BBC 'Price of Football 2014' - We are top of the league

[El Presidente]

I will be bringing your views to the attention of the BBC Price of Football debate live from the Etihad starting in two mins

 

[LamieRobertson]

I will be bringing your views to the attention of the BBC Price of Football debate live from the Etihad starting in two mins

I'm tuned in

 

[seagullsovergrimsby]

El Pres on Radio 5

 

[Own Goals Galore]

There is still a pie and pint deal for £7.50.

Buy that at a touch before 2 o'clock using e-cash and it will be £6.38 after cash back, or £6.75 if bought between 2pm and 2:30pm. That's not too pricey, is it?

I must confess Bozza, I was not aware that the deal is still on. Thanks for pointing out. All I see at the Concourse is ads for a variation of that deal including Crisp etc and cost more than the £7.50. If the deal is still on I will use it! My point remains about the general price of everything else and I am sure this is a common complaint. I've just made the decision to spend my money elsewhere, which is a shame, as I want to support the club, but do not want to stitch myself up at the same time.

 

[seagulls4ever]

I don't go and watch the team anymore because it's too expensive on a match-to-match basis. I know others who feel exactly the same. The policy of customers not fans is losing us fans.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/29618299

"Any business that thinks it can simply rely upon the loyalty of its customers, regardless of how they treat them, in the end will fail," King said.

"Because if you ever start acting in a way that assumes that your customer will keep coming regardless of what you do to them then you'll start doing things that actually are not in your customers' interests."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/29627241

 

[Pavilionaire]

At the end of the day player wages are killing football. This is why it was a ludicrous decision to allocate all FFP fines to be given to charity, rather than be redistributed amongst those clubs that play ball and lose out as a result.

If QPR were to get fined £50million and we got £1million of that then that would represent a significant chunk of revenue.

 

[rippleman]

If a business has more customers than any of their competitors in the same sector, and those customers are paying the highest prices, and then that business is still losing money at the rate of (see Bozza above) ~£1m a month, I wonder whether the CEO/CFO would be in a job for very long!

If we have the highest revenues, but making scary losses, then it appears that we are failing to control costs. So who is responsible for our apparent failure to balance the books?

 

[MissGull]

I don't mind the prices per se. It's comparable to places like costa, starbucks et al. However, the quality and availability is unsatisfactory.

 

[Marty___Mcfly]

Its in the club's interests to report ongoing losses in their accounts. If they were reporting profits there would be calls for reductions in ticket prices, increased spending on players, and increased tax liability. Accounting is a creative art- see Tesco's recent shenanigans for a good example.

 

[maglers]

I don't go and watch the team anymore because it's too expensive on a match-to-match basis. I know others who feel exactly the same. The policy of customers not fans is losing us fans.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/29618299



http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/29627241

Why do fans who elect not to go any more for financial or other reasons think that those who still choose to go are not real fans? Isn't the aim of every football club to pull in as many fans as possible and keep them for life? So lots of people went to watch BHA at the Goldstone, Priestfield and Withdean (me included), but my support is of no more value than that of my son and daughter, who only started watching the season the Amex opened. They are (and always will be) Brighton fans. Just like me and many thousands of other people. Get over it.

 

[seagulls4ever]

Why do fans who elect not to go any more for financial or other reasons think that those who still choose to go are not real fans? Isn't the aim of every football club to pull in as many fans as possible and keep them for life? So lots of people went to watch BHA at the Goldstone, Priestfield and Withdean (me included), but my support is of no more value than that of my son and daughter, who only started watching the season the Amex opened. They are (and always will be) Brighton fans. Just like me and many thousands of other people. Get over it.

Erm ... that's not what I said - at all.

I agree with all of what you said. But I think the prices and commercialisation of every aspect of the club is losing us fans - old and new.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that I was suggesting that those who still chose to watch the club are not real fans.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

I must confess Bozza, I was not aware that the deal is still on. Thanks for pointing out. All I see at the Concourse is ads for a variation of that deal including Crisp etc and cost more than the £7.50. If the deal is still on I will use it!

Maybe the club could plug the deal a bit more in big bold letters. Because it is a very decent deal when the price of a pie alone is £4.10 and the price of a pint of Kronie in town is usually considerably more than the difference between £7.50 and £4.10. Mind you, many of the till-tenders ring the items up separately as a non-deal, so if charged more, stick to yer guns and ask for a supervisor to arbitrate.

 

[SAC]

The part about us losing nearly £1 million a month is worrying. Sounds like we might be struggling with FFP.

There is something very wrong when a club with the highest* number of ST holders, highest* attendances and highest* ticket prices looses nearly £1 million a month. I'm sure I read that the club only pays £1 million a year in rent for the stadium which sounds to me way under market value. *one of the

 

[keaton]

The part about us losing nearly £1 million a month is worrying. Sounds like we might be struggling with FFP.

