CB Fry

Sky will be showing a key match too. It depends who gets first choice.

Even a point would have pretty much ruled out the chance of WHU going into second at any point during next Saturday's game. Now, assuming they win on Monday (they may still blow it) they can go an early goal up next week and be second "as it stands". That, my friends, is hell on earth. But I think we'll still do it. We have the perfect opponents so really we should finish the job.

This would definitely offer flexibility to those people who couldn't otherwise afford to have a slash at the stadium. Those new people would all get to have a slash for free of course. Anyone who bothered to have a slash during the Exeter games in L1 we don't need to be flexible for of course. They'll be paying the full eight quid.

This "luxury" of having tickets that only hard up people can afford that Frank loves to talk about....I am still waiting to hear how you stop people that could afford to pay more from buying them? ie - how can this idea not devalue the entire stadium?

Really don't get this anology at all. The clubs aim is clearly NOT to sell "our product cheaper than our competitors can" and it never will be. If Cortese was trying to do anything like that then he would be doing all he can with the six, seven, eight thousand tickets he's had to play with all season. But he hasn't. He's maintained his price position at the expense of more through the gates (and all these burger sales that are being massively overplayed in the theories being banded about on here.) A football club is not a car factory or a supermarket. And football clubs, ours especially, are not going to invest in capital building projects just to turn our box office into the Easyjet of sport.

Don't need one . It's you and your chums who are projecting your own dreams of a wonderful world on flexible pricing on a man whose ACTIONS show him as someone who has no desire to devalue his product whatsoever.

The club are going to use it to bring in a swathe of flexible pricing plans to bring the masses in. After all who can forget the raft of flexible pricing initiatives the club have run in the last two seasons when we've only had between six and eight thousand empty seats to fill. Bringing in half season tickets was brilliant. And I rememember Cortese doing something special for the old folks earlier this season too. All those family special discounts to bring in the kids in this season - brilliant - I'm sure Frank and Wes can remember the precise details of what those offers were. And that way he made the Pompey game really accessible for everyone. I was worried he would just use it as a way to flog full price tickets for other less attractive games but he is far more flexible than that. So with all the activities that Nicola "Mr Fleixible" has put in in his time here to fill the thousands of seats each week I cannot wait to see how flexible he is going to be when we have ten thousand more. Those school kids are going to be so lucky. They're our future fans you know.

I am very calm, and even think two draws will do it. I think we may not win tomorrow - a rare 0-0 maybe - but I think WHU have gone. Even if they don't blow it on Monday, fine, we won't be denied against Coventry. The only thing I think probably has gone is the league title which I really don't think we can get now, I can't see Reading letting it go. But stranger things have happened.

Tell your mate Mr Watertight Wes that this is a forum for trivial musings. He's trying to cross examine my backside like he's Rumpole of the freaking Bailey. I don't think I am being sensitive - you're bawling into your beer about not being as clever as I am. Cheer up Frank, it just wasn't meant to be for you.

That's funny, because my alternative suggestion - keep pushing up the average price per seat to sweat value out of this phenomenal demand you all think we have - is not something you want to discuss mainly because of how it will push fans away. Although apparently now you say 99.99% fans are not worried about ticket price and that "it's not all about the price on the ticket". My alternative suggestion assumes just as much success on the pitch as yours, and also frees up cash to spend on players and the academy because we are not saddled with infrastructure we really don't need. Fulham, Stoke, Blackburn have all seen European football in recent years on the back of lowish gates and minimal stadium redevelopment. If I am a miserable fecker for wanting money spent on retaining young players and signing good pros to the squad rather than 10,000 dubious seats, then yes I am a miserable fecker. Pretty sure I support a football team not a property development portfolio. But hey, that's miserable old me.

My arguments aren't "watertight" on an internet discussion forum. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Didn't realise this was the formal planning application process. The club in its current guise can and will do what they like, whatever they do will prove me neither right or wrong. I am just dishing out my opinion on what I think are good or bad ideas and expressing some rationale for it. I'll keep dishing it out, and my god I'll do it funnier than you time and time and time again. You love me.

Well I don't enjoy myself reading the arse aching drivel you post on here. And you seem to want to chew the fat on a topic just so long as everyone agrees with you. Anyone that says - hang on, this really is a long, long, long way off and don't we need to hit some KPIs first - gets labelled as being a miserable sod. I didn't realise that wa nk ing off on an internet message board about having 46k capacity football stadium was the last word on "enjoying yourself". Utter fu cking plank.

I have to say I have no idea what you are getting at here. I am not here to defend how the club sold season tickets last season. It certainly doesn't in any way prove that season tickets aren't vitally important as revenue streams and as a guarantee of a base level of support. Next.

