[Albion] Paul Barber on Albion match day ticket prices

[matt]

Unusual abundance of exclamation marks for an adult.

 

[Hastings gull]

Apologies. No idea where you're coming from here. Don't understand your post. I'm a season ticket holder. My match price is great. No complaints. I want to bring friends for less. £42 is too much and intelligent people know that. They feel stupid for paying it. It's not a case of what you can afford. It's what you're getting for that amount. That said!! I would love the club to charge £50 a seat, if they could sell them for that and there were no empty seats. haha

But the stadium is full of them, and they're earning the club zilch!

You probably did not understand, as, with respect, your initial post was not clear. You then changed tack slightly in your reply to Bozza, by saying that you DO indeed have a season ticket, whereas in your first post you talked about "if my season ticket cost that much etc". You also now introduce another element in that the enjoyment is reduced if your friends cannot sit with you, which you did not make explicit originally. I can certainly understand the point that your enjoyment would be enhanced, as that surely would count for anyone.
Unless I have misunderstood you, your season ticket is in an area which your mates would find too expensive on a day to day basis. Presumably you chose that area, and from what you say, you are understandably reluctant to give up your seat, all of which I can certainly sympathise with. However, I would find it hard to accept if I had paid a certain amount for a ticket and then found out that your mates as a matter of course were able to sit right next to me and pay much less. I can agree with the odd promotion, as it is vital to entice new or casual fans, but would be unhappy at what I would perceive to be unfair treatment and might then choose to go on a casual and cheaper basis myself, as I would assume that the club does not value loyalty.

 

[GingerBeerMan]

Haven't read the thread, far too long. I did read Barber's email though. My two points (maybe already discussed):

1. He says ticket revenue is an important part of revenue for this league due to lower TV deals. Can I trust that ticket prices (at least, existing season ticket holders prices) will fall if we get promoted, seeing as ticket revenue is a lot less important in the Premier League?

2. He alludes to trying to attract young and old fans, but why nothing about students? We're sitting next to thousands of students who are a ten minute walk away. They have money to spend on beer and pies too. Set up a shop or stall on campus on match day with £20 tickets and get more revenue, plus some more vocal fans. Why aren't students targeted?

 

[Berty23]

Haven't read the thread, far too long. I did read Barber's email though. My two points (maybe already discussed):

1. He says ticket revenue is an important part of revenue for this league due to lower TV deals. Can I trust that ticket prices (at least, existing season ticket holders prices) will fall if we get promoted, seeing as ticket revenue is a lot less important in the Premier League?

2. He alludes to trying to attract young and old fans, but why nothing about students? We're sitting next to thousands of students who are a ten minute walk away. They have money to spend on beer and pies too. Set up a shop or stall on campus on match day with £20 tickets and get more revenue, plus some more vocal fans. Why aren't students targeted?

RE Point 1. Absolutely not. Reducing ticket prices in the prem would be complete madness. Imagine if it reduced to 20 quid a match but we were relegated. Imagine the crowds of the prices went up again to cover the shortfall. This place would be in complete uproar.

 

[Captain Sensible]

You can dress it up however you want. The Matchday tickets for Charlton are too expensive. End of. Even if you have bought a ticket or tickets at that price, it's very very steep.

 

[Bozza]

You can dress it up however you want. The Matchday tickets for Charlton are too expensive. End of. Even if you have bought a ticket or tickets at that price, it's very very steep.

I partially disagree. If I wanted a ticket for tomorrow, I'd be buying a North Stand ticket for £32. That would also cover me for a £7.40 train fare. That seems decent value.

I'd simply not pay £42, even with the travel. I'm with you on that.

I'm largely indifferent about where I am though - behind the goal or on the side of the pitch. Not everyone is the same.

 

[Captain Sensible]

I partially disagree. If I wanted a ticket for tomorrow, I'd be buying a North Stand ticket for £32. That would also cover me for a £7.40 train fare. That seems decent value.

I'd simply not pay £42, even with the travel. I'm with you on that.

I'm largely indifferent about where I am though - behind the goal or on the side of the pitch. Not everyone is the same.

The travel subsidy is great, I hope that never goes and with travel I'd personally part with £25-30 for North South and Corners and up to £37for West lower and ESU. Some might ask why a fiver makes a difference? But it actually does when you buy multiple tickets. It's also the feeling of not wanting to feel you are being taken for a ride. Perhaps there are times when up to £42 for a ticket is justified. A game against your closest rivals, Play offs or cup games against a big side, those should be Cat A, but the club have done something wrong thinking that up to £42 is a good pricing strategy for playing Charlton.
I think Barber needs to re price the fixtures, this game should fall under a C cat.
Also I find it interesting that most arguing for these high prices are STH's already. Does anyone know anyone that's purchased a £42 ticket and thinks it's good value?

