The Kraken

I think you're entirely missing the point, and trying to start a debate about whether we could get more players inside the ground if we reduced prices. Of course we could. But it doesn't look like we're about to do that; therefore it's completely irrelevant to potential to the discussion concerning attendances and a bigger stadium. Therefore I couldn't care less about that side of the debate. What I'm talking about is our ability to sell out the ground given the current conditions of pricing. Because, before we build a bigger stadium, we should look to fill up our current one by maximising revenues. If we sold tickets for £1 a time we could probably build ourselves a 45,000 seater stadium and be close to fillin it every week. That is never going to happen; we have a pricing structure which the club have set. There may be some small devaitions from it, but in general, that's the price model. Similarly we're not going to add on 15,000 extra seats and drop prices just to fill them; that makes zero business sense. So again, its a pointless discussion over how many fans we COULD have if we reduced prices. I'm sticking to facts of how many attending fans we do have with the actual pricing structure.

Why? Would it also be hypocritical to say how well it was attended if you didn't attend, and how great Saints fans are for turning out in such numbers? You keep saying its a criticism; I see it as a comment of what the attendance was and how close to capacity it is. Good effort at putting words in my mouth; but you've misinterpreted my opinion. I've always thought SFC should analyse attendances in the PL for at least 2 or 3 years before making a decision. I've been shouted down on that before by some but I stand by my opinion; that after 2 or 3 years, if the demand is there, we should increase. Not by making a decision based on previous years from a decade ago, and not by taking a punt and hoping we'll fill a bigger stadium if we build it. So in line with that; what on earth is wrong with beginnning to monior ticket trends right now? And why are people getting so upset that we're doing it? If we were selling out every game these threads would be deemed positive; would you have a problem if I was saying "we're selling out all our games, often many days in advance, perhaps we need to accellerate the ground expansion plans?" I'm not exactly what you're driving at with all that. But if we're not selling out all of the ground for many games, and not selling all classes of tickets (i.e. corporates, goals, wings and centre) then I'm sorry but our attendances do indeed mean that is the true demand for games. If we were only not selling out the corporate areas I'd agree with you; but that's not the case, its the most expensive AND the cheapest tickets that are not selling out. In any case, demand is elastic and will change from game to game. Hence why these threads are valid to track that. I think the problem is that some people just don't the reuslts of the analysis. As I said, if these threads existed and we were selling out every game I simply cannot believe they'd attract the needless vitriol they do.

So far its both. The Man United game sold out regular seats but not corporate ones. Wigan, Villa and Fulham will have not sold out the most expensive seats (corporate) and also the cheapest seats (Chapel).

Personally I don't think you have to be at the game to comment about the attendance. And that's all it is commenting; not moaning. I was at the Villa game though, just to clarify. The whole debate about attendances is not to do with how well off against other sides we are, though. It's around if and when we'll need to increase the capacity of St. Marys. As I've said numerous times in this thread already; I've not come across many people (myself and Turkish included) who haven't agreed with the idea that we could need a bigger stadium in the upcoming years. Hardly anyone has ruled out that possibility. The questions have always been; when will that happen, if it does? And what should the new potential capacity be? As such, it's only natural that we should look to analyse what our fanbase is right now. How many times do we sell out? How far in advance of games do we sell out? If we don't sell out, how close were we? All those are questions that the club will be asking right now as they progress into an analysis of stadium capacity potential. So why on earth should fans not do the same? I don't get why you and so many others, just because we're not yet selling out, consider that to be moaning. The Man Utd game sold out regular seats nearly 2 weeks in advance; is it "moaning" to bring that up in the context of this thread? Saying that a particular attendance is "disappoiting", as I have done before, is simply a comment that I thought we'd attract more fans. It's not, as Frank's Cousin wants to dress it up, an attack on the club or Cortese.

Still more than 2,200 home seats on sale.

The corproate areas are a f*cking shambles at the moment. I've done the odd corporate game a season for a while now, and the whole experience now compared to our last stint in the PL is night and day, we've regressed very badly. To get people to spend more money on a ticket that a regular match seat you have to offer value; our corporate areas don't do that. At all. First you've got the corporate boxes. With little/no increase in quality of product, the prices have increased enormously. So from our previous PL days of having every box full to the rafters, we now have a situation where only between a quarter and a third of available boxes are actually being taken (and some of those are by contractors such as the training ground construction company who had it built into their contract to take up a box). The Terry Paine Ambassadors Suite was done away with; this was an exclusive experience for up to 150 or so people, hosted by Lawrie Mac and a clutch of former players. Tickets were way in excess of regular match prices, sometimes more than £200, yet whenever I was in there it was full to bursting (and a fantastic experience, i had my best ever day supporting Saints from there for the Sheffield United staying up last game of the season in the Championship). Then you have the complete dumbing down of the Mike Channon suite. Prices around £20 to £30 above the regular match ticket price, catering no longer included, drinks no longer included, a poorly staffed pay bar and overpriced cafe food options that, per the Aston Villa game, consisted a menu only of chicken ceasar salad wraps, hot dogs, and croque monsieurs. The interaction with players and ex-players to the lounge pre and post game just isn't working either; its all being run exceptionally poorly. Its no surprise the corporate areas are empty; they aren't truly corporate, they're just massively overpriced for (the football aside) an exceptionally bland experience. You'd be better off going for a nice meal and drinks in town and then going to the match rather than choosing a club option. Until it all gets fixed we'll keep seeing empty seats; and the corporate areas are hugely important to a club for boosting revenue streams without the cost of putting in significant banks of extra seats.

