Brentford launch unique new season ticket plan

[king canary 7,679]

It seems Essex Canary has been put in charge at Brentford...

Basically the policy says if you miss 4 games and don't list your ticket on the buyback scheme then you want be allowed to renew next season.

I do totally understand the principles of wanting to make sure your stadium is full but in practice I can see so many issues with this. Can't believe it'll actually stick.

 

[dylanisabaddog 5,009]

The big problem with Norwich City implementing this is that they would need to answer the phone..... 

Or perhaps open the ****ing ticket office 

Thanks @king canaryfor giving me the opportunity to vent. I feel better now 

Edited February 23, 2023 by dylanisabaddog

[Branston Pickle 3,696]

Tbh Brentford do seem to be becoming a bit of a victim of success that I don’t think they thought they would achieve quite yet (for example, their original ground plans were for a bigger stadium).  It’ll be interesting if their ‘stick’ approach works.

[essex canary 506]

Great minds think alike.

To use another example I went to a City Centre pub ahead of Tuesdays match. Ahead of paying I was invited to roll the dice. Free drinks for a double 6. 25% off for any other double. 

If that logic was applied to the £36.50 casual seat price the Club average yield would still be £34.22 per seat.

It wouldn't cost much would it yet would be greatly incentivising in filling those vacant seats. 

There isn't a potential £200 million golden rainbow in running a pub to my knowledge.

Have we got any great minds in our club's £3 million per year Management Team? Maybe they would need to pay more than £40k a year for an IT manager to design it?

 

 

[Mengo 825]

26 minutes ago, essex canary said:

Great minds think alike.

To use another example I went to a City Centre pub ahead of Tuesdays match. Ahead of paying I was invited to roll the dice. Free drinks for a double 6. 25% off for any other double. 

If that logic was applied to the £36.50 casual seat price the Club average yield would still be £34.22 per seat.

It wouldn't cost much would it yet would be greatly incentivising in filling those vacant seats. 

There isn't a potential £200 million golden rainbow in running a pub to my knowledge.

Have we got any great minds in our club's £3 million per year Management Team? Maybe they would need to pay more than £40k a year for an IT manager to design it?

 

 

Management team = how many people ?

3 million ÷ how many people ? 2, 3, 4,5.?

Great Minds 👍?

💰 money money money. 

 

 

[essex canary 506]

21 minutes ago, Mengo said:

Management team = how many people ?

3 million ÷ how many people ? 2, 3, 4,5.?

Great Minds 👍?

💰 money money money. 

 

 

Exactly. Just like politicians they know they won't be there very long (at least they wouldn't at anywhere else bar Carrow Road) therefore why do they care?

[aBee 152]

1 hour ago, king canary said:

It seems Essex Canary has been put in charge at Brentford...

Basically the policy says if you miss 4 games and don't list your ticket on the buyback scheme then you want be allowed to renew next season.

I do totally understand the principles of wanting to make sure your stadium is full but in practice I can see so many issues with this. Can't believe it'll actually stick.

 

I’m on the committee of one of the supporters groups consulted by the club and we had to do a lot of work on this. There will be some edge cases which will need to be dealt with separately (eg we were contacted by a fan with anxiety issue which meant if they had an episode on match day they’d not be in a fit state to list their ticket while up to that point they were intending to attend). Kids STs are also exempt unless their associated adult is also not attending and not reselling/transferring. 
 

It’s a necessary step for us because the ground is small and tickets for non-STs sell out quickly (within 5-10 mins for the big clubs), frustrating members who can’t get a ticket then see lots of empty seats on telly (average 1000 but up to 2000 STs not turning up). The problem is likely to have come from there having been no qualification threshold to buy STs in 19-20 ahead of the move to the new ground in 20-21 and lots of non-fans buying on the off chance of a very cheap way to see other PL teams if we went up and it was possible to attend that season. When 20-21 was announced as starting to empty stadiums about 400 of the 10k STs (up from about 6k in Griffin Park) took a refund but everyone else got free iFollow and a frozen price to use the ST without paying again in 21-22. So last season had a lot of STs who’d basically borne the cost long enough ago to not care too much about getting £23.61 back for listing their tickets for resale (and doing so to get about £5 back for a kid even less so!). Apart from that, our ticketing website is rubbish and quite hard to work out how to list tickets for resale on. 
 