 

[father_and_son]

Sorry but PB is over complicating it. I go in the East upper and on average for an ST for an adult, its £24 per game. Category A such as tomorrow is £42 plus booking fee. Thats £18 above the ST price. If it was reduced to £12 over the ST price £36 quid, Im sure alot more would sell. Also it would not put off people buying ST's. The difference of between £10-12 per gamebetween a match day ticket and ST is about right. They would easily make up the £6 difference with a program and a coffe or beer. Sort it out Barber. We need more fans in the ground to make money.

I could respond to a number of emails, but yours is the first specifically bringing up the maths of this...

I am a pricing specialist (in a completely different industry) so have to do this sort of thing all the time. There is a thing called "price elasticity" and its a number that, basically, says how many more customers you get or lose if you move your pricing down or up respectively (there are very few brands or products that you can charge more and actually see in an increase in sales, rare but true).

If tickets cost a certain amount, lets say £42, then a proportion of that money covers "fixed costs" - what has to be paid regardless of the number of tickets sold (player wages, groundsman, electricity for the floodlights, etc); a proportion covers the "variable costs" - the costs that directly related to the number of tickets sold (the wages of the stewards, the number of concourse concessions you open, etc). The rest is then "profit" which, in our case, then goes to player budgets and the like.

I have no idea what the break down is, but let's, for the sake of argument say, the fixed costs are £250,000, the variable costs are £10/person and the profit is what's left. This means that if we have a crowd of 25,000 all paying full price then £10 of the each ticket pays towards the fixed costs, £10 towards the variable and £22 to the playing budget. So the games generates 25,000 x £22 towards the playing budget = £550,000. If you drop the price of each ticket by £6, you need to sell about 30,770 to cover the same fixed costs, the new variable costs and generate the same playing budget. So that's a 23% increase in sales for 14% decrease in price. For this to work you'd need an elasticity of 1.6.

Obviously, I had to make up some numbers to do this, but PB will have something more realistic. Most industries experience something close to 1.0 elasticity, so each 1% reduction in price generates 1% increase in sales (a long way off the 1.6 my numbers suggest).

I would imagine that, for a club as professionally run as ours, this sort of thing is bread and butter to PB and his team and they have looked in detail at all the additional factors, such as different elasticities by stand, by promotion type, by group promoted to, etc etc.

PB isn't over complicating this... The long and short (and the TL;DR answer) is this is actually a complex pricing model that someone at the Albion works quite hard to create and manage. The end product needs to be a maximum amount of money going to the playing budget (or to require the minimum contribution from TB) so that we achieve the results everyone wants!

 

[Return of the Rev]

I could respond to a number of emails, but yours is the first specifically bringing up the maths of this...

I am a pricing specialist (in a completely different industry) so have to do this sort of thing all the time. There is a thing called "price elasticity" and its a number that, basically, says how many more customers you get or lose if you move your pricing down or up respectively (there are very few brands or products that you can charge more and actually see in an increase in sales, rare but true).

If tickets cost a certain amount, lets say £42, then a proportion of that money covers "fixed costs" - what has to be paid regardless of the number of tickets sold (player wages, groundsman, electricity for the floodlights, etc); a proportion covers the "variable costs" - the costs that directly related to the number of tickets sold (the wages of the stewards, the number of concourse concessions you open, etc). The rest is then "profit" which, in our case, then goes to player budgets and the like.

I have no idea what the break down is, but let's, for the sake of argument say, the fixed costs are £250,000, the variable costs are £10/person and the profit is what's left. This means that if we have a crowd of 25,000 all paying full price then £10 of the each ticket pays towards the fixed costs, £10 towards the variable and £22 to the playing budget. So the games generates 25,000 x £22 towards the playing budget = £550,000. If you drop the price of each ticket by £6, you need to sell about 30,770 to cover the same fixed costs, the new variable costs and generate the same playing budget. So that's a 23% increase in sales for 14% decrease in price. For this to work you'd need an elasticity of 1.6.

Obviously, I had to make up some numbers to do this, but PB will have something more realistic. Most industries experience something close to 1.0 elasticity, so each 1% reduction in price generates 1% increase in sales (a long way off the 1.6 my numbers suggest).

I would imagine that, for a club as professionally run as ours, this sort of thing is bread and butter to PB and his team and they have looked in detail at all the additional factors, such as different elasticities by stand, by promotion type, by group promoted to, etc etc.

PB isn't over complicating this... The long and short (and the TL;DR answer) is this is actually a complex pricing model that someone at the Albion works quite hard to create and manage.

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q...&mid=38835746F9DC5535FC4A38835746F9DC5535FC4A

 

[Captain Sensible]

I could respond to a number of emails, but yours is the first specifically bringing up the maths of this...

