Under achieving

Without knowing the kind of sponsorship and imcone we get with current attendance levels, and what we might get with a lower attendance should we raise prices, we'll not know for sure if there is ANY benefit at all to raising prices.

Enough shit maths.

 

IMO they would have got pretty much exactly the same take up, there was no need to drop the price of the already cheapest tickets in the league. If £20 is going to stop you from purchasing a season ticket then i suggest you never will.

 

Its league 2 football, you get what you pay for.

 

I agree Rahic & Rupp certainly missed a trick in not increasing the season ticket prices after the Wembley appearance, having said that if Rahic & Rupp had not brought quality in to add to the players we had (as we know they didn't) and tried to persuade McCall to resign, I'm not sure it would have gone down too well.

 

My group all renewed, even though there's been a lot of blobbing recently. I think we'd have lost a few if prices had gone up. Had tickets gone up to £200, I reckon you'd be looking at about 10-11k sold to give 0-10% more ticket money and a 20-25% loss on commercial revenues - a lower overall result.

The drop in price was a signal that the Rahic era was over and they were trying to get things back on track. It probably encouraged a lot more to renew and a few to come back.

 

We missed the boat on the time to raise prices, certainly going down and putting prices up would have been business suicide. I think the loss on commercial revenues is over exaggerated though there'll be some loss but not 25%. In the long term they will have to look at raising prices, simple business practice dictates you have to rinse as much disposable income out of your customers as you can, whether that be through ticket sales or the other incomes such as shirts, food and drink etc. Every penny counts when you have no sugar daddy.

 

True. The ‘shit’ maths have already been done by the club and they have determined cheaper prices and all the benefits that come with it is a better financial prospect than increasing the price.

 

But that’s exactly what did happen last season? We increased the price to £169 and many thousands didn’t renew, despite being in the mix until our disastrous run from January.

Were they just McCall fans and left after his sacking? Or was the increase too much for some families to tolerate?

 

There are many causes of our problems. All routed in a lack of ambition and credible running of a football club.

If we focused on being a high quality club rather than a cheap one, we might go somewhere.

All this ‘extra franchise money’, and yet if our chairman hadn’t bailed us out this season we’d have probably gone into admin.

Affordable tickets + unaffordable players. Where does that lead? We have to find a way of getting big crowds and something close to the going rate of tickets if we’re to compete over the next few years

 

Maybe the drop in sales was more to do with the enlightened few who saw through Rahics madness and the start of our latest decline.

Just a thought.

 

‘“Enlightened few” does not equate to a few thousand not renewing

 

But we have spent circa £5m this season (allegedly) and that has prompted a “bail out” from our Chairman to pay off the debt of circa £3m. So if you think just ticket sales should bring in the money needed to fund the squad, we’d need to charge over £320 and for 15k adults to renew at that price

Likely? Is it feckers like

 

We always had affordable tickets and unaffordable players - but under Rahic, our cup performance ls were dreadful, even though everyone knew how vital those games were in terms of revenue.

Nothing has changed - we only have one option. Achieve things, and win.

We can't afford to stack the odds in our favour too heavily. But that's not lack of ambition. The ambition is still there, it has to be.

 

This season has had many faults at its root. We had a big budget which was completely abused by a mad man. I don’t think it necessary needs a wage bill of 4m to be successful in league one - a well run Bradford City should be able to compete at the top end of league one with a budget nearer 3m.

As with most successful clubs there’s likely an element of subsidising required from the owner to ensure a genuinely big budget. But supporters have to do their bit. We need to be working our way back to a season ticket price of around 250 quid, which would still be one of the cheapest prices in the country. Having a massively underpriced approach won’t sustain any ambition in the longer term unless our owner is happy to keep pumping 2-3m quid in every season, indefinitely.

Personally, I think we have to break this mindset of your average City fan being impoverished and only being able to pay 60% of the going rate.

 

There wer actually an enlightened many. The biggest alarm bells were ringing loud and clear after the play off final, and that’s when people stared to vote with their feet.

 

I think you’d struggle to find a less ambitious club in the football league than us. ‘Being happy just to have a club’ is a mindset that permeates the club and our fans

 

I think the reason for the thousands not to renew went further than the £20 increase, it was down pretty exclusively to the Edin Rahic factor. Even when we were in the mix there was a sizeable group who would not renew while Rahic was about due to the growing information about how Rahic was running the club.
From what i have read on here and other social media, and speaking with fans personally, i don't believe the £20 drop had any influence on people renewing this season, they would have renewed anyway.

 

Yes it was a well written piece.

 

Someone commenting about the article who seemed pretty well informed said if Rupp doesn’t put in 2 million by June we will have broken the financial fair play rules meaning a points reduction. I wonder if @Dennis can comment on this

 

I'd expect a rise next season - whatever league we'll be in. If we have an average/rebuilding kind of season and miss out on play offs I'd expect a £25 increase, play offs/promotion I'd expect maybe a £50 increase. You'd hope, being businessmen, they'd plan for future events and season ticket sales are key in this planning.