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Season tickets, 2011/12


sotonian

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I just to think this, but am not sure I do now.

 

Last year, with tickets on sale late, zilch marketing and no installment plan, sales were really impressive.

 

And they could have been even better if they hadn't refused Nick Illingsworth's payment :-)

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So, no immediate announcement of pricing, installment plans etc. Thought the club would have struck while the iron is hot so to speak, with all the 'extra' fans in on sat I think the longer they wait the more new potential STH's will lose interest.

So will it be fri or mon then? Preferably this month would be nice!!

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I don't see much incentive for the club to change what they did this year. NC's plan to sell fairly expensive STs in a a very narrow window, no half STs, no late STs, push hard on the day prices and add a tkt tax appears to have come up completely trumps - base crowds of 18-20k, rising to 25k for the bigger games, chuck in Brighton and Walsall, chuck in a cup game with Man U and playing just about all our other cup games at home - and NC can be seen as either a brilliant general or a lucky general!

 

I guess we will see STs available in June and July only at 475-590, and day tickets at 24-30 plus the booking fee - take it or leave it!

 

The club will see last season as a massive justification of last season's pricing policy; we will buy two or three decent players, we will do pretty well in the championship particularly at home, we will get crowds of 22-24, more if we are winning.

 

I will prob go to 10 homes and 10 aways (and still not be able to get a ticket for the away leg of the play-off semi).... Boooooo.

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last year they were announced on 31st may and were on sale for renewals for 1 month.

 

saints / cortese do not want season ticket holders.

 

they want more pay on the day at higher rates.

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I am thinking of getting a season ticket, but I will probably only be able to go to 6/7 home games, but I will be looking to let friends use it for lower than the price I paid for it, sat £15 a game. Is this allowed as I do not want to waste my money and at least I can get a little bit back in the meantime.

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Have they actually come out and said that then?

 

IT does seem to be the case though. Compared to the vast majority of other clubs, both this year and last, we really haven't pushed or encouraged fans to get season tickets at all. I assume someone at the club has some sort of financial model that shows the club is likely to make more money from fans paying on the day (not surprising considering the price + booking fee), than shifting a load of season tickets. I guess that model is based on the club having a really good season and demand remaining high and growing throughout the year, as oppossed to a club expecting a rubbish year that hopes/needs to get as much money upfront as possible before s**t team performances drain away a lot of the demand.

 

Makes sense financially, just a pity, as I reckon our crowds could have been even higher this year with a positive campaign to sell season tickets upfront.

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I am expecting an increase of £60 for adult centre which is just above 15%. That will take into account the changes in vat (was it 15% when we purchased last season - now 20%), Inflation running at about 4% and uplift for Championship football.

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last year they were announced on 31st may and were on sale for renewals for 1 month.

 

saints / cortese do not want season ticket holders.

Utter cr@p

Why sell season tickets at all then?

 

Posts like this one make me wish for an 'ignore' feature from the tapatalk app...

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Of course they are not going to. It's quite obvious though isn't it, last season they made it as difficult as possible for people to buy a season ticket.

 

I thought that was becuase they wanted to install automated ticket gates?

 

I'm not saying people are wrong but if the club didn't want to sell ST why don't they just say so? The club are under no obligation to sell ST if they don't want to. I just don't hold with the idea that they'd just make it really difficult to put people off when they could just say "we are no longer selling season tickets" and have done with it .

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Utter cr@p

Why sell season tickets at all then?

 

Posts like this one make me wish for an 'ignore' feature from the tapatalk app...

 

Why is it crap? To me it appears obvious and agree with JRM. They have done zero to encourage season ticket sales, last season it was as difficult as possible to buy one. Sales announced 31st of May with a month to renew, then everyone else had a month to buy one with no installment plan, which was removed without notice or miss the boat. for the average bloke on the street £450 or so is a lot of money to find in one go. No half season tickets, no pro rata arrangements, that doesn't sound like a business that was encouraging season ticket sales and i dont see it changing this year.

