Unbelievable Jeff

Necrophilia also counts B.

People should go watch the NFL, then you'd find out about expensive tickets.

Not really, cos they know now!

Exactly. You read all these sycophantic messages pining for "the German way" without even knowing what it is. This is what happens when people blindly listen to the British press, who we all know will fit the figures and facts to suit whichever agenda they have.

Yes, but shouldn't be for a club of Dortmund size and stature. Bayern don't have the same structure and they don't suffer from a lack of fans (perhaps due to the size of Munich and smaller ground). But the biggest thing about Dortmund, and this is the thing, is that their tickets aren't actually THAT cheap. They have very few that are cheap and most go for around the 45 to 50 euro price, even for games against, for example, Hannover. Look on their website to confirm. €47.20 for behind the goal, midway up.

I don't disagree, but it's about supply and demand, and the factvthat by reducing prices you can't guarantee people would come back. If I was to pay 27 instead of 32 per game it would not make any difference to me and whether I attended.

But that's the point, with our fanbase seemingly indifferent to whether we are 8th or 18th, they have based the pricing structure on not getting full stadiums, but maximising the money out of say 30,000. Selling 30,000 at 30 a ticket makes the club 2 million more than 32,000 at 25 a ticket over a season.

Plus take into account that they are the second biggest club in Germany, get 20,000 more fans to every single game than any other team in the country, yet consistently sell their best 2 players EVERY year to balance the books. They may get cheaper tickets, but they have to make up for those losses in revenue a different way.

So the only reason you have decided to stop going is price? Not the 400 mile round trip to every home game?

It's close enough to be called Birmingham. By the way, Stoke and West Brom don't sell out every week, so it's obviously not working that well...

Of course it's not. I'm appalled (but not surprised) that people don't understand the basic economics of running a succesful football club, the peaks and troughs of a season, and think that the club are THAT amateurish when it comes to setting prices.

No, but Stoke and that part of Brum are much poorer. The clubs don't just guess the prices, they use complex algorithms to work out the amount to maximise revenues.

Wages might well be though. Unfortunately saying something isn't x times better than something else doesn't make any sense as standards costs rise exponentially for an small increase in quality. For instance Bale isn't 20 times better than Lambert.

To be fair, they aren't wrong. Plus the areas are poorer.

Are St Pauli still in the 1st division (as opposed to the Bundesliga)? Went a few years ago, had a great time.

The issue isn't with ticket prices, the issue is with identifying talent earlier in a players life cycle, and being able to pay less for them and pay less wages. See Lallana and Tadic as a good example. People always compare us to Germany, but their wages are significantly lower than their equivalent in the the EPL.

But when a company is making a loss and borrowing money you have to justify that loss - the banks won't lend money just because they want to fill the stadium. Plus you can't guarantee that would even fill the stadium for games against Stoke, QPR and the like.

I'm not sure that's true, not for first world countries - the issue is if it can mutate into a airborne virus.

I went for about 80% in my simple guess. Did 30000 x 600, it's probably on average quite a bit more.

But the point is the fans AREN'T being fleeced. If the money was going into the owners pockets or being paid out in dividends then fair enough, but it's not, it's going towards balancing the books. The issue is the wages that get paid and the prices paid for players. We have people complaining about 'only' getting £16m for an 18 year old right back, and then in the next breath complaining that ticket prices are too high.

So instead of a club making a 6m loss, you propose they make a 10 or 12m loss to make sure we fill the stadiums. There is NO way an overdraft facilitator would allow that.

Matchday revenue must be worth about £25m a year to Saints as a guess, whereas tv will be worth about £70m. Hardly a drop in the ocean is it? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26365955

And you don't think that 80m was taken into account. Let's wait until the end of this financial year and we'll see how the clubs have done financially before saying whether the price increase was correct or not.

But the need to maximise revenues is due to the high wages paid by the clubs. Clubs use price optimisation software as most companies do. It's not about full stadiums. It's about maximising matchday revenues.

I find this the most annoying day of the year. People's faux anger and outrage at the price of football is ridiculous, especially as most clubs in the league tend to make losses. You want a quality product all the way down the leagues, wages are higher and thus ticket prices are higher.