Doesn't this mean our annual losses will have increased in the last year?

 

[knocky1]

Nonsense, we've got three:

Three William Hagues = three bans.

 

[spring hall convert]

gigs,

I don't think so. Unless you are talking about concerts at the massive venues or festivals, prices for gigs at the mid to lower levels are still very reasonable. I often use this comparison against football.

The issue here is the ridiculous money the players are on. How is it even possible to get genie back in the bottle acting unilaterally?

 

[keaton]

I don't think so. Unless you are talking about concerts at the massive venues or festivals, prices for gigs at the mid to lower levels are still very reasonable. I often use this comparison against football.

The issue here is the ridiculous money the players are on. How is it even possible to get genie back in the bottle acting unilaterally?

I was going to say a similar thing. When I was teenager big gig at the Brighton centre would be £12-15 now £20-25. Films was about £4-5, now £8, the Albion was £6 (last season at Goldstone) now cheapest ticket is £25

 

[halbpro]

I don't think so. Unless you are talking about concerts at the massive venues or festivals, prices for gigs at the mid to lower levels are still very reasonable. I often use this comparison against football.

The issue here is the ridiculous money the players are on. How is it even possible to get genie back in the bottle acting unilaterally?

I agree, to an extent. The actual problem, in my opinion, is the money coming in at the top level from TV deals. Players/agents see the huge sums being paid to leagues by the TV companies and go "Well I'd like a piece of that, I'm who they're all watching after all!" That's quite a reasonable view in my opinion, it's the same reason you get TV stars in the US on $1m an episode. However, the problem then comes in the lower leagues, where the huge rise in TV revenue in the top leagues is not reflected, but the inflation to wages has trickled down. Therefore lower division clubs have no choice but to increase their revenue from ticket sales, food sales, merchandise, etc...

The thing is I don't actually think football on TV is evil, but the knock on consequences are frustrating. I can't really see a way round it that's sustainable.

 

[spring hall convert]

I agree, to an extent. The actual problem, in my opinion, is the money coming in at the top level from TV deals. Players/agents see the huge sums being paid to leagues by the TV companies and go "Well I'd like a piece of that, I'm who they're all watching after all!" That's quite a reasonable view in my opinion, it's the same reason you get TV stars in the US on $1m an episode. However, the problem then comes in the lower leagues, where the huge rise in TV revenue in the top leagues is not reflected, but the inflation to wages has trickled down. Therefore lower division clubs have no choice but to increase their revenue from ticket sales, food sales, merchandise, etc...

The thing is I don't actually think football on TV is evil, but the knock on consequences are frustrating. I can't really see a way round it that's sustainable.

The solution is a pretty unpalatable one, I think. End promotion and relegtion to the Premier League. Salary cap the rest.

 

[34064 Fighter Command]

Let's be simplistic. Assume a 23 man squad (for simplicity); wages down by £500 000. £10 000 a week, less putting (so I've heard) O'Grady on £3 000 a week.

This is still £150 000 a year (perhaps he'd be so disgusted that he'd quit to earn more in the City).

Footballers would still play football whilst "only" earning five times the national average wage.

So long as the top clubs like Manure are prepared to offer obscene amounts of money to get average players like Di Maria and Falcao the rest of the football pyramid are sucked kicking and screaming into this endless vortex of spiralling costs.

The only solution will happen under one of the following scenarios:

a) Allow the rich clubs to form their own breakaway superleague, pan-european if necessary. Allow the saner chairmen to compete in a league where money isn't necessary to 'buy' success. Forget about promotion to the superleague, it will only ever be a 'closed shop' league for clubs like the NFL and AFC are for American Football.
b) Fans vote with their feet and stop paying for tickets.
c) The business model for the big clubs fail. Look at the amount of debt Man Utd currently have. It only takes for them to get relegated ( and don't laugh at the back, it might happen one day ) and they are in deep financial pooh. Portsmouth have found that out the hard way.
d) A solar flare or other space event knock out ALL the Astra satellites that broacast Sky TV. Again this is unlikely given the redundancy built into the system, but don't say it can never happen. The oldest working one was launched in 1993, and probably has around 2 years of life left (at best).

Personally I think a lot of this is about the Premier League. Rupert Murdoch famously said to Sky Executives that the future of satellite broadcasting was in the coverage of live sport, and football in particular. That drove the formation of the Premier league, which exists for one thing and one thing only - to make the Clubs as rich as possible, either through advertising, sponsorship or replica shirt sales, on the back of subscription channel television.

If the Premier league was still available on terrestrial free-to-air TV then clubs would be denied all those income streams, wages would have to drop to keep costs under control, and the average supporter would not be facing such high prices.