Ideas for helping the club
Thought this might make for a good thread here, and for a good use of this community. So, I'll kick it off with a an idea I had for increasing season ticket sales...
The concept is relatively simple, and came to me after looking at Bradford's success one season selling very cheap season tickets. That works for a season, but the longer term effects are negligible. So the idea here is scaling season ticket prices.
- We set up a pledge system, where fans pledge to buy a season ticket - we take credit card details at this point but we don't charge their card.
- The more people pledge to buy a season ticket, the lower the cost of a season ticket becomes. This price changes for everybody including those who have already pledged.
- Two weeks before the start of the season, we charge cards at the finalised cost and send out the tickets.
Using some spurious numbers to illustrate: Let's say we normally sell 1500 season tickets at an average of £450 (once again, these are spurious numbers, if anyone has the real numbers I'll replace these here). This gives us our Base to beat.
Base = (1500 × £450) = £675,000
Additional sales beyond this then reduce the cost for everyone accordingly. So assuming we hit 1600 ticket sales, the cost would come down to £421.88 (which is £675,000 divided by 1600). However, in order to ensure that this system not only brings extra people through the gates, but also brings in more up front money, we should have a sliding percentage which we retain. So the formula for calculating the ticket cost would actually be…
(Base / sales) + n
where n is our sliding variable percentage. So in the 1600 sales example previously we would actually add our 1% which produces...
1600 tickets + 1% slider
(£675,000 / 1600) + 1%
Ticket price: £426.09
Total sales: £681,750.00
As that percentage slides up, greater numbers of sales mean both bigger discounts for fans, and more money taken in sales for Wycombe Wanderers…
2000 tickets + 5% slider
(£675,000 / 2000) + 5%
Ticket price: £354.38
Total sales: £708,750.00
2500 tickets + 10% slider
(£675,000 / 2500) + 10%
Ticket price: £297.00
Total sales: £742,500.00
3000 tickets + 15% slider
(£675,000 / 3000) + 15%
Ticket price: £258.75
Total sales: £776,250.00
3500 tickets + 20% slider
(£675,000 / 3500) + 20%
Ticket price: £231.43
Total sales: £810,000.00
4000 tickets + 25% slider
(£675,000 / 4000) + 25%
Ticket price: £210.94
Total sales: £843,750.00
Obviously 4000 season ticket sales is pretty fanciful, but my predicted effect of this system would be:
- Use people power to market season ticket sales for us – everyone who pledges to purchase a season ticket is incentivised to try to persuade their friends, family and co-workers to also buy a season ticket.
- WWFC take more money from season ticket sales than we could realistically expect to otherwise
- More people through the gates means more sales at refreshments kiosks and bars
- If season tickets become cheap enough we could be gaining sales to people who normally only make half of the games per season
- Extra sales could be going to people who will become season tickets holders for many years to come.
- The deadline day on which cards are charged produces a sense of urgency in the latter stages of the sale, which pulls people in due to the scarcity effect.
The hardest part of this is probably building a platform on which to run it, but even that shouldn't be too difficult (that's the kind of thing I do for a living). and if it works, could be a pretty sound investment.
Comments
Great idea but some clubs like to have the money in installments to help during the Summer when there is no matchday income coming in but wages still to pay. To do this the scheme would need to be launched early and have a deadline of possibly June. Also, would the Club want to commit at the moment when there is a possibility that we could be in a higher League next season?
That's a great idea. And I'm sure there'd be a way to include advance payments to cover any cash flow issues over the summer.
Does any other club operate something similar?
You could just take 50% of the face value up front with the balance paid once sales have concluded and the final 'price has been calculated'
One risk is people failing to understand the concept, and "holding off" until the price drops lower. Perhaps I don't have enough faith in humanity...
Aside from that, surely it is a win-win for the club - either the same number of season ticket holders as usual purchase, or we get more people becoming ST holders than we would of before, for (in absolute terms) more money in the pot.
Our home form hasn't been that good for years and I certainly think atmosphere has something to do with it. The club should seriously look at ways to improve this, including schemes like this to get higher attendances.
It's a great idea and, as @Glenactico says you could take 50% upfront to keep the club running over the Summer. Maybe offer the early birds extra kick backs like a couple of guest tickets, free FA Cup first round entry, voucher for food and drink, club shop discount if you commit before 1st of June.
I am not so sure it is good idea. Superficially it looks attractive but not sure it really translates to the real world.
Lets take you rexample of 1500 tickets at £450. On your example at 2500 tickets price would be £297. Two questions really, 1) is there really that much latent demand currently not going at all with season tickets at £450 that would buy season tickets at £297. feels optimistic to me. 2) is it more realistic that we would have had a little season ticket growth anyway on the back of a successful season and that some of those other new season ticket holders were already going to a few matches.
To illustrate the point, ignoring food and drink revenues and non financial benefits, lets assume that we use your scheme but that we would have got 1700 season ticket holders and of the remainder, 400 people would have seen an average of 10 games each at £20. the other 400 would never have been seen.
Comparison of revenues would be
Your scheme 2500 season tickets at £297 = £742500
Or
1500 season tickets at £450 = £675000
plus
200 new season tickets at £450 = £90000
plus
400 adhocs *10 games *£20 = £80000
Total revenues £845000
Hence in that example club would be £100k down on the deal.
Not saying this is what would happen in practise, just using figures to illustate some issues with your plan. Equally you may consider that the non financial benefits outweigh the cost of lost revenue.