I am a pricing specialist (in a completely different industry) so have to do this sort of thing all the time. There is a thing called "price elasticity" and its a number that, basically, says how many more customers you get or lose if you move your pricing down or up respectively (there are very few brands or products that you can charge more and actually see in an increase in sales, rare but true).

If tickets cost a certain amount, lets say £42, then a proportion of that money covers "fixed costs" - what has to be paid regardless of the number of tickets sold (player wages, groundsman, electricity for the floodlights, etc); a proportion covers the "variable costs" - the costs that directly related to the number of tickets sold (the wages of the stewards, the number of concourse concessions you open, etc). The rest is then "profit" which, in our case, then goes to player budgets and the like.

I have no idea what the break down is, but let's, for the sake of argument say, the fixed costs are £250,000, the variable costs are £10/person and the profit is what's left. This means that if we have a crowd of 25,000 all paying full price then £10 of the each ticket pays towards the fixed costs, £10 towards the variable and £22 to the playing budget. So the games generates 25,000 x £22 towards the playing budget = £550,000. If you drop the price of each ticket by £6, you need to sell about 30,770 to cover the same fixed costs, the new variable costs and generate the same playing budget. So that's a 23% increase in sales for 14% decrease in price. For this to work you'd need an elasticity of 1.6.

Obviously, I had to make up some numbers to do this, but PB will have something more realistic. Most industries experience something close to 1.0 elasticity, so each 1% reduction in price generates 1% increase in sales (a long way off the 1.6 my numbers suggest).

I would imagine that, for a club as professionally run as ours, this sort of thing is bread and butter to PB and his team and they have looked in detail at all the additional factors, such as different elasticities by stand, by promotion type, by group promoted to, etc etc.

PB isn't over complicating this... The long and short (and the TL;DR answer) is this is actually a complex pricing model that someone at the Albion works quite hard to create and manage.

A very sensible post if I do say so myself. What you called elasticity, I called wiggle room. But football isn't like that is it. We are talking about seats which are not getting sold. The Amex is a rather special case as it has so few match day ticket sales verses it's attendance. I'd say of the Albion fans tomorrow, 95% will be season ticket holders. There is no getting around that there are thousands of unsold seats for a side top of the championship. We know by past seasons that we can fill a few thousand more at least. How does the elasticity margins work when you have seats that don't sell because the price is too high and very very few of your crowd that buy the match at full price?

 

[Berty23]

A very sensible post if I do say so myself. What you called elasticity, I called wiggle room. But football isn't like that is it. We are talking about seats which are not getting sold. The Amex is a rather special case as it has so few match day ticket sales verses it's attendance. I'd say of the Albion fans tomorrow, 95% will be season ticket holders. There is no getting around that there are thousands of unsold seats for a side top of the championship. We know by past seasons that we can fill a few thousand more at least. How does the elasticity margins work when you have seats that don't sell because the price is too high and very very few of your crowd that buy the match at full price?

But the extra income from any extra sales would be offset by a reduction in revenue received from other seats being cheaper. As I have said in this thread many times - you can't just have a price crash to fill seats at the last minute otherwise people will never pay full price. Would you ever pay full price for a bed from dreams or a sofa from dfs?

 

[ChickenBaltiPie]

I do not understand the comparison with aeroplane one bit. A football club is completely and utterly different. I can't be bothered to rip the comparison to pieces because surely it is obvious to everyone. If prices for football suddenly dropped just before kick off then people would not pay full price. This is not about selling a few extra seats for a tenner this is about losing the revenue from 24000 seats to try and get another 3000 bums on seats. Bizarre.

What's bizarre is that you don't

Unusual abundance of exclamation marks for an adult.

Unusual choice of contribution for an adult

You probably did not understand, as, with respect, your initial post was not clear. You then changed tack slightly in your reply to Bozza, by saying that you DO indeed have a season ticket, whereas in your first post you talked about "if my season ticket cost that much etc". You also now introduce another element in that the enjoyment is reduced if your friends cannot sit with you, which you did not make explicit originally. I can certainly understand the point that your enjoyment would be enhanced, as that surely would count for anyone.
Unless I have misunderstood you, your season ticket is in an area which your mates would find too expensive on a day to day basis. Presumably you chose that area, and from what you say, you are understandably reluctant to give up your seat, all of which I can certainly sympathise with. However, I would find it hard to accept if I had paid a certain amount for a ticket and then found out that your mates as a matter of course were able to sit right next to me and pay much less. I can agree with the odd promotion, as it is vital to entice new or casual fans, but would be unhappy at what I would perceive to be unfair treatment and might then choose to go on a casual and cheaper basis myself, as I would assume that the club does not value loyalty.

You were not my intended audience. If you had of been, I would've kept it simpler

 

[ChickenBaltiPie]

I've read your posts carefully. If price was the only consideration stopping your mates going to the game, then I don't believe it.