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Why is it crap? To me it appears obvious and agree with JRM. They have done zero to encourage season ticket sales, last season it was as difficult as possible to buy one. Sales announced 31st of May with a month to renew, then everyone else had a month to buy one with no installment plan, which was removed without notice or miss the boat. for the average bloke on the street £450 or so is a lot of money to find in one go. No half season tickets, no pro rata arrangements, that doesn't sound like a business that was encouraging season ticket sales and i dont see it changing this year.

 

I wouldn't bother with this clown. Further up the thread he says "I guess until you know what you've spent on players, you don't know what your costs are and how much you need to charge." - because of course, that's how season ticket pricing/releases work :lol:

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I refuse to believe that anybody with a financial background would ignore the possibility of around £6million (I've taken 15,000 x £400 as a guesstimate!) paid up front !

Pay on the day is unpredictable and much more difficult to plan for !

Sure mistakes were made last year but there is nothing to suggest that NC is financially naive !!

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I thought that was becuase they wanted to install automated ticket gates?

 

I'm not saying people are wrong but if the club didn't want to sell ST why don't they just say so? The club are under no obligation to sell ST if they don't want to. I just don't hold with the idea that they'd just make it really difficult to put people off when they could just say "we are no longer selling season tickets" and have done with it .

 

Because by stopping season tickets all together would kick up far too much of a fuss amongst Saints core fanbase. Its not about stopping all season tickets, but their preference is clearly towards pushing towards paying on the day/game by game, as it seems to make the club more money. There are a fair few who might get a season ticket/might not, depending on easy it is, how much available cash they have at the time. These are the people who have been discouraged and will be paying on a match by match basis, supposedly making the club more money.

 

Surely you can't deny that last season and so far in this pre-season, the club has not really promoted season tickets, certainly compared to previous years and compared to what the vast majority of other clubs in the country do? - Or would you disagree with that?

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I refuse to believe that anybody with a financial background would ignore the possibility of around £6million (I've taken 15,000 x £400 as a guesstimate!) paid up front !

Pay on the day is unpredictable and much more difficult to plan for !

Sure mistakes were made last year but there is nothing to suggest that NC is financially naive !!

 

We're sort of in agreement, as I definitely agree that NC is not financially naive, I don't doubt he's pretty shrewd. And that's my point, he has worked out, that for a successful promotion chasing, match winning side, where demand for attending games is very high, that getting people paying match by match full whack, plus booking fee makes the club more money than season tickets. There will alsways be a hadcore that ensure they get their season tickets no matter what, but there are a fair few thousand floating between getting a season ticket or just sticking to paying match by match and it is these people that the policies effect.

 

I hope I am proved wrong and we get a great package of deals for people to stump and commit to filling St Marys for the whole of next season.

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Utter cr@p

Why sell season tickets at all then?

 

Posts like this one make me wish for an 'ignore' feature from the tapatalk app...

 

Well go on then ignore it kev you plonker.

 

Go ahead and explain to us all what saints have done in the last couple of years to ENCOURAGE season ticket sales.

 

Last year we had a huge potential to sell more – captive audience after the 50k that went to JPT final, positive outlook to the new season, but no, as Turkish pointed out it was kept hush hush, no marketing, just a official site announcement late on 31st may saying you had a month to renew with no instalments, I was on holiday for 2 weeks in june last year and had to borrow money to get mine.

This year we had a full house last game of the season, big programme sales, a lot of website hits, if you as a business had any intention of selling season tickets that would be your key opportunity to raise awareness and advertise.

As I have mentioned before a mate of mine tried to buy 6 season tickets for him and mates after the Plymouth game, prepared to pay full price, but NO they could not buy them – how is that a good way to treat your supporters?

