2010/11 Season Tickets

[jayohaitchenn]

The games and corporate deals are advertised heavily in my office.

[OOH! SHAUN TAYLOR]

Years and years of being a bit shit/very shit with just the very occasional decent season takes a heavy toll and it takes a hell of a lot to get the support back and the only way to do that is winning on the field week in week out, season in season out. As has been alluded to though, the club is now set up for that to happen and the support will gradually come back. Like it or not though, it takes time.

[pauld]

Wow! What a great offer!

[herthab]

Great offer which will hopefully see the Townend more populated and noisier nxt season.

I won't be moving from the DRS though. I like to see both halves of the ame.

[Batch]

I would move back to the Town End, but now the lad has started coming he wouldn't see anything from there. SO its DRS again for me. For £20 less than last year. Stunning.

I just hope the recently apathetic lost Town support will back this deal in numbers.

[Spy]

I doubt many people will move back to the town end from DRS. People complained about the atmosphere but those people don't care enough to move back.

[nochee]

I doubt many people will move back to the town end from DRS. People complained about the atmosphere but those people don't care enough to move back.

I dont think so either. I dont think it matters tho, as long as the DRS becomes the new singing stand. There was a 10 minute spell between the DRS and the Town end during the pikey game where the singing and atmosphere was brilliant.

[Simon Pieman]

Si, I don't think you'll lose your seat but you'll obviously have to pay more after March 15th.

I don't mind about that so much

Whilst the prices are good I don't think they're low enough to see the levels of increase the board want. Personally I don't think the Board expect it either, which is why the prices are more or less the same.

The good thing is the town end offer. We'll see if it gets a good response from the fans or not.

[Spencer_White]

The board are raising the stakes with this sort of stuff. Spending big and keeping  season ticket prices so low.

Bit worried to be honest. I think the 5,000 they got the other season is about the best were going to get in the current climate. Wonder if they should change tack and try to increase matchday sales?

I can see the board getting pissed off with our support stagnating. All Il say is that they need to think long and hard about the proposed redevelopment. You cant just press on and spend millions if the attendances just wont rise. Have to say, at this time in 2004 our support was much more passionate and much more determined. Maybe Im just at that sort of age where your mates get bored of football, but a lot of them have fallen away. Some of them have even taken to supporting Premiership clubs, which isnt a reflection on the club, just shows a lack of class on their behalf IMO.

It does have a chance of succeeding though. You cant beat seasons like this when you are well in the mix for promotion at the end of the season. It is a genuine rush, and it gets people out. Thinking back to early 2004, when we played QPR, if we had won we could have nicked an automatic spot, if they won it all but guaranteed their promotion. The feeling that morning was unbelievable. Better than any drug for me. Thats the sort of emotion the board could have on their side if the rest of this campaign goes right.

[Iffy's Onion Bhaji]

It's actually a £20 reduction all round if you take away the TE offer. It's a great gesture from the board tbh because the STs from the last 2 seasons have been priced quite fairly. Given the fact we seem to be building a decent side for this level I think it would be silly for any non ST regular to not take up the offer. But of course there are loads of factors that come into peoples mind when deciding to buy or not. Money being the first. I think a lo will depend on how the season ends up. Think we'll get the 1k TE ones sold as they'll go to ST holders already in the TE or people who want to move from the main stands.

[Nemo]

"But if we find that there are only 5,500-6,000 fans who can commit to this, then we'll be big enough to accept that we have to cut our cloth accordingly and inevitably that would lead to playing football at a lower level again which none of us would want."

Quote from the Jeremy Wray article on the Official Site is very interesting.

Looks like they're hoping for a big, big increase in Season Ticket sales from this, 5500-6000 would be the best season ticket sales for many a year and they'd consider that dissapointing. It's kind of exciting, but also worrying as I don't trust the Town itself to get behind this in force. That said, I'm certainly considering buying a ST despite the fact that I'm not sure whether or not I'll be able to make most games, so who knows. I hope we sell out every week, doesn't mean it's going to happen.

[Samdy Gray]

I'd be extremely surprised if we even sold more than 5,000. Going by Wray's comments, I think the board may have made a huge fuck up with this.

[LucienSanchez]

At a lower level? Their '3 years to championship' plan seems to have taken a number of changes

[Don Rogers Shop]

I genuinly believe the leeds game is going to be a massive influence on season tickets for next year.Most who go on tuesday would of gone to Fulham and if they see another good performance i think they will come to more games this season and next.

[Oaksey Moonraker]

I think this is a generous offer by the club and that £199 or £259 it is still good value compared with the best part of £350/360 that we used to pay during the Wills/Diamandia era to watch some pretty dire football.

We do need a big take up on this for Fitton, Wray and all to continue to pump in money to this club. I have done some number crunching on this and it's interesting how much season ticket revenue contributes to overall revenue and how much the club is reliant on other income.

Last season 2008/9 we had gate revenue of £2,093,428 across 23 league and 1 cup game or £87,226 a game or roughly £12 per person per game on an average gate of 7433. Yet the wage bill last year was nearly £4M and the total expenditure was £6.5M and we lost £3m last season. That may well have been paying off old debts and tax bills etc.

If we had take up on the offer of say 8000 that would only bring in around £2m based on 1000 TE at £199 and 7000 at £259 is another £1,813,000 (will ignore the concessions for the purpose of the calculation). That is still only half the wage bill and another £4.5M short of total expenditure. We have £6m due to creditors in this year but that includes the St Modwen settlement £1,475,000 and the CVA which has been paid by not formally signed off so can't be cleared from the accounts yet.

Where we do get the money in is on the walk up/away fans and they would probably be worth 2000 a game based on the 5500 STs sold in the 2008/9 promo and the average gate of 7433. At £20 a time to average out the concessions that would give another £920,000. We also pulled in another £1.4m on the FA/FL money, sponsorship and commercial activities. That combined would cover the wage bill as it was in 2008/9 but this has probably risen again this year with the likes of Douglas, Lucas etc coming in.

What this does highlight is that how much a club we will be reliant on the board to keep funding us in the immediate future until we can grow our revenue from other sources. We need to find roughly another £3M a season to break even and that's where the arguement around a new ground to generate commercial activities comes in. Some of this year's expenditure would have come the Cox money.

It's where those who say Fitton and Co should put more money in are really frustrating as they are funding this with £7m already lent to the club and in the short term funding £3m a year. I know they are wealthy but it would be like selling your house for £250,000 and someone asking you to give £25k to the club, would these people do that?.

Based on our average gate we are a top end League 1 club and until we start to get 10,000 a game we shouldn't be thinking about the championship. We would need probably 15,000 a game to be financially competitive with the other clubs in that league. It is a bigger league in terms of profile from our 1990's days in it so the people of Swindon, Wilts and other areas may well start to back the team. Let's hope we get there to have this debate again.