The next big challenge is whether the club has accepted our lobbying to maintain or reduce the prices of non-ST tickets. £35 for a Cat B game and £45 for Cat A is too much in the current economic climate and particularly so when away tickets are capped at £30. The ticket income is obviously negligible compared to PL money and if we went down we’d need to have grown the regular fan base rather than just gouged fans for seeing PL games if we didn’t want the ground half empty. 

[Grando 283]

On the face of it this seems like an excellent idea to me. I suppose the main potential drawback is that there may well be a fair amount of people who don't list enough games on the buyback scheme and then aren't allowed to renew. If there isn't a big enough waiting list to fill those gaps then the club might be shooting themselves in the foot. So perhaps they could implement something along the lines of if you miss more than 4 games that you haven't listed on the buyback scheme then the Club reserves the right to not automatically give you the option to renew your seat... 

[nutty nigel 7,644]

Brentford most likely have different issues to us because of their location. I remember a Watford fan telling me a few years ago that Arsenal/Chelsea/Spurs etc fans bought season tickets just to ensure they saw their teams away game at vicarage road. I guess if money's no object...

[Capt. Pants 4,284]

Without going into overthought I think this is an excellent idea. It should be easily implemented in this day and age. My gym does something similar in that if you book a class and don't turn up on repeated occasions you are banned from booking classes.

Back to NCFC; empty seats really does annoy me, especially if it's been sold to some old grunter at a ridiculously discounted price in the first place.

[nutty nigel 7,644]

But the atmosphere has been better with the seats empty than when their occupants turned up...

 

 

 

 

🙃

[essex canary 506]

5 minutes ago, nutty nigel said:

But the atmosphere has been better with the seats empty than when their occupants turned up...

 

 

 

 

🙃

Is that why we disposed of Daniel Farke and his crowd are the 12th man philosophy?

[shefcanary 2,466]

2 hours ago, king canary said:

I do totally understand the principles of wanting to make sure your stadium is full but in practice I can see so many issues with this. Can't believe it'll actually stick.

With Brentford being in the greater London area, you can see with the current size of the stadium that they could enforce this quite easily and yet still it being a success as well as "morally" acceptable. It would be more difficult in a more rural setting like Norwich though I would suggest.

It does make you think though that Brentford should have built a bigger stadium! 😉  

[shefcanary 2,466]

1 hour ago, dylanisabaddog said:

The big problem with Norwich City implementing this is that they would need to answer the phone..... 

Or perhaps open the ****ing ticket office 

Thanks @king canaryfor giving me the opportunity to vent. I feel better now 

Agreed Dylan, as I've long argued, instead of doing those (albeit very well done) non-core football videos and attracting all those plaudits from other media organisations, they just concentrated on the nuts and bolts of fan engagement, then they wouldn't have such a bloody disconnect! 

[aBee 152]

24 minutes ago, Grando said:

On the face of it this seems like an excellent idea to me. I suppose the main potential drawback is that there may well be a fair amount of people who don't list enough games on the buyback scheme and then aren't allowed to renew. If there isn't a big enough waiting list to fill those gaps then the club might be shooting themselves in the foot. So perhaps they could implement something along the lines of if you miss more than 4 games that you haven't listed on the buyback scheme then the Club reserves the right to not automatically give you the option to renew your seat... 

This is precisely what is being implemented- the renewal is safe as long as you do one of the following for at least all but 4 home games by renewal time in late February (1) turn up! (2) transfer to another home fan (3) list on the ticket exchange before 10am on match day (4) list on the exchange after 10am on matchday and the ticket does in fact get bought. There’s (at least in the PL) plenty of demand for STs. If come February 24 we’re rooted to 20th spot the club might not in fact refuse renewals from those who’d continued to transgress but still wanted a ST. 

[shefcanary 2,466]

32 minutes ago, aBee said:

I’m on the committee of one of the supporters groups consulted by the club and we had to do a lot of work on this. There will be some edge cases which will need to be dealt with separately (eg we were contacted by a fan with anxiety issue which meant if they had an episode on match day they’d not be in a fit state to list their ticket while up to that point they were intending to attend). Kids STs are also exempt unless their associated adult is also not attending and not reselling/transferring. 
 