I am also on a number of clubs mailing lists due to buying tickets for games as a neutral a few times, almost all of them have sent out mailings advertising season ticket sales, when you can buy them, at what cost, Fulham do a mailing, Reading have had theirs on sale for a few weeks and committed to keeping the same price whether they get promoted or not and have subsequently had very good sales.

 

Saints, in my opinion, are complacent, and have adapted the business plan of best case scenario saints do well next year, high crowds of match by match purchases, paying the £3 ticket tax = more income generated from the fans.

 

Season ticket holders are the lifeblood of football clubs, they should be treated with the service that regular customers deserve.

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Agreed, if anything it was the previous lot who were - not doing anything about people who were cancelling their direct debit and still going to games.

And you know that happened?

 

Last season's instalment plan wasn't done under the direct debit scheme (because of the timing of the takeover, there simply wasn't time to set it up in that way), so they relied on the goodwill of supporters to pay the money. There was a grand total of twenty-eight people who failed to pay the full amount over the course of the season. There were a (larger) number of people who had a payment missed either because the card they provided had expired or because the club kept changing which day of the month they were taking the money, but a quick phone call or email resolved the problem.

 

In previous years, the responsibility for collecting the money fell on an external finance company (which I think ultimately went through Saints Financial Services when it still existed) and it was set up under the national Direct Debit scheme, whereby the company has a signed agreement from the customer and they will keep trying to take the DD until it's successful. I guess there's a bit of psychology involved there as well, if your money's going to a finance company, you're more likely to ensure it gets paid, even though I don't think these schemes are in any way linked to your credit rating.

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Because by stopping season tickets all together would kick up far too much of a fuss amongst Saints core fanbase. Its not about stopping all season tickets, but their preference is clearly towards pushing towards paying on the day/game by game, as it seems to make the club more money. There are a fair few who might get a season ticket/might not, depending on easy it is, how much available cash they have at the time. These are the people who have been discouraged and will be paying on a match by match basis, supposedly making the club more money.

 

Surely you can't deny that last season and so far in this pre-season, the club has not really promoted season tickets, certainly compared to previous years and compared to what the vast majority of other clubs in the country do? - Or would you disagree with that?

 

I'd agree they could do a better job on ST promotion. I put that down to not being sure what league we were going to be in both seasons (even last season there was an outside chance of play offs until quite late) rather than an out right attempt to discourage the selling of ST tickets.

 

The club could have gone down the early bird route on cheap ST but if/when we'd been promoted they'd of lost out on being able to charge more for being in a higher league.

 

If you are right pushing towards paying per game is a very risky move. Possibly more money in the long run but at the risk of a big drop in money if the season goes pear shaped and people decide to do something else on saturdays 6m up front or a possible 7.5m (or only 5m if season goes tits up) later on seems like a pretty striaght forward choice to me.

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Utter cr@p

Why sell season tickets at all then?

 

Posts like this one make me wish for an 'ignore' feature from the tapatalk app...

why dont you have the abilty to ignore it on ur own? actually there is all the reason to believe the club is pushing for more single sales rather than ST ..

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Think it is a sound argument to say that clubs in a financially tighter situation than we are (all speculation aside!!!) are likely to rely heavily on ST sales, after a summer of relatively little income/activity. This is certainly my experience from working at a football club, albeit non-league. A club more financially stable can afford to play the longer game, not needing the initial hit from large ST sales at the start of the season, and hope to earn more in the long-run by on the day sales, particularly if the team is performing well, which NC would expect us to be doing.

 

Also, with or without marketing, it is pretty safe to say that we will still receive a substantial amount of income from ST sales this year - at the very least i would expect almost everyone to renew, and at a slightly increased cost.

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Think it is a sound argument to say that clubs in a financially tighter situation than we are (all speculation aside!!!) are likely to rely heavily on ST sales, after a summer of relatively little income/activity. This is certainly my experience from working at a football club, albeit non-league. A club more financially stable can afford to play the longer game, not needing the initial hit from large ST sales at the start of the season, and hope to earn more in the long-run by on the day sales, particularly if the team is performing well, which NC would expect us to be doing.

