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Realistic season ticket target 5k

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diehardmariner
February 20, 2020, 10:20am
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Quoted from rancido


I agree that temporary toilets would solve one problem but the overriding aim must be a new ground. Anything spent on BP is wasted money IMO. If we don't get a new ground then future ambitions to the level our club can perform at will be severely limited. Limited capacity, limited parking, limited facilities etc and the list goes on. Any redevelopment of BP would need the support of the council in planning permission and this is not an automatic thing just because we have an existing ground. I think a lot of of people have either forgotten or weren't aware that when a new ground was first mooted all those year's ago it was as a result of a discussion with the council of the time. The club wanted to develop BP and the council expressed their preference for a new ground and offered their help in getting one.


Yes, I completely agree that moving grounds has to be our main aim.  You'll do well to find many people who disagree with that.

But your final point highlights the danger of putting all our eggs in that one basket.  If the wind changes and the council either has another overhaul and/or they change their mind, we're back to square one.  Trying to fight against the tide to get our new stadium built but without local backing for it.  

Over 25 years since we started talking about a new stadium and we're no further down the line.  Based on that alone, it's incredibly optimistic to think we'll be in our new ground anytime soon.  If we're in the new ground within 5 years I'll be very impressed.   Within that time period even if we managed to attract an extra 1,000 season ticket holders each season that's a lot of guaranteed income each year that we're missing out on.

In my opinion, which I accept is far from informed or that of someone who knows what they're on about, we can't afford to just wait on the new ground and hope it solves all our problems.  Even if we move to a new all-singing, all-dancing stadium it doesn't guarantee a sustained increase in ticket sales. We still have to get everything else right around it.  That includes decent catering, decent access.  Let's use the time we've got left at Blundell Park as a trial and error way of seeing what people want.  I've seen people muting about wanting Docks Beers to have a presence at the ground, let's set this up now and see if it's viable for the new ground.  It might be that it's a small handful of people who want it and if implemented the vast majority of people actually want pissy Carlsberg instead.   We've got food vendors galore in Freeman Street Market at the minute, let's get some of them down to the ground and selling proper food.  Again, it might be that people want a cold-rat burger instead.  But at least we'll have tried and sampled the market, better we do it now than build it as part of the permanent infrastructure in the new ground.
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grimsby pete
February 20, 2020, 10:45am

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A few points worth thinking about to increase ST sales.

1 ,Work started on the new stadium.

2. We need a successful team  ( this will happen under Ollie )

3. A family ticket priced to encourage whole families to attend.

4. Easy payment option for the ones who might find it difficult to come up with all the money in one go. ( I think we had something like this but it needs improvement. )

5.  An offer along the lines if you had a season ticket for one year you get 5% off the first season in new ground.  10% off if you have had one for 2 years.  15% off if you have had one for 3 years ,then 20% off if you have held a ST for 4 or more years, this is just a one off to try and get as many people already a STH  before we have the new stadium.

Hopefully if enough good will has happened and deals like No. 5 above we will have more than 6,000 STH for the first season in the new ground and average gates of over 10,000 if we are in L1 and even more if Ollie has got us in the championship.

I am not expecting all this to happen but I am very optimistic .  

UTMM


                             Over 36 years living in Suffolk but always a mariner.
                             68 Years following the Town

                              Life member of Trust

                               First game   April 1955
                               
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lew chaterleys lover
February 20, 2020, 10:50am
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Presumably, Ian Holloway has all the updated information as to whether a new stadium will be built within a reasonable time frame. If it is 5 years away he will not want to have his team playing in a stadium that continues to decline until that time comes. Who would?

I think he is the sort of character that likes things to be as good as they can be, so I would expect him to point out to "squeaky" what could be done with a bit of investment to make the whole experience better.

John Fenty has put all his eggs into the new stadium for the best part of two decades, and we are no further on. Unless some definite, concrete proposals appear before the end of the current season then some simple, clever innovative changes should be made to BP. The floodlights were amended because he had to do it - things should now be done because he values the fans continuing support, and show a willingness to attract new fans with better facilities.
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NorthseaMariner
February 20, 2020, 10:58am
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I agree with a lot that’s been said. At present to get to the toilets it’s a long queue, certainly in the Findus. People don’t want this nowadays. The same can be said for the bar and snack bar, all limits sales.
I think the bars should have pre pulled pints, ready just to top up and go. Also I think the idea of getting pop up food and bars in the unused corners of the ground a great idea.
Put some temporary toilets somewhere else and these things make the ground experience, if a little querky, more enjoyable.
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headingly_mariner
February 20, 2020, 11:13am

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Quoted from pen penfras


Can't find any data for the latest season, but what I can find from a couple of years ago is that our cheapest season ticket is at the top end of prices (5th), but our most expensive is at the bottom end (19th). Most clubs seem to have a big difference between the cheapest and most expensive tickets, whereas there's not much difference in ours.

It's similar with matchday tickets. Our cheapest was 10th highest, but our most expensive was only 50p higher than the least expensive.

I suppose this makes it harder for people on lower incomes to be able to go to the matches vs other clubs, but can we really justify increasing the price of the most expensive tickets to offset the lower end price like other clubs have?

So when you're talking about it being more expensive, you're only talking about the cheapest prices. Overall, we're about middle for season ticket prices and low for matchday tickets.


Why would you need to increase any tickets if you sold more?