It’s a necessary step for us because the ground is small and tickets for non-STs sell out quickly (within 5-10 mins for the big clubs), frustrating members who can’t get a ticket then see lots of empty seats on telly (average 1000 but up to 2000 STs not turning up). The problem is likely to have come from there having been no qualification threshold to buy STs in 19-20 ahead of the move to the new ground in 20-21 and lots of non-fans buying on the off chance of a very cheap way to see other PL teams if we went up and it was possible to attend that season. When 20-21 was announced as starting to empty stadiums about 400 of the 10k STs (up from about 6k in Griffin Park) took a refund but everyone else got free iFollow and a frozen price to use the ST without paying again in 21-22. So last season had a lot of STs who’d basically borne the cost long enough ago to not care too much about getting £23.61 back for listing their tickets for resale (and doing so to get about £5 back for a kid even less so!). Apart from that, our ticketing website is rubbish and quite hard to work out how to list tickets for resale on. 
 

The next big challenge is whether the club has accepted our lobbying to maintain or reduce the prices of non-ST tickets. £35 for a Cat B game and £45 for Cat A is too much in the current economic climate and particularly so when away tickets are capped at £30. The ticket income is obviously negligible compared to PL money and if we went down we’d need to have grown the regular fan base rather than just gouged fans for seeing PL games if we didn’t want the ground half empty. 

Thanks for this background ABee. Some fair points raised there. I'd also add the issue of students going off to uni who miss a fair few term time games (my sons ticket gets regularly shared although I'm lucky one of my 64 year old mates is actually a PhD student so kind of gets away with it). I've just made a cheap shot about lack of ambition over your stadium, I thought actually the limitation was space for construction, but if it was considered then dismissed on the grounds of lack of confidence, join the club with us over the City Stand!

Interesting that your STholders not turning up mirrors that at the Carra', where I would say it is also 1-2,000 fans. It does seem that some kind of "pooling" app is a potential game changer on this a la "Twickets" for live gigs, where tickets can be bought and sold amongst registered bona fide fans right up until the event opens its doors.

[aBee 152]

14 minutes ago, shefcanary said:

With Brentford being in the greater London area, you can see with the current size of the stadium that they could enforce this quite easily and yet still it being a success as well as "morally" acceptable. It would be more difficult in a more rural setting like Norwich though I would suggest.

It does make you think though that Brentford should have built a bigger stadium! 😉  

The original stadium plan was nearer 25k but had to be reduced to about 20k due to PL requirements for TV truck parking and media facilities (annoyingly made redundant by technology as the broadcast trucks are no longer huge lorries). It went down further to 17.5k for cost and technical reasons which meant the only way to get to 20-25k would have involved the North Stand being built over a railway line. The cost of that complex build would have massively outweighed the potential additional revenue over 20 years even at full capacity. The site, if you’ve been, is incredibly tight with railway tracks on three sides and the need for land for the enabling developments of flats. To have got somewhere so near to our old home was much better than (as Ron Noades tried) eg moving out to Woking. 
 

I think there’s only a case for a use it or lose it policy if the ground is technically sold out but in practice has substantial numbers of STs unused (we’re having a separate conversation about unused complimentary/sponsor tickets or ones which the sponsors give to away fans). 

Edited February 23, 2023 by aBee

[Canary73 161]

 It is fine in principle if you assume that most ST holders are local bit more many fans of clubs it isn't the case and there are many that do 100 mile+ round trips for home games.  I have seen three games so far due to train strikes, engineering works or games being shifted to midweek because of the world cup - I get that it is an issue for smaller grounds but arguably the club has your money whether the season ticket holder sits there or someone else does.

[shefcanary 2,466]

17 minutes ago, aBee said:

The original stadium plan was nearer 25k but had to be reduced to about 20k due to PL requirements for TV truck parking and media facilities. It went down further to 17.5k for cost and technical reasons which meant the only way to get to 20-25k would have involved the North Stand being built over a railway line. The cost of that complex build would have massively outweighed the potential additional revenue over 20 years even at full capacity. The site, if you’ve been, is incredibly tight with railway tracks on three sides and the need for land for the enabling developments of flats. To have got somewhere so near to our old home was much better than (as Ron Noades tried) eg moving out to Woking. 

Thanks for the further detail, it was more about site limitations than confidence over filling the seats!

I wonder if Attanasio will prefer to go down the route of "stick" or "investment in the estate"? His track record suggests the latter, but at least this is a "threat" that could hang in the background.

[NewNestCarrow 203]

1 hour ago, essex canary said:

Great minds think alike.

