trousers

The emergency budget that hasn't happened yet....?

I work to an annual household budget so have not been able to justify the expenditure on either basis (i.e. Upfront or installments) I don't have a 'leisure expenditure' budget per se. I simply spend any surplus from my monthly expenditure on non-essentials such as attending football matches, cinema, takeaways, etc

I've never been able to justify the cost of a season ticket (against other family expenditure) and therefore I've never bought one. Why do others who can't afford one appear to assume they have a right to be able to do so?

Nope, can't think of anything off the top of my head....

To undermine an analogy.......Is that because you wanted 100% of the merchandise up front or that you wanted to receive parts of the TV delivered once every two weeks between August 2010 and May 2011?

Agree. In other words, Cortese would be mad to jeopardise the business he runs by hacking off his profit making customers....

Post #50 edit: bugger - just spotted I've gone through the 10k post mark sometime in the last few days without so much as a fanfare or bunting. Gutted.

+1 Whilst Liebherr may well be a billionaire (according to popular concensus) he is trying to run the club on a self-sustaining basis both for his own benefit and that of any future owner. He and Cortese will thus be setting up the 2010/11 budget accordingly. No more, no less.

......^ This ¦ Whilst having a relatively well paid job I have yet to get to the point where I can justifity buying a Football Club season ticket over and above other higher priority family budget items. This is despite, in the general scheme of things, the cost of a season ticket being relatively trivial compared to some family budget items. I am therefore happier paying a 'PAYG' premium for match day tickets as it fits in better with my lifestyle. If people can't afford a season ticket then perhaps consider a more prgamatic lifestyle such as the one I have adopted? (sorry, that sounds a little patronising but have left it in my post as the sentiment that I'm trying to convey is valid)

But wouldn't that have given rise to the 'transparency' accusation? I'd rather the ticket price was broken down into 'cost' + 'profit mark-up' than all being absorbed in to one unfavomable total.

It's not a "stealth" tax....the charge it's far too visible for it to be classed as "stealth"

FFS

Cheers for the clarification and I genuinely feel for the people that fall into the latter category. I guess the question to those in that category is: Would you rather: (a) a Saints team bobbing along in League One that you could afford to watch or (b) a Saints team storming towards the Premiership that you can't afford to watch. Intersting conundrum

..

Stu - so, with respect, are you suggesting that Cortese/Liebherr have no idea how to run a self-sustaining business and therefore that their recent pricing decisions are based on pure naivity?

Hi Stu - rest assured, I don't want to fall out over this as you are one of the posters I most respect on here, but I would be surprised if the lack of access to short term 0% credit applied to a "large majority of Saints fans" I'd be interested to hear where you get your "large majority" stats from (genuinely). What do you mean by 'large majority'? 55%? 70%? 80%?

But getting "0%" credit isn't a bad thing per se as long as it is managed properley by the individual. If people were advocating that taking out a (say) 36% credit card arrangement was the way to get a Saints season ticket then, yes, that would be irresponsible, but a properley managed 0% arrangement is hardly going to trouble the world financial crisis.

I'm not 'rich' by any stretch of the imagination but whenever I move from one 0% credit card to another I typically get 'offered' £11k credit limit. I would be surprised if any 'wage earner' would get offered a credit facility less than the price of an SFC season ticket

What are these "stealth" charges? All charges seems quite transparent and up front as far as I can tell.

Yes, you astutely identify me as a PAYG customer. Of course, as a consumer, I'd rather pay as little as I can get away with for any commodity that I purchase, but I equally understand the economics of running a 'self-sustaining' sporting venture (aka Southampton Football Club) and if the extra "£x" I'm being asked to 'invest' in my club means we get to the 'end game' quicker than if we trundle along on average League One income ad-infinitum then I think it is a price worth paying. I can't believe for one minute than Cortese has increased the cost of attending a Saints game as a purely vindictive exercise. He will have done it based on sound business reasoning and for this fact alone (that the club is being run on sound business principles) I am eternally grateful after the financial mis-management of the last decade....

The 'problem' with extending "lines of credit" to unsuitable customers is not really a fair comparison to ceredit worthy people taking out a 0% credit card. It is prefectly reasonable to loan 'credit worthy' people money at 0% without getting anywhere near perpetuating the 'trouble in the recent past' whereby credit was dished out willy-nilly to anyone who wanted it.

This whole 'argument' is slightly amusing as I remember posting on a "Plastic Fans Vs Real Fans" thread a year or so ago that it was the 'Pay As You Go" fans that brought more money into the club than Season Ticket holders as the former will ultimately pay more over the course of a season than the latter. I believe that Cortese has simply latched onto this fact from a business persepective and thus made it more likely that people will "Pay As You Go" rather than buy a Season Ticket. I thus applaud Cortese for his Business Acumen

I used to be a member of the German Sausage Appreciation Society (GSAS) message board a few years back. I once came second in their wurst post of the year award.

Hi - Cheers for the info - I was thinking about the one-off per match price rather than for a whole season. I think the £1,200 someone quoted above sounds about right from memory.

No, I should be the one apologising for stoking things up :-) We all love each other really.