximated. Let's say 400- not all of those offerings are in general admission areas; Corner Flag, Cells, Terrace View and Lower Grounds definitely are. But let's assume all 400 unoccupied spots are former General Admission spots.

£50 for an adult in zone 2, £56 for Zone 1 for Saturday. £56 x 400 = £22,400 lost match ticket revenue. If we were to assume there's only 400 hospitality/GA+ seats in total then even at a median range they're making far more.

It's still lost revenue of course, but the GA/Hospitality means we make more money than previously. But the how's and the exactly what's, we have no idea. There's an appetite for these tickets- how strong is? Probably not as strong as Heck likes and stronger than some would like to admit.

[London Villan]

It's strong now at the start of the season, for a home game, on a Saturday evening.

What will it be like against the likes of Bournemouth and Palace - particularly if they get moved to Sundays...

[Pat Mustard]

Have chunks of the GA+ seats not just been bought by hospitality re-sellers as well though?  I seem to see a lot of adverts for hospitality at Villa Park that don't come from the club, so even though they are 'sold' for club purposes, they are adding to the empty seats in the ground. 

Again, it might be great for revenue, but it's not for supporters and not sustainable for the long-term - if the seats are not selling these companies simply won't buy any more in future.

[Brend'Watkins]

Heck has gone for the easy option, fleece the loyal fan base. What is he doing on the commercial side though? Birmingham based Cadbury are sponsoring ManU, why haven’t we now got a foot in the door there? Or, at any of the other numerous service providers to football clubs? I know we don’t have the pull of ManU globally but even so, increased revenue from Sponsorship should be the benchmark for Heck’s success or otherwise, not, how much he can squeeze from the loyal fan base.

[AV82EC]

It's strong now at the start of the season, for a home game, on a Saturday evening.

What will it be like against the likes of Bournemouth and Palace - particularly if they get moved to Sundays...

We don’t know, we can speculate but as Ads says we’re pissing in the wind really. And we won’t find out until we see Heck’s numbers for this years accounts some time in 2026.

[London Villan]

Have chunks of the GA+ seats not just been bought by hospitality re-sellers as well though?  I seem to see a lot of adverts for hospitality at Villa Park that don't come from the club, so even though they are 'sold' for club purposes, they are adding to the empty seats in the ground. 

Again, it might be great for revenue, but it's not for supporters and not sustainable for the long-term - if the seats are not selling these companies simply won't buy any more in future.

And of course, they'll pay discounted rates for those tickets too.

[Ads]

I dont think 400-600 seats, 1-1.5% of all seats, has any impact on atmosphere, particularly as the Holte is invariably 99.9% occupied and the source of the noise at Villa Park.

There's also plenty of season ticket holders who miss games. I think its a weak argument that CL football in 25/26 is jeopardised by GA+/Hospitality. It doesn't appear to impact Arsenal, Man United Man City over the years. Liverpool are the outlier for take up, owing to their smaller ground over the past 20 years.

[Pat Mustard]

I dont think 400-600 seats, 1-1.5% of all seats, has any impact on atmosphere, particularly as the Holte is invariably 99.9% occupied and the source of the noise at Villa Park.

There's also plenty of season ticket holders who miss games. I think its a weak argument that CL football in 25/26 is jeopardised by GA+/Hospitality. It doesn't appear to impact Arsenal, Man United Man City over the years. Liverpool are the outlier for take up, owing to their smaller ground over the past 20 years.

For me it's not about those 400-600 seats directly per se, but it's the impact the overall pricing structure is going to have on certain games this season.  For example, I can specifically see Brentford at home on Tuesday 3rd December being a particulalry hard sell to thousands of people who have already coughed up for 3 CL games by that point - the possibility of us going into that game with at least 4-5k empty seats is very real (especially as there will probably be an additional 1500 seats unoccupied in the away end), and it will have a direct impact on atmosphere.

We qualified for the CL last season by 2 points.  One more draw or defeat and we wouldn't have made it - these are the margins we face to qualify.

[Ads]

When was the last time we went into a league game with 5 to 6000 unsold seats? Pre-Dean Smith?

[simon ward 50]

At least the Villa re-usable coffee cups are of a decent quality this year!

Credit where credit is due

[PeterWithesShin]

The bonkers 3-3 with Sheff Utd. Attendance: 34,892 (2,286 away)

[Pat Mustard]

When was the last time we went into a league game with 5 to 6000 unsold seats? Pre-Dean Smith?

It probably is.  That also coincides with the last time we as a family wouldn't have all gone to a game we could make, but we are definitely not going to Brentford in December this year as we can no longer justify the cost on top of everything else.