To use another example I went to a City Centre pub ahead of Tuesdays match. Ahead of paying I was invited to roll the dice. Free drinks for a double 6. 25% off for any other double. 

If that logic was applied to the £36.50 casual seat price the Club average yield would still be £34.22 per seat.

It wouldn't cost much would it yet would be greatly incentivising in filling those vacant seats. 

There isn't a potential £200 million golden rainbow in running a pub to my knowledge.

Have we got any great minds in our club's £3 million per year Management Team? Maybe they would need to pay more than £40k a year for an IT manager to design it?

 

 

Off the top of my head:

1.  Part of the problem at Brentford is that their ground is too small because - as their fan admits - making it 20k was too expensive. If cost concerns saw a new Main Stand at CR have capacity cut by 14% between planning & construction you'd be the first to be outraged at such short-term penny-pinching.

2. If NCFC gave discounted tickets to casual fans (on the roll of dice) it would lessen the benefit of STs and decrease club income. (it also encourages gambling!). I know you don't approve of benefits being watered down.

3. Brentford are using Ticketmaster to run their snazzy, new ticketing system.  How keen would you really be for such a customer-unfriendly monoply to be in charge of ticketing at CR? What happens when the box office call costs £1 per minute?  Or each ticket purchased comes with a £2 surcharge? And who on earth at Ticketmaster would take your call as you begged to jump the queue for a big match in London?

The grass is not always greener ....

[aBee 152]

26 minutes ago, Canary73 said:

 It is fine in principle if you assume that most ST holders are local bit more many fans of clubs it isn't the case and there are many that do 100 mile+ round trips for home games.  I have seen three games so far due to train strikes, engineering works or games being shifted to midweek because of the world cup - I get that it is an issue for smaller grounds but arguably the club has your money whether the season ticket holder sits there or someone else does.

I do a 400 mile round trip from Leeds for home games. The policy will only impact if on 4 games I’m actually on the way to travel becomes impossible. If a game moves to midweek with advance notice I can list the ticket for resale (eg sadly no way for me to do Fulham at home on Monday week). 
 

There is a revenue increase by reselling- a standard ST raises £23.61 per game but the member price is £35 for Cat B and £45 for Cat A so the club gets an extra £10-15ish for resold unused STs. If it’s a child ST that rises to £30-40. 
 

While that’s not much compared to PL Tv money, the £200-300k or so over a season (plus catering, programme, merch sales) adds up to paying for half a dozen B Teamers or more U18s. 

[aBee 152]

9 minutes ago, NewNestCarrow said:

Off the top of my head:

1.  Part of the problem at Brentford is that their ground is too small because - as their fan admits - making it 20k was too expensive. If cost concerns saw a new Main Stand at CR have capacity cut by 14% between planning & construction you'd be the first to be outraged at such short-term penny-pinching.

2. If NCFC gave discounted tickets to casual fans (on the roll of dice) it would lessen the benefit of STs and decrease club income. (it also encourages gambling!). I know you don't approve of benefits being watered down.

3. Brentford are using Ticketmaster to run their snazzy, new ticketing system.  How keen would you really be for such a customer-unfriendly monoply to be in charge of ticketing at CR? What happens when the box office call costs £1 per minute?  Or each ticket purchased comes with a £2 surcharge? And who on earth at Ticketmaster would take your call as you begged to jump the queue for a big match in London?

The grass is not always greener ....

I don’t think the contract with Ticketmaster gives them the right to charge transaction fees. The current Secutix contract doesn’t but is deeply terrible. Ticket enquiries are still being handled by the club. There isn’t any queue jumping because purchasing entitlements as at many clubs are based on number of loyalty points held by members. If you haven’t got the points, you can’t buy!

[shefcanary 2,466]

14 minutes ago, NewNestCarrow said:

3. Brentford are using Ticketmaster to run their snazzy, new ticketing system.  How keen would you really be for such a customer-unfriendly monoply to be in charge of ticketing at CR? What happens when the box office call costs £1 per minute?  Or each ticket purchased comes with a £2 surcharge? And who on earth at Ticketmaster would take your call as you begged to jump the queue for a big match in London?

A ha, as per my "Twickets" suggestion, I know there are Apps out there that can do such a thing, it is a shame it is Ticketmaster that run the show, but can see Attanasio being very familiar with their operation.