Haha genuinely laughed out loud at that one. Credit where credits due. Good one.

 

[drew]

If the club ignored all their pricing models that are used and just did what some are suggesting and bring the price down considerably then they might sell considerably more tickets and it would be even harder for the OP to buy tickets so he can sit with his friends! Simple answer is to sit with your friends and release your ticket (or give it to someone else and just charge them the equivalent cost of your ticket in the other part of the ground. If they brought the price down to a level the OP thinks is fair then there would be another crowd who want it even lower. And they are probably the same crowd that would complain when we aren't spending on players.

 

[father_and_son]

A very sensible post if I do say so myself. What you called elasticity, I called wiggle room. But football isn't like that is it. We are talking about seats which are not getting sold. The Amex is a rather special case as it has so few match day ticket sales verses it's attendance. I'd say of the Albion fans tomorrow, 95% will be season ticket holders. There is no getting around that there are thousands of unsold seats for a side top of the championship. We know by past seasons that we can fill a few thousand more at least. How does the elasticity margins work when you have seats that don't sell because the price is too high and very very few of your crowd that buy the match at full price?

Whether you want it to be or not, modern football is exactly like that, it is a business. It's not about bums on seats, its about cash in the bank. TB is very generous, but even he has limits (including the FFP one as well as his own desire to subsidise our saturday afternoons). The amount of extra money you make from the extra sales has to cover the shortfall in income from dropping all the matchday prices.

 

[Berty23]

What's bizarre is that you don't



Unusual choice of contribution for an adult



You were not my intended audience. If you had of been, I would've kept it simpler

I have never worked in the aviation industry so I might be wrong about this but I am going to make a guess. On a flight you don't have 2/3rds of the plane filled with the same people who are sat in the same seat for every flight. Let me know if I am wrong. Cheers

 

[Captain Sensible]

Whether you want it to be or not, modern football is exactly like that, it is a business. It's not about bums on seats, its about cash in the bank. TB is very generous, but even he has limits (including the FFP one as well as his own desire to subsidise our saturday afternoons). The amount of extra money you make from the extra sales has to cover the shortfall in income from dropping all the matchday prices.

But it doesn't does it. Yes if say 3k bought at full price and 5k went unsold, I'd understand your point. But most likely tomorrow we are talking under 1000 Matchday tickets. With around 6k unsold.

 

[ChickenBaltiPie]

I apologise for my tone - there is no need, but I stand by my general point.

There is a bloke who is currently paying nearly £20 of his money for me to sit in my seat every game. And you. And 25,000 others. If he, and those he employs, genuinely thought there was a better way, would they not be doing it?

It must come down to short term versus long term views again - something PB alluded to. Tony Bloom, Paul Barber and his team have to both manage the long term health of the club and the short term health. They will analyse significant quantities of data and research from the fanbase to do that. I can speak about what I'd do with confidence, as I could about most of those I go to games with. But there are 25,000 others who will all have slightly different views and sensitivities to all environmental factors, not least of all price.

There simply must be a strong belief that if the difference between a season ticket and a single match ticket was smaller than it is now, a reasonable quantity of season ticket holders would surrender their tickets and go match by match. And many wouldn't pay for midweek fixtures, nor for games against the likes of Rotherham. Once that starts to happen, don't we end up in a vicious circle where we become yet another Championship team where, on the highlights on a Saturday night, the ground looks empty?

Beyond that, if the club didn't have the surety of a significant season ticket revenue stream, I would imagine more caution would need to be taken with on-the-field investment since income over the course of a season becomes far more uncertain.

On all your general points, I completely agree. I couldn't see me paying £42 for a ticket (but that is picking the extreme). Hell, I even did a brief double-take this morning when I bought Derby tickets today. Only £30 but that's a fair old hike on my WSU season ticket price, even if we ignore the travel element.

Bloody hell. With the behaviour of an alarming majority on here. (Which is obviously all your fault.) I'm not sure your comments really warrant an apology. But thanks all the same. Very big of you.

You make a number of interesting points, I don't necessarily disagree with if I'm honest haha and read them with interest. It's obviously a very complex equation with many variable factors to 'predict' and no guarantees. All things considered the club could be doing a hell of a lot worse.

And to be clear, I am eternally grateful as we all should be for blooms £20

My experience regarding my friends aside... Simply, I see empty seats and I worry about the loss of revenue that represents.

 

[ChickenBaltiPie]

I have never worked in the aviation industry so I might be wrong about this but I am going to make a guess. On a flight you don't have 2/3rds of the plane filled with the same people who are sat in the same seat for every flight. Let me know if I am wrong. Cheers

That's a very good start. Well done you. Gold star!

 

[Berty23]

That's a very good start. Well done you. Gold star!

Thanks. My next assumption is that people will only be prepared to pay for every single match if they receive a decent discount. Call it bulk buying. Is that fair?