The Pricing Of Football Attending

[troodee1893]

I have started a new thread for this because it is in response to postings in more than one other thread.

I have read the debate about business difficulties and the change in attitudes over the years. I don't doubt things are difficult in the pub trade taking into account reducing customer footfall and income and fighting competition from the likes of Wetherspoons. It stands to reason that locals will have a great deal of trouble from Wetherspoons selling pints £2 cheaper than they do. That's all I can add to the 'pub' argument but turning to the Football market it is not a clear cut argument to simply say that lower prices will mean more customers and at least the same income. Over a number of years arguments have been made comparing prices between say Scottish and German football prices, the price of admission to a Football match compared with a theatre or cinema ticket or music concert ticket. There is also the ongoing argument about adult concessions and youth and young children tickets and whether we or United are correct in their pricing, whether we should go further in giving away free tickets or reducing prices etc.

FWIW here is my take on the Football pricing debate. I reckon the difficulty in pricing Football admission is getting the balance right between attracting a reasonable sized crowd, keeping prices as low as possible and crucially keeping the standard on the park at a level that maintains Premier League status, keeps the club competitive and pleases the fans who actually attend. First and foremost I am in favour of markedly reduced and arguably free tickets for initially kids up to say 12 during their formative years to catch them young and secure our future support Furthermore substantial reductions can be justified for the youths up to 18 for largely the same reasons. I don't know if we have got this right and perhaps err on the side that we should be doing more in this area. For adults, and for this I am looking at all above say the age of 18, I may come across as more controversial, especially when the current government is about to scrap the pensioners' winter fuel allowance and are making noises about hitting pensioners further. Having worked in the financial industry all my life and being well over the pension age myself I found in my experience that the young working demographic with young family especially find making ends meet harder than most pensioners and could again arguably be more deserving of reduced pricing than the OAP. Not all OAPs because there is a world of difference between an OAP with state and private pensions and the OAP with state pension only even taking into account pension credit. OAPs largely benefit from free buses and such like without any means testing (which I wouldn't really be in favour of). So to cut a long story short, whilst I don't think clubs including us would get away with scrapping OAP prices they should be a more moderate reduction in favour of other demographics.

Turning to free tickets. I have already stated my support in principle for this but there are caveats. In the past we, and clubs like United, have issued free tickets through schools and other outlets and found that rarely more than 50% of the tickets are used. If we cannot get some folk to attend with a freebee then we are on a sticky wicket with price reductions. Some in the past on here and other forums have advocated simplistic ideas that say halving the price would double the crowd. Season Tickets are our lifeblood and any price reduction would have to be incorporated into the ST price as well as the single game price (used to say PATG but this is now sadly a thing of the past). Over decades we have tried price reductions on single games and almost without exception it has cost the club income. It doesn't work and has been proved not to work in our experience at least. The vast majority of the crowd are going to attend anyway assuming that prices aren't stupidly high and the reduced price does not drag in nearly enough others.

Comparing prices to other Football countries is largely pointless as many have TV deals that dwarf ours and in particular it is said that Germany e.g (a country whose prices are compared regularly to ours) could let everyone in free and not make anything like the difference to income that you would expect. It is not a level playing field. A few other observations on pricing recently I have paid £60 up to over £100 for concert tickets regularly. The pricing of West End shows has gone through the roof recently and whilst cinema tickets are still less than a football ticket, here at least you come back to the product on sale. The cinema has a standard price you choose your film attend and either enjoy the film or not. The football fan wants success and like it or not the amount of income is the main influence on the ability of the club to attract and pay players and therefore has a great influence on such success. There is no doubt in my mind we could reduce prices, reduce income, contract the club and become a successful lower league club but would our 5k core fans accept this. I think not.

[Prince Buster]

I've had this discussion before so a quick calculation as follows to illustrate.

If you sell 3,000 tickets at £30 you take in £90,000.

If you reduce the price by 16.66% to £25 you need to sell 3,600 tickets to take in the same £90,000 - an extra 600 tickets or an increase in sales of 20%. 

Reality is that if you reduce prices by that 16.66% you might get a 5% to 10% increase in uptake so are creating a significant loss and once the prices go back to normal the vast majority of those extra sales will disappear. No business is happy to create a loss with no increase in future sales expected to cover it.

Comparison with cinema tickets is irrelevant, different business models completely with cinemas being open 365 days (I think they open Christmas and New Year days) per year and football grounds in use only 18 or 20 days per year.

