stevegrant

When was that ever said?

The club will almost certainly make a profit this season despite having spent the best part of £3m in transfer fees - astronomical by this division's standards.

The main implementation cost of the online booking system was absorbed years ago, I think it cost upwards of £500k initially to set up with AudienceView, although I assume there is an ongoing licence and support contract with them which obviously has to be paid for. The phone lines only cost significant money on the rare occasions it's particularly busy, when they then use an external call centre in Dunstable, which obviously comes at a cost. At all other times, it's whatever the cost of running an 0800 number - no idea whether that's a fixed monthly/annual fee or on a pence-per-minute-per-call basis.

Online is almost certainly the quickest. You only get a choice of block and "level" rather than any individual row or seat (although personally I think you should be able to select a block and view a grid of all the available seats in that block and select an individual seat), and once it gets to the staff actually processing it, the card payment's already been done automatically so all that's needed is to print the ticket and put it in an envelope. One or two minutes per transaction at the very most.

In which case, why isn't it applied to tickets sold at the ticket office window as well? Presumably they're not unpaid volunteers, after all...

I think you have far too much time on your hands, Sir

Unless of course the club's plan is to send all tickets by recorded delivery...

Or they'd put tickets for a popular away game on sale on the Monday immediately after a home game...

Pretty sure it was in the pipeline back when we were in the top flight, the season tickets back then were cards with barcodes on. Then we got relegated, so they couldn't justify the relatively large expenditure (would guess at somewhere in the region of £300-500k to implement). Then the cards started getting cloned and forged, so they withdrew them completely.

You seem to be missing the point. Very few people are actually complaining about the price of the season ticket renewals. With the VAT rate returning to 17.5% and the desire of the club a year ago to price the tickets such that they sold lots in a short space of time before the season started, they were always going to go up a bit. £328 works out at just over £14 a game - fine by me.

This is pretty much where I stand. Without Liebherr's money, we wouldn't even be having this conversation because Saints would more than likely have ceased to exist 11 months ago. Cortese clearly played a role in that, and credit clearly goes to him for doing so. However, I'm sure I'm not alone in being slightly wary about some of the things he has said, done or been rumoured to have said or done.

He's taking after you in the "avoiding answering anything that might completely scupper the point you're trying to make" stakes.

Did he? What scandalous accusation did the Echo put the club's way? That their plans for Staplewood had been approved by the New Forest District Council, as shown by their publicly visible website, and as earlier publicised by Radio Solent and Sky Sports, among others? That Markus Liebherr was not at the Southend game, as first reported by Radio Solent? That Alan Pardew was on the verge of being sacked, as first reported by Radio Solent, and then by Sky and the Daily Mail? Although the old saying does suggest that the best form of defence is attack...

Yes, if they're booked via the phone or online. No idea.

Cheques are charged by banks at a flat rate, whereas other methods are charged as a percentage. Unless you're dealing with small amounts of money (which the club aren't), cheques are much cheaper to deposit in a business account at the bank.

American Express charge the highest fees, IIRC...

Oh, and of course if they'd announced the prices earlier, fans could have paid their instalments before the season started... no full payment = no season ticket sent out + club have part of your money anyway.

But the club are not giving you money, so that example is flawed. All you would be running off with is a book with a few vouchers in, which would be rendered worthless if the club instructed turnstile operators to refuse entry to anybody holding specific tickets. They managed to prevent any of the Daily Echo's sports reporters from gaining access to St Mary's for three months, and that wasn't affecting revenues at all...

Only with foreign clubs.

I'm sure he won't be withdrawing any cash from the business for as long as he owns it, but there's absolutely no way he won't be selling for a profit in the future if he can. That's why he invested, it was an absolute bargain with near-guaranteed profit in the medium-to-long-term if the club is run well and gets promoted.

Just had it confirmed, the £3 booking fee will apply to away tickets as well. Christ.

As far as I was aware, Calderon's contract at Brighton doesn't expire until the end of June.

Ron, some fair points, but I'm struggling to see who "wins" in this situation. The club will lose a number of season ticket holders solely because of this decision. They may gain season ticket holders elsewhere, but there's surely a higher probability of an existing season ticket holder renewing than someone buying a "new" season ticket.

Every year they've run the installment scheme, with the exception of last season, it has been done through an external finance company. As a result, the club get the money up front - albeit with the finance company taking a cut. As part of that cut, it's then their responsibility to chase up late or defaulted payments. Obviously if they want to run it the way they did last season, whereby they take card details from those who want to use the scheme, they then run the risk that they just don't get the money for various reasons.

No, the booking fee doesn't apply to season tickets, only matchday tickets.