 

Also, with or without marketing, it is pretty safe to say that we will still receive a substantial amount of income from ST sales this year - at the very least i would expect almost everyone to renew, and at a slightly increased cost.

 

Yep, definitely reckon that is part of it as well, we're now as desperate for and reliant on getting as much money up front as possible. And yes, goes without saying that after promotion and a great finish to the season we'll sell plenty of season tickets anyway.

 

I just think we could do more. Hopefully I'm proved wrong.

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I'd agree they could do a better job on ST promotion. I put that down to not being sure what league we were going to be in both seasons (even last season there was an outside chance of play offs until quite late) rather than an out right attempt to discourage the selling of ST tickets.

 

The club could have gone down the early bird route on cheap ST but if/when we'd been promoted they'd of lost out on being able to charge more for being in a higher league.

 

If you are right pushing towards paying per game is a very risky move. Possibly more money in the long run but at the risk of a big drop in money if the season goes pear shaped and people decide to do something else on saturdays 6m up front or a possible 7.5m (or only 5m if season goes tits up) later on seems like a pretty striaght forward choice to me.

 

But there are a number of ways around all that. Why not have figures/prices waiting to go so that at the final whistle after the Walsall game they could have done a big promotion then, they'd have know at least from the Plymouth game (if not before) that we were up, really cashed in on the buzz around the city and the club. Wouldn't have been to much of a risk to prepare that.

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But there are a number of ways around all that. Why not have figures/prices waiting to go so that at the final whistle after the Walsall game they could have done a big promotion then, they'd have know at least from the Plymouth game (if not before) that we were up, really cashed in on the buzz around the city and the club. Wouldn't have been to much of a risk to prepare that.

 

I agree, I just don't think that by not doing so, it is a sign the club is looking to drive out ST.

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last year they were announced on 31st may and were on sale for renewals for 1 month.

 

saints / cortese do not want season ticket holders.

 

they want more pay on the day at higher rates.

 

Makes no sense at all. Rather than not sell any season tickets at all why not simply hike the price of them? I reckon a good proportion of season ticket holders miss a few games each season - these games would produce no revenue at all from these people if they paid as they went. If the price is right (from the club's point of view) it would be utterly senseless to discourage (or withdraw) the season ticket option. I smell conspiracy theory here.

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Makes no sense at all. Rather than not sell any season tickets at all why not simply hike the price of them? I reckon a good proportion of season ticket holders miss a few games each season - these games would produce no revenue at all from these people if they paid as they went. If the price is right (from the club's point of view) it would be utterly senseless to discourage (or withdraw) the season ticket option. I smell conspiracy theory here.

 

Not really. All the season ticket holders that I know pretty much do every game or at least their season ticket is used every game. The club would make more money from a fan doing say 18 games at £25 a match than they would from that fan being a season ticket holder.

 

Or if you know better than us, please explain why we have FAR less promotion of season tickets than any other clubs?

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Can someone please remind me how much an adult ST cost last season in the Chapel please? It's gone from the OS now.

 

Cheers

I think it was £338. My best guess is that it will be £398 for next season. That matches what Norwich charged last season.

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Not really. All the season ticket holders that I know pretty much do every game or at least their season ticket is used every game. The club would make more money from a fan doing say 18 games at £25 a match than they would from that fan being a season ticket holder.

 

Or if you know better than us, please explain why we have FAR less promotion of season tickets than any other clubs?

 

Well I reckon that as you say there are indeed plenty of people who go to every game or at least get their ticket used. Equally, I know of people who buy a ticket each year and easily miss up to half a dozen or so matches during the season (work, family commitments etc.). Anyway my main point was why not simply raise the season ticket price rather than this alleged "cloak and dagger" anti- season ticket scam? People are then free to take it or leave it.