We're not Sunderland in 1995. More recently Sunderland blew our average attendance out of the water last time they were in the second tier. Sunderland historically have a history of far bigger attendances than we have ever had. We're not Sunderland in 1995 who were moving out of an old tired stadium to a new one. We're not Sunderland in 1995. We are not Sunderland in 1995. Season tickets are, aside from television revenues, the single most important revenue stream for any club. Being that TV revenues below the Prem are middling to poor, season ticket revenues are the single most important revenue stream for every club below the top tier. I don't care what you think about Sunderland in 1995, it's a pi ss weak response to a pretty universal truth in football. The fact you need to pick away at it shows how pathetic and petty you are.

First off - that comment is not a statement presented as fact. It's a comment proceeded with the word "I think". It's my opinion expressed on a message board. Everything I type on here is my opinion. So just to summarise your theory here - we need a bigger stadium so people that are too busy to have season tickets and go to games have the flexibility to not go to games. Season tickets, I am afraid, is the be all and end all. As much as the footings in the ground, they are base foundation of a stadium, a fan base, a balance sheet and a football club.

If you think a Man U ticket in a 32k stadium will cost the same as one in a 45k stadium you're off your head. In a stadium that big I think I'd be able to decide to go to that game on the morning of the game and drive the three hours from my house safe in the knowledge I'd get one. Sorry you people can't just keep airily parrotting "its supply and demand innit" and then apply any old cockeyed theory to it. I tell you what , lets see if we sell 20k+ plus season tickets. That's DEMAND. Or a waiting list for season tickets. Thats DEMAND. Lets see if we have no tickets on general sale for any game. Thats DEMAND. No one wants to wait for any of this to get to even close to happening. Just blinkered build-it build-it build-it foam hand waving delusion. Babbling on about chucking seats up and then talking about slashing prices in order to fill them, and at the same time passing on offer related rebates to season ticket holders to keep them sweet.....if you can't see any flawed logic then dismissive claptrap is all I've got for you sunshine.

So your gold silver bronze (which exists up and down the country and has done for at least twenty years, byt thanks for painstakingly explaining it like it was String Theory)...anyway your system there means everyone getting cheaper tickets. Another name on the list for Wes Tender who seems to be obsessed by that point. Thanks for being there.

Plenty are talking about reducing prices mate.

What, apart from the people talking about the Bundesliga model, the people talking about reducing ticket prices all over this thread. I don't see swathes of caveats from them about "BUT NOT FOR EVERYONE". So really I have no idea what point you are desperately scratching around for. If ticket prices are going to come down in this wonderful vision, then they will come down for everyone, that is the justification for expansion from pretty much every supporter on this thread. Truly, truly mental.

Exactly how do you put ticket decreases through but not for everyone? Do tell because I have seen the uproar on here from ST holders when special offers are announced.

1. Yes, MLG has suggested it before, and yes it always comes up. 2. Oh, I see, just cheaper tickets for the 20,000 new people. Of course, silly me. The original fans just carry on paying as normal. Fair enough then.

Pompey did not try an "exclusivity model" they just didn't bother investing in their stadium. Apple do control supply as part of their model. If Ipads were stacked high in the foyer of Asda at £200 a pop (true universal supply) they'd sell a hell of a lot more than they do now, but they wouldn't make anywhere near as profitably, and long term probably prove to be an error. Pursuing exclusivity in football clubs is actually very sensible. One factor in selling season tickets is that it is a guaranteed seat for the Man United game. If the stadium was so big that Man U tickets could be snapped up by wandering up on the day before, a key incentive to buy a season ticket is gone. Don't underrate exclusivity in football my old son. And maintaining a premium on tickets is also vital. All the bright sparks on here seem determined to massively downvalue cost per seat but this is madness from a business point of view. And building permanent seating on a football stadium is not the same as Tesco or Sainsbury's "planning for an upswing in demand", those flipping seats are there and will be there forever once they are in. I'll repeat again, most businesses including Tesco do not go out to sell as much of their thing as humanly possible. They sell as much as they can as profitably as possible. Massive, massive difference. Churning and churning and churning out more product than anyone really wants is not a sustainable business model. Funnily enough, a 32,000 stadium with 30,000 people paying £50/£55 a ticket probably is perfectly sustainable (after all, their is MASSIVE demand out there according to the geniuses on here) and requires zero capital expenditure whatsoever, so all that cash on the pitch. Lovely.

Just remembered Cortese's big idea this season to increase gates for unattractive games. It was to force people to buy a second ticket at full price if they wanted to buy a derby game ticket. Which is as far from " kids for quid because children are the fans of the future" as you can possibly get. We may be planning to expand sometime. But people need to forget the idea that we are doing it to make tickets cheaper for everyone.

Lets all remember that , this season, with 6,000 odd seats to fill for many games, there has been little, essentially none at all, in the way of "flexible pricing" to increase gates. Why you people think Cortese is going to spend fifteen million quid on seats and THEN introduce it I struggle to understand. Lots of talk about increased burger sales in the Cortesedome but again not a something we went for this season when we had ample opportunity. Any ideas, geniuses?