Just to expand on a couple of themes; It was mentioned on a previous thread that Bayern Munich don't have a problem filling the Allianz Arena as their season ticket prices are only £100. You can even get deals in Germany for cheap travel if you buy a match ticket, they know how to join the dots it seems. West Ham reckoned they would fill the Olympic stadium (if they were given the go ahead to use it) by making the ticket prices cheap. When/If we ever get a bigger ground wouldn't it be sensible to pack it out every week by making the tickets cheaper? The danger is by making them too cheap everyone will buy one and not feel so bad about missing games and we could be playing to a half empty ground on some days. Looking up and seeing a wall of 30,000+ blue and white hoops at the Millennium stadium in the play off final was jaw dropping and I'd love to see that kind of home crowd but asking £50 a ticket on the door would stop that dead in its tracks.
West Ham won't fill the Olympic Stadium. Even if you give away ****, not everyone will take up the offer. Don't expect massive price drops if the new stadium gets built - they still need to pay for it, and the sale of Loftus Road will only take them so far. I would hope we'd get a deal on the steelworks though...
West Ham might have been able to fill it as the capacity was going to be reduced from the Olympic size. As for our stadium, Tony has already said it will be 45-50k which we all know we wont be able to fill for a few seasons at least. Some fans will moan and moan and say this is too big and we'll lose atmosphere. But we need a larger stadium that we will grow in to. Look at the problems Chelsea are having now because they believed that 40k would be big enough for them. But we have to think big for our stadium because it's this that will bring us the revenue to compete when the new fair play rules start to kick in. The stadium will be multi purpose, with Phil Beard in charge to make it the kind of success that he achieved at the 02. Concerts, other sporting events and all sorts will be planned and this will give us the revenue to pay for the stadium and increase our income so that we can buy the players we need to continually grow as a club. People are moaning about the stadium, ticket prices and the likes, but the fact remains if we didn't think big and had to stick within our means as they are now, we'd be playing in the Rymans Premiership instead of the Barclays Premiership.
It will lead to cheaper prices, just look at Wigan for example. We need to price the matches so they are just on the verge of selling out each game to achieve maximum profit. I hope we follow the bayern model of really cheap prices with food and drink the price it is outside, not 2 to 3 times as much. The only time I ever bought anything at a game was when Bristol City had a bottle of water, packet of crisps and a paper for £1.
I think we should downsize and get back to grass roots and relocate to the Warren Farm... Play Sunday football jumpers for goal posts