[TIL 1010 4,799]

A lot of Johnny come latelys jumping on the bandwagon since they left Griffin Park which only had a capacity of just over 12,000 and was hardly ever full to capacity.

[Canary Wundaboy 1,360]

12 minutes ago, TIL 1010 said:

A lot of Johnny come latelys jumping on the bandwagon since they left Griffin Park which only had a capacity of just over 12,000 and was hardly ever full to capacity.

Alternatively, investment and success have grown the fanbase, something every football is trying to do.

[TIL 1010 4,799]

2 hours ago, essex canary said:

 

Have we got any great minds in our club's £3 million per year Management Team? Maybe they would need to pay more than £40k a year for an IT manager to design it?

 

 

Oh never seen you mention this before, well not on this thread but maybe a dozen others.

[wcorkcanary 4,342]

2 hours ago, essex canary said:

Great minds think alike

And fools rarely disagree.  

 

Cuts both ways you clown. 

[nutty nigel 7,644]

1 hour ago, essex canary said:

Is that why we disposed of Daniel Farke and his crowd are the 12th man philosophy?

Wagner obviously listened to Webber and all those complaints about Smith. He mentions the fans constantly throughout the pressers, acknowledges us as often as he can and always wears the club shop. 

Perhaps season ticket holders should be kitted out by the club shop too...

[shefcanary 2,466]

1 minute ago, nutty nigel said:

Wagner obviously listened to Webber and all those complaints about Smith. He mentions the fans constantly throughout the pressers, acknowledges us as often as he can and always wears the club shop. 

Perhaps season ticket holders should be kitted out by the club shop too...

Is that implied criticism of Deano @nutty nigel? 😉 

[king canary 7,679]

2 hours ago, aBee said:

I’m on the committee of one of the supporters groups consulted by the club and we had to do a lot of work on this. There will be some edge cases which will need to be dealt with separately (eg we were contacted by a fan with anxiety issue which meant if they had an episode on match day they’d not be in a fit state to list their ticket while up to that point they were intending to attend). Kids STs are also exempt unless their associated adult is also not attending and not reselling/transferring. 
 

It’s a necessary step for us because the ground is small and tickets for non-STs sell out quickly (within 5-10 mins for the big clubs), frustrating members who can’t get a ticket then see lots of empty seats on telly (average 1000 but up to 2000 STs not turning up). The problem is likely to have come from there having been no qualification threshold to buy STs in 19-20 ahead of the move to the new ground in 20-21 and lots of non-fans buying on the off chance of a very cheap way to see other PL teams if we went up and it was possible to attend that season. When 20-21 was announced as starting to empty stadiums about 400 of the 10k STs (up from about 6k in Griffin Park) took a refund but everyone else got free iFollow and a frozen price to use the ST without paying again in 21-22. So last season had a lot of STs who’d basically borne the cost long enough ago to not care too much about getting £23.61 back for listing their tickets for resale (and doing so to get about £5 back for a kid even less so!). Apart from that, our ticketing website is rubbish and quite hard to work out how to list tickets for resale on. 
 

The next big challenge is whether the club has accepted our lobbying to maintain or reduce the prices of non-ST tickets. £35 for a Cat B game and £45 for Cat A is too much in the current economic climate and particularly so when away tickets are capped at £30. The ticket income is obviously negligible compared to PL money and if we went down we’d need to have grown the regular fan base rather than just gouged fans for seeing PL games if we didn’t want the ground half empty. 

I can understand the rationale but I think in practice there are so many reasons why someone might miss games at short notice.

For example, I think back to my dad who I attended games with, while he was undergoing treatment for cancer. He didn't know how he was going to be feeling one day to the next and if he wasn't feeling up to go8ng I'd often go see him instead of attending the game. The idea that either him or me would have to justify to our football club why we couldn't attend in order to escape a punishment going forward feels absurd.

Similarly I have a friend who suffers from anxiety and depression. Football is one of her great joys in life. She doesn't plan when her tough spells are going to hit and I can only imagine waking up knowing you were on your 3rd yellow card and one more miss might involve your season ticket being taken away next year would add to her stresses. 

I know the policy mentions exceptions etc etc but the idea that physically or mentally suffering people or just those with children who might get sick, or those with further to travel or those who maybe work uncertain shift patterns who have given their club a significant sum of money in exchange for their ticket have to justify themselves to a bloody football club is grim in my view.