National League play-off final prices
Since I've got a free weekend coming up I thought I'd pop along to the Tranmere / FGR play-off final on Sunday. £41 plus £3 booking fee. For non-league football. Good to see the FA are working to fill the place for the occasion. Think I'll find something else to do.
0
Comments
Totally agree ,I believe the women's FA cup final is much cheaper.Also the non league cups finals day which gives you 2 games for the price of 1
Yes, bought tickets for the NL Finals day, which is great value - £25 for two games and only a quid for kids. Went last year and other than the no re-entry rule between games it was great (you could take your own food in).
Sadly in pure financial terms, probably makes sense to price it high.
Most of the committed supporters are going to go anyway, not a particularly attractive match for many neutrals/less committed.
eg: say at £20, you would get 20000 supporters of the two clubs and 5000 neutrals - total revenue £500,000
at £40 you get say 16000 in total - total revenue£640,000.
Wembley commercial types are pretty good at working out how to price the events to maximise revenue. Agree its a bit of a shame for colour and atmosphere and the "occasion".
Anyone remember how much we had to pay?
In pure financial terms, is there any evidence that a lower price of say £20 would generate twice the attendance of a higher priced £40. The fact that we got far more than our normal home attendance suggests not. Not sure it was 25000 but accepting your number , are you suggesting that had prices been £20 instead of £40, we would have got 50000.
Sadly high prices for showpiece finals have a commercial logic while detracting somewhat from the occasion and atmosphere.
£41 for a non league game is an absolute liberty, regardless of the occasion
Dev's post can be summarised as follows: loyal fans will pay whatever we charge them so let's rinse them for as much as we possibly can
I will never agree with that approach
Pretty much spot on, Eric. I didn't say I agreed with the approach, just said I understood its financial logic, contrary to the OP.
Who gets all this money generated by these inflated ticket prices? Do the clubs involved get a cut? Does the rest of the league get any?
Don't take it as gospel (as if anything on here should be) but I've read a couple of times that Conference play-off finalists get a far higher cut of the gate than league clubs do for their finals.
@DevC Since you like to reduce most discussions to lists of figures (often purely theoretical ones), can't see how your argument here adds up. Tranmere's highest attendance this season was 7,790. FGR's was 2,383; even assuming all those fans wanted to go to Wembley, that only adds up to just over 10,000. Which would look pretty rubbish. Surely better to try and get some glory hunters, casual observers, daytrippers etc out to make the place look good for the occasion and create an atmosphere? The Wirral is both some distance from Wembley and hardly the richest part of the UK, so can't see thousands of people flocking to pay such extortionate ticket prices (on top of petrol/train fares and the rest). It's short sighted greed, pure and simple. If the Trophy and Vase finals together can be priced at £25 (and virtually free for kids), no reason why this match can't be.
Last seasons final attracted approx. 20,000 at I believe similar prices.
Lets assume for now that this years will be roughly the same.
Do you believe that if they made prices £20 instead of £40, the attendance would instead be 40,000.
If not in financial terms, which was the basis of your argument, then the higher price makes commercial sense.
I have noted above that its a shame from an "occasion" point of view.
I prefer not to assume. I just don't like seeing football fans ripped off yet again.
I presume the answer to the question is "no", then.
I haven't said I support the pricing, just that contrary to your earlier post, it does make commercial sense. Personally I think the pricing is unnecessarily high though for both this and the Lg1 and 2 playoffs.
I've done a few of the playoff finals over the years, and one year I think quite insanely I paid a chunk less for league 2 than for the conference one.
The conference game which was played out in a pathetically small crowd of perhaps 10,000?
I also remember being infurirated some jobsworth refused to sell one of the many 1,000s of available tickets in a cheaper tier before the higher price ones had gone at a league 1 play off final.
Luckily some absolute legend random was passing and had a spare ticket he only wanted about £20 for
Did a similar scenario not happen with us when after a few days of ticket sales only the more expensive sections of the lower tier and the 'club wembley' seats were on sale, only for us to find on the day that cheaper seats down the front in the corners were still unsold?
Pretty sure we only had about 16k at the last play off final and Southend took circa 25k.
Yes off to the non league finals day as well, and got the tickets even cheaper.
Standard price is £25, and £1 for Kids. If though you go into group bookings, and buy 9 or more, adult tickets are half price. So bought our 6 adult tickets, plus 3 kids and so we are only paying £13 each. Couple of Macclesfield fans in the group, so should be a good day out.
Just checked Lg1 playoff prices. They are over £50 plus booking fees unless you are prepared to sit in the very upper tiers (closed for our game).
Don't remember our game being quite that painful - anyone remember?
It was plenty painful enough.
Looking like Forest Green have managed to buy their way out of the Conference then. The vegan burgers may be sustainable but I don't think the football club is.
McNulty looks like a stray fan has wandered onto the pitch and managed to blag a game.
It will cost them a bit more to buy their way out of Div 2.
Wanderers sold around 17,000 tickets for the final - well down on previous visits to Wembley against Kidderminster (1991) and Runcorn (1993). Inflated ticket prices were blamed for the reduced interest - between £13 and £24 being charged for regular adult seats and £32 for the Olympic Gallery. Meanwhile Preston had sold close to 25,000 tickets as Wembley fever gripped a side that had not been to the home of football since the FA Cup Final in 1964. The attendance on the day reached just over 40,000, a new record for a Division Three Play-off Final by a margin of almost 14,000. It made for a more balanced atmosphere than Wanderers' FA Trophy visits but there was still massive tension in the air due to promotion prize at stake.