You don't even need that much experience in business. Just as long as you haven't got all your knowledge from a single episode of the Apprentice you can see that we focus on a single variable, margin, rather than the whole equation of margin x volume = profit.
The club seem completely oblivious to the concept of volume. It's not just ticketing, it's the club shop as well. They would rather sell fewer shirts at full price than most shirts at full price and then some at half price so they deliberately order less than demand. They'd rather charge premium prices for 2 or 3 bits of tat than standard prices for lots of tat. They have no desire to sell all the seats in the stadium because they prefer to have 1 sell out a season at full price than 20 at a reasonable price. There are so many things that we do as a club which is fixated on the margin that I do worry that whoever they have modelling any data hasn't been past the first chapter in their textbook. There are deliberate strategies around things like ticketing and delivery fees that actively deter new fans/customers. It's really bizarre.
There are so many things we could do better. It appears really amateurish from the outside. I've complained many times about how Gibson has failed to grow the fanbase in anyway whatsoever since he took over. If we had gained any fans from outside of Teesside, especially globally, and had a product to sell them (merchandise, iFollow, etc) then we could have increased revenues by increasing volume. He's missed the boat now obviously, his chance was 20 years ago when we were in the PL, in Europe and signing superstars. He has got himself into this situation deliberately where his fanbase is a tiny core of people. Even within Teesside he tried ******* off half of them by calling them mackems. If you want more money out of the same people every year the only option you have left is increasing prices and hope they don't leave. They will leave though. I'd guess we're top heavy in the age ranges that attend the Riverside and inevitably those people will stop going at some point and never come back. There is a much older crowd at the Riverside than there is at an away game for example.
I bet there are more young people now on Teesside that are not Boro fans compared to my days. Football on the TV is really accessible now for the PL teams and we've been outside the PL for so long that anyone under 20 that only watches MotD or youtube/FIFA etc will have barely heard of us. Kids will be buying whatever shirts are available in Sports Direct and watching those matches more easily than they can watch a Boro match. Only way to get them is to get them through the door and you aren't going to do that so easily at the walk-up prices we charge. It's so much cheaper to support one of the big teams and if you aren't going to go to the match anyway why would kids choose Boro over City/Liverpool/Utd or even PSG/Barcelona/Madrid/Bayern etc.