Are you taking the piss?

[PeterWithe]

This will probably be my last year with a season ticket. I still like going down, but with the journey, and the traffic afterwards, it's the best part of a whole day gone, and I don't enjoy it enough to compensate for missing out on family life and other stuff I'd rather be doing.

I've felt like this for about 20 years but I still keep going.

When you posted that you were not renewing the hospitality package, I asked if you were then able to drop straight on to a normal ST and you said no, did the club see sense and change their mind? Feel free to tell me to mind my own business.

in fairness we do this every year, I remember Gazza and Tony Cottee moving for £2m each and thinking football is fucked, its eating itself. But 30 years later here we still all are.

[Hookeysmith]

I remember my old man ranting about how the game had gone to shit back in the day when Fulham director, Jimmy Hill, agreed to pay Johnny Haynes £100 pw back in 1962.
In 1968 George Best became the first player to be paid £1000 per week and it has escalated since then.
Ticket prices, and not just for football, have grown at a similar pace.

Whilst there are buyers there will always be sellers.

[Bent Neilsens Screamer]

A really good article that I really wish didnt have to be written.

I think the Bologna game may actually end up being an unorganised protest. I just dint imagine enough people paying that much for that particular natch.

I think every game will be a sell out. Including Bologna. Apparently so do the club.

And me. They’ll be those that try and get tickets for Bayern and Juve and are unsuccessful, they’ll then try for Bologna. Not got the wow factor but you would have still seen the Villa in the champions league.

[Small Rodent]

A really good article that I really wish didnt have to be written.

I think the Bologna game may actually end up being an unorganised protest. I just dint imagine enough people paying that much for that particular natch.

I think every game will be a sell out. Including Bologna. Apparently so do the club.

And me. They’ll be those that try and get tickets for Bayern and Juve and are unsuccessful, they’ll then try for Bologna. Not got the wow factor but you would have still seen the Villa in the champions league.

Sadly this is a bit of my thinking. If Bologna became available to me I’d snap it up to see Villa for maybe the only time in my life in the “European Cup”. I’d feel like a scab though.

But then I thought of the train tickets and hotel and time off work and thought of the lovely guitar speaker and cabinet I’d like to buy which would be a similar price.

Which got me to thinking, Villa would be an emotional knee jerk buy for one event, the guitar stuff a rational investment that can be planned more.

Emotional buys are always irrational.

I doubt this will be a problem though because I’m sure all matches will sell out before reaching my level of availability.

[adrenachrome]

A really good article that I really wish didnt have to be written.

I think the Bologna game may actually end up being an unorganised protest. I just dint imagine enough people paying that much for that particular natch.

I think every game will be a sell out. Including Bologna. Apparently so do the club.

I think you may well be right.

I studied economics in the mid 1970's, and there was a concept named the price elasticity of demand for a product.

Clearly, the current administration have decided that our current expanding supporter base are sufficiently elastic to bear the load.  As many posters have remarked over several years, and particularly DW, the social base of our support is irrevocably changing.

[AV82EC]

A really good article that I really wish didnt have to be written.

I think the Bologna game may actually end up being an unorganised protest. I just dint imagine enough people paying that much for that particular natch.

I think every game will be a sell out. Including Bologna. Apparently so do the club.

I think you may well be right.

I studied economics in the mid 1970's, and there was a concept named the price elasticity of demand for a product.

Clearly, the current administration have decided that our current expanding supporter base are sufficiently elastic to bear the load.  As many posters have remarked over several years, and particularly DW, the social base of our support is irrevocably changing.

But isn’t that just a societal change anyway, a shift of lots of people into the middle classes through occupation, education etc etc. I’m not sure that’s peculiar to the Villa.

[adrenachrome]

A really good article that I really wish didnt have to be written.

I think the Bologna game may actually end up being an unorganised protest. I just dint imagine enough people paying that much for that particular natch.

I think every game will be a sell out. Including Bologna. Apparently so do the club.

I think you may well be right.