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I was under the impression a season ticket last season allowed quite a decent discount compared to paying individually every game,i worked it out start of season and was around £15 a game for an adult to watch at one of the best stadiums around. To suggest,therefore,that cortese doesnt want st holders is mad. If this was the case they would work out at no discount to encourage ppl not to buy them at all surely? Or am i just being stupidly logical?

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I was under the impression a season ticket last season allowed quite a decent discount compared to paying individually every game,i worked it out start of season and was around £15 a game for an adult to watch at one of the best stadiums around. To suggest,therefore,that cortese doesnt want st holders is mad. If this was the case they would work out at no discount to encourage ppl not to buy them at all surely? Or am i just being stupidly logical?

 

Spot on. I think you'll need to use fewer syllables to convince some of the conspiracy boneheads though.

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Well I reckon that as you say there are indeed plenty of people who go to every game or at least get their ticket used. Equally, I know of people who buy a ticket each year and easily miss up to half a dozen or so matches during the season (work, family commitments etc.). Anyway my main point was why not simply raise the season ticket price rather than this alleged "cloak and dagger" anti- season ticket scam? People are then free to take it or leave it.

 

Because if they were to significantly raise the price of a season ticket to a cost that the majority of long-term season ticket holders would find off-putting they would have to put it up to such a high amount it would cause a real fuss. Much easier/cleverer just letting the matter drift, come out with a few lame excuses for not contiuing the installment plan etc.

 

I'm not having a go at Cortese for this, I think it's really good business sense, Saints must have made a load of money this season with the high amounts paying for one-off games and as a season ticket holder I got a good deal (plus the less people with season tickets, the better it is for those of us that do when it comes to prioritising for popular away games!).

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Spot on. I think you'll need to use fewer syllables to convince some of the conspiracy boneheads though.

 

you dont get it. this business sense is similar to the photographer ban, changing conventional ways of selling to a more profitable model, they will not actively "get rid of" season tickets, they will just not make it easy or as attractive to get them, the principle motivation of this is to make more money from the pockets of you and I, the fan.

 

and you can leave out the bonehead comments

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Well I reckon that as you say there are indeed plenty of people who go to every game or at least get their ticket used. Equally, I know of people who buy a ticket each year and easily miss up to half a dozen or so matches during the season (work, family commitments etc.). Anyway my main point was why not simply raise the season ticket price rather than this alleged "cloak and dagger" anti- season ticket scam? People are then free to take it or leave it.

 

Oh and if a fan was to miss "half a dozen" games the club would still be making more out of them paying match by match than as a season ticket holder.

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and if you beleive the club do want to sell season tickets, please explain what steps they have followed to do so?

 

They make it very cheap for renewals. They want as much money up front so they can plan the financial budgets for the season. Ok not as much as we have needed the money on the past as we are a cash rich club. I have no idea what they have up their sleeve to promote the season tickets. We will find out, but I do remember them banging on about it pre-season 2010/11!!

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They make it very cheap for renewals. They want as much money up front so they can plan the financial budgets for the season. Ok not as much as we have needed the money on the past as we are a cash rich club. I have no idea what they have up their sleeve to promote the season tickets. We will find out, but I do remember them banging on about it pre-season 2010/11!!

 

they did not make it "very cheap" we were still most expensive in the league.

and the club did not bang on about it it pre-season 2010/11, they hardly mentioned it, they didn't even notify existing season ticket holders when they could buy, people only knew by official website

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Well that had better be absolute rubbish...

 

 

It certainly wouldn't make much sense when we have an unused capacity of about 9 or 10K per game.

I think the STs will have a ceiling level of about 18K or so,which will probably be enough.I could see concessions being restricted though.

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Email recieved from TO earlier.

 

'We currently do not have any information on season tickets for next season. We are hoping to have more information towards the end of this month. Please keep checking our website for any updates.'

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