[GordonDee]

3000 tickets at £30=£90,000 other than that your logic is good

[Prince Buster]

7 minutes ago, GordonDee said:

3000 tickets at £30=£90,000 other than that your logic is good

Fair point - it was early

[Mr Sensible]

34 minutes ago, Prince Buster said:

I've had this discussion before so a quick calculation as follows to illustrate.

If you sell 3,000 tickets at £30 you take in £9,000.

If you reduce the price by 16.66% to £25 you need to sell 3,600 tickets to take in the same £9,000 - an extra 600 tickets or an increase in sales of 20%. 

Reality is that if you reduce prices by that 16.66% you might get a 5% to 10% increase in uptake so are creating a significant loss and once the prices go back to normal the vast majority of those extra sales will disappear. No business is happy to create a loss with no increase in future sales expected to cover it.

Comparison with cinema tickets is irrelevant, different business models completely with cinemas being open 365 days (I think they open Christmas and New Year days) per year and football grounds in use only 18 or 20 days per year.

Agree with this, we are paying some employees £3,000 a week, a Dundee cinema minimum wage.

I think prices are slightly too high, but I don’t get this clamour to reduce it by lots, will only mean better players go elsewhere.

I think we need to be more creative with ticket sales, let’s say a £70 3 match ticket for the Edinburgh games, or say £65 for say Motherwell st Mirren games.

[Dundeefc1783]

I have been saying for a long time that the club should be more creative when it comes to season tickets. 

As someone who in the last 6/7 years has started working shifts and not being able to attend all home games it has just not become feasible or justifiable to buy a season tickets if missing 4/5/6 games a season etc. 

Obviously patg is the alternative but I find during the winter months after saying a night shift etc it becomes easy not to bother due to it being fu*king freezing or us playing sh*te etc. If had a season ticket this is much less likely.

I have said for a while that the club should be coming up with an alternative to a full season ticket, perhaps a 10 and 15 game season ticket. I understand that with us having category a-z games these days it would require some thought  and planning but I would defo become a season ticket holder again if something like this was on offer. I imagine there would also be people in a similar boat. 

[Prince Buster]

Problem with 10 or 15 match season tickets is allocation of seats - season ticket needs a seat allocated and it means that seat can't be sold as a PATG for any game when only sold for 10 games. There might be ways round that (there are) but it causes inconvenience and extra work which equates to additional cost. Actual cost is difficult to establish too as it's valid for both Cat A or Cat B games so can be used mainly for Cat A with less use for Cat B matches or vice versa which affects and changes the overall value of that ticket.

We know going into a season how many cat A and cat B games we're going to have so maybe a cat A only season ticket or a cat B only season ticket? That allows a seat to be allocated for known games only and frees it up for other games if needed. Question is would our ticketing system cope with that?

[troodee1893]

3 minutes ago, Prince Buster said:

Problem with 10 or 15 match season tickets is allocation of seats - season ticket needs a seat allocated and it means that seat can't be sold as a PATG for any game when only sold for 10 games. There might be ways round that (there are) but it causes inconvenience and extra work which equates to additional cost. Actual cost is difficult to establish too as it's valid for both Cat A or Cat B games so can be used mainly for Cat A with less use for Cat B matches or vice versa which affects and changes the overall value of that ticket.

We know going into a season how many cat A and cat B games we're going to have so maybe a cat A only season ticket or a cat B only season ticket? That allows a seat to be allocated for known games only and frees it up for other games if needed. Question is would our ticketing system cope with that?

Agree with your thoughts there and your final sentence is very relevant. A big big IF!!

[an-dee]

1 hour ago, Mr Sensible said:

Agree with this, we are paying some employees £3,000 a week, a Dundee cinema minimum wage.

I think prices are slightly too high, but I don’t get this clamour to reduce it by lots, will only mean better players go elsewhere.

I think we need to be more creative with ticket sales, let’s say a £70 3 match ticket for the Edinburgh games, or say £65 for say Motherwell st Mirren games.

In fairness to the club, there were a good few value for money package deals last season. The three games at Christmas and the deal with Rangers/Livi were both good value because it also included the expensive Category A game. I think the club will do the same this season if the fixtures fall that way.