I studied economics in the mid 1970's, and there was a concept named the price elasticity of demand for a product.

Clearly, the current administration have decided that our current expanding supporter base are sufficiently elastic to bear the load.  As many posters have remarked over several years, and particularly DW, the social base of our support is irrevocably changing.

But isn’t that just a societal change anyway, a shift of lots of people into the middle classes through occupation, education etc etc. I’m not sure that’s peculiar to the Villa.

Yes. It's been an ongoing and persistent process.

It just seems that in the past few weeks we have been sledge hammered with the brutal truth.

You will be one with The Lanyard and The Velvet Rope. Resistance is futile.

[RamboandBruno]

A really good article that I really wish didnt have to be written.

I think the Bologna game may actually end up being an unorganised protest. I just dint imagine enough people paying that much for that particular natch.

I think every game will be a sell out. Including Bologna. Apparently so do the club.

And me. They’ll be those that try and get tickets for Bayern and Juve and are unsuccessful, they’ll then try for Bologna. Not got the wow factor but you would have still seen the Villa in the champions league.

You might be right. I suppose i was just basing it on the fact that ive already mentally opted out of buying my seat for Bologna. To be honest as much as ive been really excited by the prospect of champions league, i wouldnt pay those prices for anyone of them if it wasnt for my 14 year, who has been coming with me to VP since he was 5 years old, through all those dark days and losses, he can’t wait for these matches, but equally is old enough to understand how expensive they are.
Your probably right in that someone will pay more for my seat for Bologna, sad really.

[The Edge]

My son sent me this. There's no name on it unfortunately this situation is not going away.

[amfy]

Complaint sent to fancomplaints@avfc.co.uk at 11.57 & response receive from Lee Preece at 12.37. Basically a ‘Thank you and being passed to Senior Management’.
I am complaint number 933.
Could we get the numbers up a bit? It only takes a few minutes -
Copy & paste wherever you put on here - it’ll be more use in a complaint email!
Later we could do a FOI request & show the strength of feeling as part of a campaign.

[Drummond]

I often use the line from a favourite song of mine

"The problem with success is that you become what you detest"

If / when we continue to upset the establishment and win the league or even the Champions league (Don't mock as even SUE has stated these are his targets) you just wait to see all the Johnny come latelys that turn up at VP with their half and half scarves who will think nothing of a few hundred quid for a match day "experience".

To think i used the away day trains every other weekend and queue up at Mold Trafford to pay £1.50 to get in with my working wages of £26.50 per week. Everything in them days were proportinonate today it is almost the opposite on everything not just football.

I hope the media backlash has prompted a rethink

Ticket £1.50, Wages £26.50pw

Now the equivalent would be....

Ticket £79.50, Wages £1395pw which is £72k per year..... there won't be many on that!

[djbone]

It's good to see something happening. I'm too far away to get to VP regularly (inc the Everton game) but will be doing whatever I can, online and in complaint to the club etc.
I'm a Claret member and like many I'd been hoping to somehow wangle a CL ticket. They've really taken the shine off the brilliant work of Unai and the team though, so not sure I'll be arsed at these prices.
I see a lot of people saying that while they don't like it, the sort of thing the club is doing is inevitable. Sod that. As others have said, this is part of how our society's going more generally and we have to challenge it.
There have been recent victories over similar for Prem club fans at the likes of Liverpool, Wolves, West Ham, not to mention the pushing back of the Super League. If there's enough of a furore over this and other piss takes, the government may even be finally forced into regulating this shit show.
As the late great Bob Crow said, "If you fight you won't always win. But if you don't fight you will always lose"

[simon ward 50]

Is the hike in the cost of disabled parking spaces at VP true?

[wozwebs]

Is the hike in the cost of disabled parking spaces at VP true?

Yes gone up from £190 to £380. Absolute joke at the moment off the pitch.

[purpletrousers]

See the Heck thread. Of all the things you don’t fleece people for, it’s being disabled. Utterly disheartening.