Zoophonic
Well-known member
Frozen prices and, not unrelated, frozen league performances
Stoke City Freeze Prices
- Thread starter fmttmadmin
- Start date
All you are doing by linking ticket prices to performamce is highlighting how shambolic this season has been and most of the last 15 seasons. We have been consistently among the most expensive and rarely been among the best.
But to be honest it's incorrect lt isn't it. Stoke still have a similar wage budget to us this season despite their much lower ticket income. Realistically the FFP headroom is much more reliant on player sales than ticket revenue.
Air Resistance
Well-known member
As much as I disagree with our pricing structure, comparing to Stoke is a bit of a nonsense.
northernrower
Well-known member
Brilliant from Stoke. Just goes to show that billionaire owned clubs in the Premier League really have no excuse to be charging the amounts they do.
Redwurzel
Well-known member
The Stoke City prices are great for the fans, but the fans are not really responding.
Surely Stoke's average attendance should be well above ours if they are 40% cheaper.
In reality its around 26,500 Boro and 21,000 Stoke, this season.
If Stoke's wage bill is the same as ours, the Coates family must be putting in a bigger subsidy than Gibson, because their ticket revenue will be 50% below ours.
Surely Stoke's average attendance should be well above ours if they are 40% cheaper.
In reality its around 26,500 Boro and 21,000 Stoke, this season.
If Stoke's wage bill is the same as ours, the Coates family must be putting in a bigger subsidy than Gibson, because their ticket revenue will be 50% below ours.
There's a lot more revenue streams than just ticket sales and owners subsidies...
But even still FFP will limit what they can put in.
Their team are rubbish so they are doing well to get that many I think. This is the usual argument of everyone only being influenced by a single variable. Some people are influenced by price and others by performance and others a combination of both. They are selling 21k tickets when they have been dreadful for several seasons in a row. We have had several seasons with promotion opportunities and aren't doing much better in terms of attendances. At their prices I think we would have been approaching sellouts far more frequently. If we had the performances Stoke have had over the last 6 seasons with our prices we'd be getting half what we have.
You should be able to model expected attendance based on performance and price ranging from £0 per ticket to £1k per ticket and top of the league to bottom of the league. To maintain 20k+ attendances then prices can only rise to a certain level or performances can only dip to a certain level. You can't finish 19th every season and charge top of the league prices and that is the danger with our pricing structure.
All it takes is one bad season, a terrible bit of PR and people to not renew and then the prohibitive new season ticket price will stop them from returning and then it is a downward spiral of attendances.
We don't get anywhere near that. Concessions including the GRFZ where tickets are much cheaper means our average season ticket price is about half that. £8.8m from Gate Receipts in 2023 including walk-ups and cup gate receipts.
We have expensive tickets and low volume of sales, particularly for adult tickets.
Redwurzel
Well-known member
Nano - Stoke were amongst the top 8 teams for promotion before the season begun and they still probably only sold 16,000 STs at their low prices.
To me price has effect on sales but it is not the major deciding factor in buying a ST
My guess if we charged Stoke prices we would get about 2.5k more fans, but our total ticket revenue would be lower. This would lead to pressure to reduce player costs, especially as our playing spend was £28m in 2022/23.
I did post a few weeks I felt we should have frozen this season, but charging £349 for 23 games as Stoke do for an adult is too cheap.
Redwurzel
Well-known member
So why are posters on here saying we are nearly twice as expensive as Stoke?We don't get anywhere near that. Concessions including the GRFZ where tickets are much cheaper means our average season ticket price is about half that. £8.8m from Gate Receipts in 2023 including walk-ups and cup gate receipts.
We have expensive tickets and low volume of sales, particularly for adult tickets.
MickaelDebevePhenomenal
Well-known member
because in some, not all, circumstances we are. Mine for example.
But it is a complete guess. My guess is if we were 19th multiple years in a row we'd sell 12k season tickets.
If I wanted to buy a season ticket at Stoke I could get one for £344 (all the way up to the season kicking off as they have scrapped the early bird window). At Boro it would cost me £574 and if I decide to buy in August instead of now I'd expect another £50 on top of that so as a new customer it would cost almost double to be a season ticket holder at the Boro as it would at Stoke.
Walk-up tickets as well are from £20 at Stoke and from £30 at Boro.
We don't have anywhere near that revenue generation from STs. Half it and that's closer to the real number. Just ask Rob on the approximate breakdown on concessions vs full paying ST holders.