Summer 2014 Transfer rumour thread - Part III

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but we don't actually sell out too often?

 

You can't sell out when we cover a couple of hundred seats in a black cover along with the fact that the away team at times do not sell out.

I think we get close to selling out most games apart from the odd single seats (not many people like going to games alone)

 

On average the stadium is 92.4% full, and we have the 12th highest average attendance in the league. Considering every team above us in that chart has a larger stadium, I'm sure we could benefit from an increased capacity.

 

On Sky, a pundit has just said that Nicola was bullish, but the new board is seen as more amenable to selling. Firstly, they may be seen as more likely to sell, but we have no hard evidence of that yet. Secondly, Nicola may be a hard negotiator, but none of us know what he might have been made to do by force majeure...our financial position is the same for our present board as it would have been for Nicola (in fact, it may be slightly better now Katharina is actively involved). Nicola had stretched things as far as he could...if you remember his argument with KL earlier in the season. I have no doubt that Nicola would have squeezed until the pips squeaked (and may have managed to keep MP), but he may have been forced to sell to finance progress as well.

 

You don't have to sell out most games for an expansion to be worthwhile. Even if you're only selling out a few games, you're losing out on some demand for those games and could be making more money with more seats.

 

I don't know, but what about the seats for hospitality. If that isn't doing that well, presumably those seats are empty.

 

We mustn't forget how much expansion of SMS would cost...would take a long time to get your money back. The training ground has been top priority for a few years. Don't hold your breath for expansion in the near future...a lot of income comes from outside rather than ticket sales.

 

From the Echo
In

• Leandro Damiao - £15m - Santos - Express
• Kasper Schmeichel - £? - Leicester - Mail
• Gabrielle Angell - ? - Watford - InsideFutbol
• Fabio Quagliarella - £2m - Juventus - Mirror
• Lukas Fabianski - ? - Arsenal - Mirror
• Ryan Bertrand - ? - Chelsea - Telegraph
• Timothée Kolodziejczak - £6m - Nice - Mirror/Telegraph
  
  
  
  
  

 

We all know what rumours are worth, but it does remind us that when next season starts we will have some new players whatever happens and we will be looking forward to seeing them. Light at end of the tunnel and all that.

 

It's a good point, and if the away allocation isn't sold out there's little we can do about that also, so the stadium is very rarely going to be 100% full.

 

Target low attending away fans with special offers promotions etc. Improve the matchday experience for them. Priority = bums on seats.

 

We should have been allocated the seats that Carlisle didn't take up in the JPT (I.e. most of them!). We had 45,000 then, so for big games we could quite easily get 35k-40k fans in our own section, plus increasing the away allocation and sell out a 45k stadium for some games. It'll look so empty for Cup games though!

 

I can speak from experience and there was a hell of a lot of Saints in the Carlisle end that day.

 

Don't think we could get that many. For the JPT, every Saints fan came and brought their families. If we got that number for even a big game, many would be supporting the other side. Even Nicola who was ambitious suggested it was only plausible if we were regularly in the Champions' League.

 

Kept quiet during the Mexican waves to avoid attention then!

 

I don't agree with that at all. There are 400,000 people who have "liked" saints on facebook (and surely many other fans like myself who haven't), which is far more than would fit into the stadium. Sure, there are season ticket holders who will go to most games, but I would suggest that a large proportion of every home attendance is made up of people who don't attend every game, which means there are many more fans out there who could be tempted to go to more.

 

I agree that there are many more fans than would fill the stadium, because, apart from season ticket holders, a lot of seats have different people every week. However, those people may not increase the number of games they go to just because the ground is bigger. It would be nice to be able to get seats together though...sometimes not possible.

 

They might do if the prices were reduced (I know, I know), and as Joe said earlier, you'd potentially get much bigger attendances for the games that do sell out.

 

There may be more chances of reduced tickets...offers which we no longer get, but remember the extension has to be paid for. I'm sure someone will remember the rough estimate for that...all I remember is that it was massive.

 

Yes, supposedly it was similar to the initial cost of building the stadium in the first place! Still, with a long-ish repayment term, the costs would be covered by the extra ticket sales, and then when it's paid off you're in profit (not to mention more fans in the ground which has to be worth something even if their tickets aren't).

Assuming the expansion is to 45000, it would only take 50 sell-outs to make the money back (and anything over the original capacity is essentially money towards it).

Anyway, I don't suppose it's likely to happen anytime soon, but as you can probably tell, I think the case for expansion is strong.