What time of year do we normally announce our ticket prices? Must be coming up soon, be interesting to see what Saints do. With the new TV deal I would love to see us make a stand and drop our prices but I'm not holding my breath. Fair play to the Liverpool fans who staged their protest and by the looks of it it sent a message to the owners are rumoured to be re-considering. So what way do you think we will go? Would you be pissed off if the club raised their prices for next season? Would it stop some STH's renewing? Is there people out there for whom money isn't really an issue but at a certain point wouldn't go due to principle? What do you think is a fair price for a match?
I would love to see the club freeze or even reduce the price of admission. Cmon Ralph, you know it makes sense; think of all the positive publicity that would buy. It also occurs to me that I'm currently paying nearly twice as much for my ST than I was in League 1. Am I getting twice as much pleasure (or pain) out of a trip to St Mary's than I was then? Don't think so.
Agree with the 2nd paragraph, also less games. As for the first, I agree with the positive publicity point, the club makes enough money to be able to reduce prices across the board and the amount of publicity it would get at the moment would be brilliant. I'm sure if one club done it then others would follow suit and it would be nice if we could start the trend.
Might be an idea if Saints looked at the reaction of Liverpool fans....chance for us to look superior by freezing or making price increases minimal. At least our argument could be that we have a small capacity....the bigger clubs should be ashamed.
The answer, in my view, would be to televise all games live and then use the increased revenue from such a deal to lower ticket prices.. everyone wins.
I don't think any increase should happen at all. Our income is about to go up by roughly £30m per year, how about giving something back to the fans who essentially make all of this possible?
No need to do that. TV revenue is already increasing exponentially. The issue is how do clubs divide the windfall? Liverpool seem to have decided it should be divided up between higher wages for players and profits for the owners. Their fans, to their credit, have expressed their resentment at the greedfest in the modern game. Saints can afford to take the lead from a moral standpoint; in fact with the huge volumes of TV money being paid out, any PL club could.
Alan Shearer has helped get the genie out of the bottle. He publicly and rightly said on MOTD that ticket prices are a small fraction of the income that PL football clubs receive and called for £10 typical and £20 limit pricing. He's the first to openly break ranks and supporters are going to keep referring to that kind of influence to beat the clubs with. I hope the subject doesn't go away, but I fear other pundits will keep their gobs shut when they need to fall in behind him. It's the sort of thing Robbie Savage needs to mouth off about. He may not be the world's greatest pundit but he gets himself heard. I'll just pop Shearer's comments here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/35516397
Nice little article from the Daily Mirror over comparable ticket and season ticket prices throughout the major leagues of Europe. Not thorough, but something to read while drinking a cup of coffee: http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/cheapest-barcelona-bayern-munich-season-6635285
Just read that Jamie Carragher joined the walkout at Anfield, which he says was for "every supporter in the country". Fair play to him if true.
When I go to a football match these days I feel as though I am an extra in a made for TV production and therefore should be paid as an extra and not have to pay for the privilege.
It's a shame really because the clubs prey on fans unconditional loyalty, it's not like any other business where if you're unhappy with prices etc. you go to a competitor.
Yep, I can sympathise with that StG. It's like clothes that shout the manufacturer on the exterior. Like I have to pay [far too much] for this stuff and I don't get a cut of the profits, so I'm shafted both ways? I don't buy such clothing.
Oh and for what it's worth we announced prices on 31st March last year so I assume will be roughly the same time.
If we staged a walk-out in the 77th minute at St Mary's, no-one would notice as that is swathes of our fans do anyway.
Fair play to Liverpool fans, we've been saying for years something needs to be done, and just not buying your ticket isn't good enough, as there will be 50 people who want to buy it instead. Buying and walking out is an excellent protest, especially if it affects the players massively, which it did. Its just the laws of supply and demand. If clubs cared about fans, they would come out and say they have frozen/dropped prices, if they come out and spin it the way Liverpool did - making a % of fans better off when a huge % of fans will also be significantly worse off, I'm not surprised why the protest happened. Be interesting to see what Saints do, I regularly pay above 30/35 pounds now, the campaign is for £20 adults. Here's a thought for Liverpool, stop spunking huge amounts of money on crap players, and use a TINY fraction of that to freeze/drop prices to help out fans, that's all they need to do.
I'm reminded yet again that one particular president of an Italian football club said he saw a day when they would be letting supporters in for free. Admittedly that was a response to falling attendances, but it was also tied in with TV audience revenue and getting sufficient supporters into the ground to create the right atmosphere.
Yep I think the atmosphere would improve massively too. I personally think the atmosphere was better with 20k in league 1 than it is now.
