Crowd vs Walsall under 5,000

[perseus]

It makes poor reading nowadays. It is not only prices, ticket availability, quality of football, open air, it is more than that.

There is no simple answer.

 

[Bevendean Hillbilly]

And its Brighton Hove albion...

 

[Moshe Gariani]

It makes poor reading nowadays.

on the contrary, the graph illustrates perfectly the transient nature of support and the effect of league status and other variable factors... our current crowds are perfectly understandable and pose no problem at all with regard to the likely attendances at Falmer to watch a more successful team

 

[Brovion]

If you believe that price is the answer as to the low gates buy a copy of Albion Results book and see the gates in the last few years at The Goldstone eg. Tues 16th Mar 1996 in Div 2 home to Hull won 4 - 0 attendance 4910, Nov 14th 1995 home to Walsall lost 3 - 0 att 4976 so it hasnt changed much and that was in Div 2 the equivalent of Div 1 now.

As someone who has banged on about high ticket prices I actually agree with you! There is not one single factor as Perseus points out above. For me, personally, the cost IS the biggest factor. With a wife working part-time and two children in full-time education (one an adult) I want to see some cheap 'Family' ticket that matches my circumstances. When the kids were younger football, as in attending Albion games home and away, used to be one of the things we did together.

My second gripe is the logistical difficulty in getting tickets. I don't know until literally the last minute what people's work, educational, extra-carricular and social arrangements are going to be. Assuming at least one other is able (and wants) to go I then have to go through the palaver of either getting to the ticket office or ringing up. The sortcomings of the Albion's ticketing system have been analysed before on here so I won't drag them up again.

Subsidiary reasons are: Withdean, the souless nature of modern football, Withdean, other attractions such as live televised football (not for me but the others often prefer it), Withdean and of course the whole Withdean experience.

 

[perseus]

Not forgetting, rude and obnoxious people sitting in the seat next to you (or near you) mouthing obscentities, eating curries* etc.

(* Just put a curry in the slow cooker, it is just that looking some of the food at Withdean makes me want to throw up sometimes.)

 

[Albion Dan]

For me its not cost, but 100% Withdean and what an unenjoyable experience it is, especially if you have to travel more than twenty miles to get there.

Ive been sat there when weve been 3-0 up and still been completey bored, cold, wet and under the impression I was at the Library. Having our littel boy was the excuse Id been looking for for a while to give up the season ticket and the journey down from London and I dont miss it one bit.

Falmer, good atmoshpere, good faciliities, and a capable playing side will bring people back in their thousands, I have no doubts about that whatsoever.

 

[DJ Leon]

What you didnt want a free meal and a pint thrown in with the price. Shame on you we are a wealthy club that can afford to sell tickets at giveaway prices. Pay on the day at the gate we cannot do due to the restrictions placed on us by the council to use Withdean , so why keep bleating on about it. That is not just yiou but many others.

You're right that price is not the only factor (as you said in another post) but the reason people keep 'bleating' on about price and ease of buying tickets is because they're 2 of the major factors for people not coming. Just check out the number of previously committed fans on this forum alone who are now not going to games regularly (I'm one of them). The club must do something about this now.

 

[Dave the OAP]

A season ticket cost less than £10 a week. Put a tenner aside for a year and when renewal comes round you've got the money and a bit left over.

that is fair enough, but you do not pay a £10 a week do you. You have to pay by a certain date or your price goes up. and that vertain date tends to be when you are looking at deposit time for holidays etc etc .

There are no easy answers to this crowds business....as I have said...we are watching third division football and unless you are leeds united, gates will be around the 5000 mark!

 

[sir albion]

Absolute crap.You tell me how many more clubs playing at withdean in our division would be getting the gates we get paying the prices we do?.I know so many people who will go when we get Falmer who have hardly ever set foot in withdean.As long as the prices are sensible it will be a totally different situation.

Very true bud as i have only been withdean once

How can people moan about crowds in such a complete dump of a ground

 

[Yorkie]

that is fair enough, but you do not pay a £10 a week do you. You have to pay by a certain date or your price goes up. and that vertain date tends to be when you are looking at deposit time for holidays etc etc .

There are no easy answers to this crowds business....as I have said...we are watching third division football and unless you are leeds united, gates will be around the 5000 mark!

I've already paid our deposit for our holiday next June. Yes the season ticket money saving is from March to March.
When you haven't got a lot of money, then planning is the most important way of managing it.