[Mr Sensible]

20 minutes ago, an-dee said:

In fairness to the club, there were a good few value for money package deals last season. The three games at Christmas and the deal with Rangers/Livi were both good value because it also included the expensive Category A game. I think the club will do the same this season if the fixtures fall that way.

Unfortunately no one is really interested in games versus Celtic or rangers.

[an-dee]

19 minutes ago, Mr Sensible said:

Unfortunately no one is really interested in games versus Celtic or rangers.

True, but I went to these games last year because I was getting the ticket a little bit cheaper. If I was paying £32, I might not have gone. 

[Gedee]

11 hours ago, troodee1893 said:

I have started a new thread for this because it is in response to postings in more than one other thread.

I have read the debate about business difficulties and the change in attitudes over the years. I don't doubt things are difficult in the pub trade taking into account reducing customer footfall and income and fighting competition from the likes of Wetherspoons. It stands to reason that locals will have a great deal of trouble from Wetherspoons selling pints £2 cheaper than they do. That's all I can add to the 'pub' argument but turning to the Football market it is not a clear cut argument to simply say that lower prices will mean more customers and at least the same income. Over a number of years arguments have been made comparing prices between say Scottish and German football prices, the price of admission to a Football match compared with a theatre or cinema ticket or music concert ticket. There is also the ongoing argument about adult concessions and youth and young children tickets and whether we or United are correct in their pricing, whether we should go further in giving away free tickets or reducing prices etc.

FWIW here is my take on the Football pricing debate. I reckon the difficulty in pricing Football admission is getting the balance right between attracting a reasonable sized crowd, keeping prices as low as possible and crucially keeping the standard on the park at a level that maintains Premier League status, keeps the club competitive and pleases the fans who actually attend. First and foremost I am in favour of markedly reduced and arguably free tickets for initially kids up to say 12 during their formative years to catch them young and secure our future support Furthermore substantial reductions can be justified for the youths up to 18 for largely the same reasons. I don't know if we have got this right and perhaps err on the side that we should be doing more in this area. For adults, and for this I am looking at all above say the age of 18, I may come across as more controversial, especially when the current government is about to scrap the pensioners' winter fuel allowance and are making noises about hitting pensioners further. Having worked in the financial industry all my life and being well over the pension age myself I found in my experience that the young working demographic with young family especially find making ends meet harder than most pensioners and could again arguably be more deserving of reduced pricing than the OAP. Not all OAPs because there is a world of difference between an OAP with state and private pensions and the OAP with state pension only even taking into account pension credit. OAPs largely benefit from free buses and such like without any means testing (which I wouldn't really be in favour of). So to cut a long story short, whilst I don't think clubs including us would get away with scrapping OAP prices they should be a more moderate reduction in favour of other demographics.

Turning to free tickets. I have already stated my support in principle for this but there are caveats. In the past we, and clubs like United, have issued free tickets through schools and other outlets and found that rarely more than 50% of the tickets are used. If we cannot get some folk to attend with a freebee then we are on a sticky wicket with price reductions. Some in the past on here and other forums have advocated simplistic ideas that say halving the price would double the crowd. Season Tickets are our lifeblood and any price reduction would have to be incorporated into the ST price as well as the single game price (used to say PATG but this is now sadly a thing of the past). Over decades we have tried price reductions on single games and almost without exception it has cost the club income. It doesn't work and has been proved not to work in our experience at least. The vast majority of the crowd are going to attend anyway assuming that prices aren't stupidly high and the reduced price does not drag in nearly enough others.

Comparing prices to other Football countries is largely pointless as many have TV deals that dwarf ours and in particular it is said that Germany e.g (a country whose prices are compared regularly to ours) could let everyone in free and not make anything like the difference to income that you would expect. It is not a level playing field. A few other observations on pricing recently I have paid £60 up to over £100 for concert tickets regularly. The pricing of West End shows has gone through the roof recently and whilst cinema tickets are still less than a football ticket, here at least you come back to the product on sale. The cinema has a standard price you choose your film attend and either enjoy the film or not. The football fan wants success and like it or not the amount of income is the main influence on the ability of the club to attract and pay players and therefore has a great influence on such success. There is no doubt in my mind we could reduce prices, reduce income, contract the club and become a successful lower league club but would our 5k core fans accept this. I think not.

Good Post troodee, which justifies a Discussion ... I'd suggest there's no obvious easy answer (Well no fae me anyway)

But I hope others, which are finding it difficult, if not impossible, to regularly attend live games, can add to this topic