Frank's idea wasn't dynamic pricing; Frank wanted to have a broader range of pricing, extra cheap tickets offset by extra expensive tickets. Sadly for Frank, the current model at the club is proving that doesn't work. Against Man Utd for instance we sold out all of the regular seats, but were around half full in the corporate suites and boxes (i.e. the expensive seats). Fans may be more inclined to pay for cheaper seats; but what is absolutely clear is that they are very much disinclined to pay for the costly seats right now. The only way we'd fill a bigger stadium right now would be a price drop; any offset with other higher ticket prices simply wouldn't work, we'd just have much bigger empty corporate areas were that the case.

What happened to your old one?

Exactly. It's very odd that so many people are getting themselves so hot under the collar about an internet thread. Don't like it? Fine, don't read it and don't post in it, the thread title is pretty accurate in describing what you'll find inside. The thing that all these whingers seem to miss is that most Saints fans who have entered the debate accept that there may be a need for a bigger stadium in the future. I've barely seen anyone that has said we will never need a bigger stadium, and if can push on we may need a bigger capacity within the next 5 or 10 years. With that in mind, it's pretty bloody important to find out what our fanbase is NOW; not on some figures from 10 years ago when we last in this league. Right now. You can bet the club are keeping a close eye on all our attendances and how quickly we sell tickets, so why should it be taboo for the fans to do so? No doubt if we were selling out every week these exact threads would be seen as a positive and not one person would be moaning about how boring and anti-Cortese they are.

Who is doing this Marco?

Manji accusing others of having an agenda; I think my ironyometer just exploded! :lol::lol:

Does it make a difference? I guess it does to the 20 or so who've been let go, yes. But being as it doesn't matter to you in any way, lets just move on. And for God's sake lets not talk about it on a message board, that would be awful.

Well I'm not sure why you brought Cortese into it. I didn't even mention him. And I doubt he takes that much of a direct input into HR issues such as this. It was a simple question. Do you or don't you think these people deserved at least to be sat in a room together and told face to face that their services were no longer required? Personally, I think the least someone in the HR team could have done was spend 5 minutes of their precious time to tell them face to face. If you think otherwise, that it was too much effort and that those with over 20 years service didn't merit that as they're only support staff, then fine, we'll just disagree.

Good rant Frankie. Answer the question I posed above you, would you? Do you think that laying someone off who has more than 20 years service with a bland letter is acceptable, and that SFC needn't have wasted their time telling them face to face?

Sorry just so I understand. Do you think that laying someone off who has more than 20 years service with a bland letter is acceptable, and that SFC needn't have wasted their time telling them face to face? Sorry, I think that's a p*ss poor way to do business.

OK, I'll defer to better information. Must admit I'd not thought it would anywhere near that number, but there we go. In any case, my initial comments were not about whether the decision to get rid of the staff was the right one or the wrong one, merely the manner in which it was conducted.

Hmmm. I did bucket rattling down at St. Mary's before the Villa game, I started around 1ish and went up to kick off. I was right by a programme seller; there was never a queue for the time I was there. He didn't sell very many programmes at all compared to total attendance. The 800 programmes sold mentioned was, I'm guessing, not entirely accurate. There's simply no way that the chap I was by sold any more than 50 programmes on his own. Your fag packet maths suggest around 1 in 4 people buy a programme. Nope, I can't see it being anywhere near that figure. Do a straw poll on here for how many people buy a programme, I'd be surprised if it was 5%.

Best in service both on and off the pitch. I'm trying to get on board with that Hypo but my Dell-sized mentality keeps getting in the way.

I think you might need to revisit some maths there. 20 staff have been let go, 800 programmes sold each is 16,000 programmes sold. Just for the staff who've been let go.

You dredged this thread up just to come back with that?

Christ, they're absolutely desperate for some deflection from their own circus act down there, aren't they? :lol: And please don't tell me that SOSPompey is the actual SOS Pompey? I can't believe it would be tha actual SOS Pompey, surely? Because that would reflect pretty poorly on the sheer unprofessional nature of the happy band of renegades they have down there trying to "save" their own club.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-19848963 Whatever you think of the decision, the manner in which these people have been told their services are no longer required is completely unprofessional and direspectful.

What has Dig Dig got to do with it?

It would never have worked;the logical way to get there from the motorway (or even from town) would have had traffic coming down Britannia Road; with Saints games every other Saturday (presumably a snow-dome's busiest day) it would be a traffic nightmare. You can't really expect people to park in town and carry their skis, boots and ski gear for a 15-20 minute walk!