Enough Already ! How many threads about ticket prices

grantroederdisaster · August 24, 2010

[quote user="Lambert is King"]

If you look back at threads in April / May you will see casual supporters claimimg our support week in and week out is 35000. Dream on it is around 23500. To get many more than this it seems we need to be playing Ipswich / Leeds ( teams that take their full allocation ) or be top of the league. Without meaning to be rude I dont think people contributeing to a lot of these threads are actually telling the truth. If you read their posts they indicate they go to most games, but will now pick and choose because of the prices. The strange thing is they say they will be going to watch the Ipswich game ect which will be A * so you will give the club more income anyway for the same amount of games. Why then did we not have massive gates last year when the seats were cheaper, but bigger gates for catergory A games. If you go to more than half the games why did you not get a season ticket it would have been cheaper and no booking fees or membership to pay. There is one part of this that does not fit and that is after the Barnsley game I think you will find that like for like against the first 3 league games of last season Norwich supporters attending games will be up by around 5%. So either most of the people complaining about the casual prices only started attending games last year once we were top of the league or getting into the championship has seen a large number of new fans coming to FCR that did not previously attend but are happy to pay big bucks even when we are not top. Of course the club can always reduce prices to fill the seats but for games such as Swansea would we really have sold out or would we have seen a few extra fans costing us a huge amount of revenue. If McNally put on some cheap games will you all give a garuntee that you will fill every seat ? or do us that have bought season tickets have to see cheap seats sold lost revenue and sell all our star players ? Cheap seats were sold to season ticket holders, but we effectively gave a garuntee that we would be there every week not just 5 or 6 games a season.

As far as booking fees membership ect go this is something charged by most clubs. Lots charge upwards of £1.50 per ticket not per transaction. Most monthly installment plans for season tickets are done over 10 months and carry anything from a flat fee of £15 - £50 to interest rates rangeing from 19 % to 29%. Some are saying McNally has got it wrong, I say it was Doncaster. He offered ridiculously cheap football reduceing the price further by getting the club to pay package and postage and also paying a fee on each transaction to credit card companies / banks. I cant remember seeing a min charge for a credit / debit card so a £1 ticket sold could have cost the club 30p postage £1 charge by bank for card transation and 50p ? printing staff paper ect. No wonder we were so much in debt. He then invested heavily in crap but highly paid players that were not bothered about this club. McNallys only crime is to try to keep the club afloat and at the same time set out a realistic business plan to steady the ship. He has to get in certain revenue, not certain crowds, so yes he can reduce drastically casual prices but that will need to be covered elsewhere ie season tickets will increase even more than they are going to increase next season. McNally has to garuntee our creditors a certain club income or they will recall loans. If he doubled season ticket prices and charged £40 a seat we would stiil get 10000 supporters but our income would not decrease. Come on guys you get what you pay for, you pay a pound for something that should cost £5 and you expect it to fall apart. Cheap seats Doncasters policy = league 1 football higher prices mean championship football with a chance of premiership football. Decreasing the casual prices means increasing season tickets drastically. If lots do not renew then we are back to square one. If Doncaster was still here I am convinced we would now be in administration as his ridiculos business plan of cheap football for all and still trying to succeed on the pitch was flawed.

[/quote]

If our ground was big enough and we were in the Premiership I think we could get 35,000 most home games and the club said this figure could have been achieved in the 2004/05 season.

Remember our season tickets are capped at 20,550 so its likely that some fans who wanted one were too late?

Obviously with a bigger ground capacity more season tickets would be available at cheaper prices and would be snapped up if we were in the Premiership. Also like every club we have plenty of casual badwagon jumping fans who''d go to a lot of games if we were doing well or in the Premiership. Then if we had a ground capacity of 35,000, which willl only happen in the Premiership, everyone that wanted a season ticket could get one and then charging high casual prices for games against unattractive oppostion would be more acceptable!

Mcnallys already said that he''ll do what thinks is best for the club even if fans don''t agree so I doubt that he pushed on with the 1000 capacity increase due to fans pressure. He saw the crowd figured and realised that if the success continued then filling an extra 1000 seats wouldn''t be a problem. What he got wrong was assuming that cause of the large crowds, fans would continue going even with admission prices that are over the top. It wasn''t that long ago when 16,000 was a good crowd so assuming we''ll get high crowds all the time even with extortionate ticket prices are wrong!

Other fans for reasons like education, job, low income, can''t afford to pay for a season ticket, but would still like to go to quite a lot of games. Other fans with kids who''d like to go are also being priced out by ridiculous prices!

The prices charged for the Swansea and Watford early in the season were too high and prevented home and away fans from going. The prices like I said before are only justifable for a handful of top games a season!

Booking fees I can see you point and if anyone doesn''t like them then they can always get tickets from the Castle Mall shop and the club shop.!

