Stan A. Einstein wrote: May 19th, 2023, 11:05 pm Two points.

Firstly I believe that it is not possible to get the gates where we want them to be immediately. It needs in my view a plan to increase attendance over the long term. Season by season. Gates are disappointing but hardly disastrous.

Secondly whilst it is correct to point out out our gates today in tier 4 are better than they were in the mid 1980s in Tier 3, we are hardly unique in that. On 25 April 1984 Bradford City played us in a Division 3 game. The attendance?

3347.

Your mention of Bradford City is interesting. They have adopted a policy of seriously cheap season tickets which undoubtedly swell their fan base. That’s very laudable but if we did the same, would it increase the attendance sufficiently to compensate the gate money? I suppose it’s a case of suck it and see which is not without its risks moneywise as I suspect we don’t have much of a buffer in the kitty.
Perhaps a joint enterprise with the dragons for a Rodney Parade universal season ticket might be an experiment that would be mutually worthwhile. Bit of market research needed?

Morning Mike,
To answer your question I don't know whether seriously reducing prices would increase gates. Or joint tickets with Dragons. Or any ideas that you, me or other people might have. What I do know is that the people of Newport are the same as people everywhere else. I have been to the Americas, Asia, Africa and all over Europe from Russia to Inishbofin. And I have yet to go anywhere where people are any different.

One of the jobs of whoever is CEO/General Manager or whatever you want to call the job, is that he or she needs to find out why our gates are not as good as they could be and rectify that.

Interesting debate about attendances, but I’m not sure about the Bradford pricing model as far as we are concerned.

A bit of a blunt calculation, but if we worked on gates of 4000 with an average ticket price of £20, that brings in gross revenue of £80k. So we decide to reduce prices by 20% in an attempt to boost crowds which takes our average down to £16 or £64,000 gross per match, to recover the lost revenue we would need crowds of 5000 just to be financially no worse off. I am of course discounting all other sales that take place on match days and would naturally improve with higher footfall.

However conversely. a 10% increase, if gates can hold at 4000, brings in an additional £8000 gross or £184,000 over the course of a season. Both risky strategies but on this occasion I think the Trust have got it just about right.

I stumbled across a statement from the Morecambe board yesterday stating they will have their biggest ever budget in league two next season.

Collars wrote: May 29th, 2023, 1:29 pm I stumbled across a statement from the Morecambe board yesterday stating they will have their biggest ever budget in league two next season.

Which probably translates to :

we have a number of fixed contracts for players who we are unlikely to move on, and thus will need to use the parachute payment on top of the normal budget, to pay players we don't really want.

Bangitintrnet wrote: May 29th, 2023, 2:51 pm

Collars wrote: May 29th, 2023, 1:29 pm I stumbled across a statement from the Morecambe board yesterday stating they will have their biggest ever budget in league two next season.

Which probably translates to :

we have a number of fixed contracts for players who we are unlikely to move on, and thus will need to use the parachute payment on top of the normal budget, to pay players we don't really want.

Well unless they are playing in a six aside league they are fecked because they only have 6 players on contracted for next season

neilcork68 wrote: May 29th, 2023, 3:06 pm

Bangitintrnet wrote: May 29th, 2023, 2:51 pm

Collars wrote: May 29th, 2023, 1:29 pm I stumbled across a statement from the Morecambe board yesterday stating they will have their biggest ever budget in league two next season.

Which probably translates to :

we have a number of fixed contracts for players who we are unlikely to move on, and thus will need to use the parachute payment on top of the normal budget, to pay players we don't really want.

Well unless they are playing in a six aside league they are fecked because they only have 6 players on contracted for next season

Remember this:

Our playing budget, which is a significant proportion of our annual expenditure, was set in the summer of 2021 upon promotion, for a two-year period due to the number of contracts of this length we were required to hand out. This represented a doubling of our 2020-21 League Two playing budget.

So Morecombe can cut the budget by just under half, and still have their highest ever L2 budget. I agree though Neil, it sounds like they are not retaining many, and a complete rebuild is on the cards by the seem of it.