Surely the cheapest tickets are the most important. Our club represents one of the most deprived areas in the country, people often have to make the choice not to go to the football. Our tickets should towards the lower end of the league and we should have the ambition to sell many more.

The price changes over the last few years are part of the short termism, bad pr and poor marketing that have dogged the club for years. A huge problem with the season tickets is  that they’re lazily marketed and there is very little incentive.
The club need to make it so it’s daft not to have one, to show the long suffering fans that they’re important and get the floaters to buy into an idea that things will change.

A price freeze or hike will be a huge own goal. I fully expect it to happen though.
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pen penfras
February 20, 2020, 11:23am

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Quoted from headingly_mariner


Why would you need to increase any tickets if you sold more?

Surely the cheapest tickets are the most important. Our club represents one of the most deprived areas in the country, people often have to make the choice not to go to the football. Our tickets should towards the lower end of the league and we should have the ambition to sell many more.

The price changes over the last few years are part of the short termism, bad pr and poor marketing that have dogged the club for years. A huge problem with the season tickets is  that they’re lazily marketed and there is very little incentive.
The club need to make it so it’s daft not to have one, to show the long suffering fans that they’re important and get the floaters to buy into an idea that things will change.

A price freeze or hike will be a huge own goal. I fully expect it to happen though.


Would a 10% price decrease on the cheapest tickets lead to more than 10% extra ticket sales? I highly doubt it. So that would mean less money for a push. I really don't understand how the people that moan about the budget the most are the same ones that moan about the ticket prices, you can't have it both ways. Not that I disagree that our cheapest tickets are expensive considering the local economy.

Targeting families and trying to get more kids through the gates would be my preference. This is where the future loyal support comes from.

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aldi_01
February 20, 2020, 11:34am

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Interesting that folk have mentioned queues for toilets...all about opinions but if people aren’t buying a ST because they may need to queue to have a slash then I’d assume they never visits anything with large crowds.

Let’s face it, we can claim a new stadium will suddenly mean we shift a few more thousand but it’s nonsense and unfounded...fact is, reason we don’t shift any has been said numerous times already.

Failure to capitalise on the most important win in the clubs history. Consistently poor management of club. A lack of vision. Journeymen players. Poor performances. Lack of ambition. Lack of care around current stadium because of the chasing of a pipe dream and the same old offers being churned out...


'the poor and the needy are selfish and greedy'...well done Mozza
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diehardmariner
February 20, 2020, 12:14pm
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Quoted from aldi_01
Interesting that folk have mentioned queues for toilets...all about opinions but if people aren’t buying a ST because they may need to queue to have a slash then I’d assume they never visits anything with large crowds.



I know what you mean but I think it's part of the bigger picture rather than a definitive reason.

I can only really comment on where I sit (Main Stand).  The toilet facilities there for blokes are a joke, it's a tin shed and you're basically pissing in a big trough.  If you're unfortunate enough to want a dump at the game, you've had it.  I can't personally say I've gone to any ground and thought 'toilets were horrible, never going back to that ground'.  But then I'm not a new customer.  

Equally so I'm not a woman who has to join a 25 minute queue for the toilet because there's only two toilets in the whole stand.  In 2020, that's just not acceptable.

You add the crap toileting, you add the crap catering, you add the fact that you can't get in the bar at half-time, you add the fact that you can't get parked and there's no system in place to alleviate it....We're already up against it because the vast majority of seats are with some sort of restricted view or you risk getting soaked when it rains.  As long as we're at BP we can't control that, but we surely have to do our best to make sure everything else is as good as it possibly can be.  

Put it this way - you're a parent of two kids with no real interest in GTFC but the kids have got some free tickets from school so you all go along to see what the fuss is about.  You go along but when you get there you're parking miles away from the ground.  You get in and decide on something to eat, after spending a small fortune you find the 'burgers' are bloody awful, cold and you end up throwing half of it away.   At half-time you all go to the toilet, by the time your daughter has managed to get to the front of the queue it's the 55th minute of the game, you've missed two goals waiting in the queue.  That's after you and your lad went to the toilet and stood in a load of urine on the floor.  Washing your hands was an ordeal because the single sink and towel dispenser is right in the exit way.   It's cold, it's wet and you can't understand why in the modern age you've got a big massive post in the way of one of the goals.  To cap it all off it takes 20 minutes to get back on a traffic free road because of congestion.

Are you going to come back?

There's things there that we can control.  There's things that we can't and there's things that we can partly mitigate.  Maybe I'm looking at it far too simplistically but there's a lot we can do to improve things and I struggle to see why we haven't.
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coddy60
February 20, 2020, 12:36pm

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Just scanning through,  so apologies if I missed it,  but  nobody seems to have mentioned the biggest, in my opinion,  single obstacle here is the sheer volume of shiftworkers, or like me, offshore workers who support Town, who will never buy a season ticket as it is wasting cash.
Think of all the industry around here which is 24/7 and you're losing a hell of a lot of supporters who can only occasionally attend.
Is there a case for selling a season ticket,  based on a person's shift rota, giving them discount based on the number of games they are available?
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grimsby pete
February 20, 2020, 1:13pm

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The new stadium will have 14,000 seats  which will mean there's plenty of room for the kids paying very low prices,

Once the kids get used to watching town winning and playing well under Ollie they will be hooked like I was in 1955.

They are the future.

UTMM


                             Over 36 years living in Suffolk but always a mariner.
                             68 Years following the Town

                              Life member of Trust

                               First game   April 1955
                               
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