 

[Kenhead]

Another problem with paying for season tickets in march is that there are always away games to also pay for, if we are in with a shout with promotion i would find myself useing that money to go to that must win away match, games the following season would come secondery in my thoughts.

 

[e77]

We are beginning to feel the hangover from the nightmare years of the 90s. A lot of the young guys (who in the day used to make up a large part of the crowd) have grown up and had children, which restricts them going to so many games and the Gillingham and to a lesser extent Withdean years have hardly presented an attractive alternative to a blossoming Premiership for the kids who in years gone by would have replaced them!

I almost think the next two and a bit seasons at Withdean should be written off and we should concentrate on building up the fan base through the schools.

 

[champion7]

That's f***ing shocking.

We truly are a lower league club with a very poor fanbase.

we don't have a problem the fanbase, its just noone wants to sit inthe withdean on a miserable wet seat and have no roof over their heads and have to pay well over twenty quid for the pleasure

 

[Barrel of Fun]

http://www.football.virginmedia.com/page/leagueonevideo/0,,12555~1162498,00.html

Nice shot of the crowd gently applauding Robinsons' first league goal for a while!

 

[Jim in the West]

As a STH of many years (incl Gillingham), I'd willingly see the club flog tickets (even in the South Stand) at £10. I'd be amazed if most STHs didn't understand the current situation, which demands pretty urgent action, I think. I'd far rather watch us play in front of 7,000+ with 2,000 of those getting in for virtually nothing, compared to the prospect of circa 5,000 for the next home game. If the club is worried about pi$$ing off existing STHs, then there are plenty of opportunities to keep us happy - eg: discounts off the price of a season ticket for the first year at Falmer. It is criminal that the club is effectively allowing more than 2,000 seats to remain empty every home game when we desperately need to get kids and families back to the Albion. I was really concerned about the fact that loads of kids couldn't get a ticket in the early years back at Withdean. Now we no longer have that problem, and the club seems to be doing nothing. This is probably slightly unfair, but I cannot understand why the club are not doing a lot more to get youngsters in.

 

[Yorkie]

It's a little unfair to say the club are doing nothing. My colleague has a son at Balfour who went with the school to the Luton game for £3 a head.
More could be done I agree but the club are trying to reach the youngsters.

 

[portslade seagull]

We need to reduce the ticket prices and fast, because tonight was embarassing. Time to give more tickets to schools, so we can get the younger generation in and watch their local team play. Instead of watching Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United etc.

I agree wholeheartedly with your comment lets the kids in for £5 instaed of the £16 my son currently has to pay..where do they think the money comes from..yes of course the bank of good old mum&Dad......Also Oap's should be £5 as well

 

[Brovion]

Quite simply it is the laws of Supply and Demand. I was discussing it with a few mates last night (all of whom went to Cardiff, none of whom went on Tuesday). When the Albion first moved back to Brighton there was a bit of a cachet in getting a ticket; in those days the club could probably have added a fiver to the price and still sold out. Now they probably can't give them away and yet the default price stays the same. My mates thought I was mad for paying full price for two tickets.

Everyone agreed that graded games was the way to go. For the likes of Leeds the club can charge full price. For Walsall on a Tuesday night when there's Champions' League on the telly £5 was the figure suggested.

 

[Alex Alex Dawson oo! oo!]

........................................................................................ For the likes of Leeds the club can charge full price. For Walsall on a Tuesday night when there's Champions' League on the telly £5 was the figure suggested.

So how would the economics of a £5 ticket price actually work out - ie what do you assume/think was the gate income on Tuesday night, how is this impacted by charging £5 and from where do you make up any shortfall?

 

[Brovion]

So how would the economics of a £5 ticket price actually work out - ie what do you assume/think was the gate income on Tuesday night, how is this impacted by charging £5 and from where do you make up any shortfall?

Look, I'm just reporting what some ordinary 'Albion fans in the pub' think! The club would lose money if every seat was taken at full price, so the £5 ticket would, hopefully, have the effect of 'papering the house' (as they say in the theatre). At least it should give a better atmosphere, get a few more people back into the habit of going to matches again and make some kids think twice before they automatically say they're Arsenal fans or whatever. The club hardly cleaned up on Tuesday selling tickets at the price they did, so any reduction of gate receipts would have been neither here nor there. Think of any money lost as being spent on customer service, advertising, building a customer base, whatever.