As for blaming Doncasters policy for our relegation. Our relegation happened after 4 years of stagnation and bad managerial decisions. Keeping Worthy one year longer than was necccessary then appointing 2 bad (so called) managers in Grabnt and Roeder then running out of ideas and appointing Gunn cause he would tow the line.

Roeder(nowhere) had lots of money available but went down the crazy loan route and couldn''t manage the players. £700,000 for a seasons loan of Bertrand who wasn''t that good in most of his appearances and sacrificing a good club servant in Shackell to pay for the has been Sibierski are examples of extortionate amounts of money wasted!

Our ticketing policy under Doncaster although too cheap at times in no way played any part in our relegation to Legaue 1!

I''m all for high prices for the big games but 2 games against non attractive games in August when no one knows how the club are going to do over the season was a mistake. Remember a lot of casual fans are casual cause they only want to see the big games or come along when Norwich are doing well!

tom cavendish · August 24, 2010

[quote user="Lambert is King"]

If you look back at threads in April / May you will see casual supporters claimimg our support week in and week out is 35000. Dream on it is around 23500. To get many more than this it seems we need to be playing Ipswich / Leeds ( teams that take their full allocation ) or be top of the league. Without meaning to be rude I dont think people contributeing to a lot of these threads are actually telling the truth. If you read their posts they indicate they go to most games, but will now pick and choose because of the prices. The strange thing is they say they will be going to watch the Ipswich game ect which will be A * so you will give the club more income anyway for the same amount of games. Why then did we not have massive gates last year when the seats were cheaper, but bigger gates for catergory A games. If you go to more than half the games why did you not get a season ticket it would have been cheaper and no booking fees or membership to pay. There is one part of this that does not fit and that is after the Barnsley game I think you will find that like for like against the first 3 league games of last season Norwich supporters attending games will be up by around 5%. So either most of the people complaining about the casual prices only started attending games last year once we were top of the league or getting into the championship has seen a large number of new fans coming to FCR that did not previously attend but are happy to pay big bucks even when we are not top. Of course the club can always reduce prices to fill the seats but for games such as Swansea would we really have sold out or would we have seen a few extra fans costing us a huge amount of revenue. If McNally put on some cheap games will you all give a garuntee that you will fill every seat ? or do us that have bought season tickets have to see cheap seats sold lost revenue and sell all our star players ? Cheap seats were sold to season ticket holders, but we effectively gave a garuntee that we would be there every week not just 5 or 6 games a season.

As far as booking fees membership ect go this is something charged by most clubs. Lots charge upwards of £1.50 per ticket not per transaction. Most monthly installment plans for season tickets are done over 10 months and carry anything from a flat fee of £15 - £50 to interest rates rangeing from 19 % to 29%. Some are saying McNally has got it wrong, I say it was Doncaster. He offered ridiculously cheap football reduceing the price further by getting the club to pay package and postage and also paying a fee on each transaction to credit card companies / banks. I cant remember seeing a min charge for a credit / debit card so a £1 ticket sold could have cost the club 30p postage £1 charge by bank for card transation and 50p ? printing staff paper ect. No wonder we were so much in debt. He then invested heavily in crap but highly paid players that were not bothered about this club.

McNallys only crime is to try to keep the club afloat and at the same time set out a realistic business plan to steady the ship. He has to get in certain revenue, not certain crowds, so yes he can reduce drastically casual prices but that will need to be covered elsewhere ie season tickets will increase even more than they are going to increase next season. McNally has to garuntee our creditors a certain club income or they will recall loans. If he doubled season ticket prices and charged £40 a seat we would stiil get 10000 supporters but our income would not decrease.

Come on guys you get what you pay for, you pay a pound for something that should cost £5 and you expect it to fall apart. Cheap seats Doncasters policy = league 1 football higher prices mean championship football with a chance of premiership football. Decreasing the casual prices means increasing season tickets drastically. If lots do not renew then we are back to square one. If Doncaster was still here I am convinced we would now be in administration as his ridiculos business plan of cheap football for all and still trying to succeed on the pitch was flawed.

[/quote]1. 10 years ago, NCFC averaged only 15.539. The increase in attendances has also increased the revenue from food and drink. The income from that is now the equivalent to a mid-table Premiership club.2. Cheap seats do not lead to League One football, bad footballing decisions do. Blackpool even achieved promotion to the Premiership on a very small budget.3. The club debt is down to money invested in the stadium etc. (would you rather the stadium went to rot?) money wasted on signings that were not value for money, millions lost due to the collapse of ITV Digital, and the loss of millions in TV revenue due to relegation.4. Unless McNasty can fill the new seats on a regular basis then they are a complete waste of money and have only added to the club debt. In fact, if they are empty then even higher ticket prices won''t be enough to subsidise the cost of the empty seats.

William Darby · August 24, 2010

[quote user="grantroederdisaster"][quote user="Lambert is King"]