I don't think you get it at all. [reply to earlier post] Yes more should be done to fill the stadium at present, but if you ramp up your marketing budget to make that so, the size of the prize is presently perhaps another couple of thousands punters, maximum. Is it even worth it? Now, if we had a 30-35k capacity stadium, suddenly the size of that prize is somewhat bigger (and I certainly think the £3m per season reasoned above is absolutely feasible). It doesn't need to be full to capacity for EVERY game - but it DOES need to have a bigger capacity for key games, which would more than justify the outlay.
But that is additional income over and above season ticket sales, with 30k at £20 every week the club would go bust
Why will we? I'm not saying it has to be 100%, just that there shouldn't be as many tickets left over. If there's a thousand unsold tickets, how would you justify sticking in another 5000 seats? That'd then potentially be 6,000 seats empty for all the building cost, not to mention extra lighting, power, plumbing, concession stock, extra staff and stewards. Success puts people in the seats, not structural design. If you had a wife and a child, would you go out buy an eight seater people carrier, just in case you had another 5 kids? Or would you keep the moderate sized car you had, which will cost less money to run and has a bit of extra room for when you have to pick up somebody important? You'd wait until the kids were on the way before even considering getting a bigger car.
Only for someone looking at a very long term investment of 10 years or more by which time we might be looking at having to build a new stadium anyway
I don't really understand what you mean. Are you suggesting that a stadium expansion would take 10+ years to pay for itself?
Erm unless you missed it we are right at the bottom end of capacities now. Others will be proactive even if we are not. Keeping the KC small is a self fulfilling profecy and will do nothing but make us stagnate.
How ? If the costs are £15 million & you manage to sell 60k more tickets a season, after all the additional costs you might net £1.5 million, so it takes 10 years to pay for the building work !
Erm....YES that is exactly what I'm saying Cost £15-20 million for 10000 seats Gross income based on current attendance but if all extra seats sold for 6 class A games £3 million, probably only net £1.5 million Thus 10 years to repay excluding interest on loan to build
Firstly the additional ticket sales would almost certainly be more than 60k, and that argument only works if you imagine the whole cost is carried by the club with no investment or funding from elsewhere.
Zero additional sales for games outside Cat A? The probability of that is somewhere around zero itself. If your argument stood up then no club would ever develop their stadium at all.
` The cheapest option in the long term would be to build a new 40k seater stadium as the costs for building new are less than extending the current stadium & the running costs of a newer stadium are lower. By the time you have made back your money the KC will be well past it's prime
We're basing all of the talk about the future on nothing, we don't know where we'll be in 10 years time, so there's no point speculating and any sound businessman might have projections but he certainly wouldn't fling millions at a project unless he knew we were guaranteed results. If we're seriously going to consider the expansion project, it has to be based on how we're doing now. Yes, we're selling a lot of tickets, but 40% of last seasons home games weren't sell outs and that's an issue that needs resolving before any talk of expanding the stadium. We aren't going to stagnate at all, that's bullshit, the amount of fans watching a game doesn't have any bearing on the success of the players on the field, in fact it's the opposite, surely? And also, if the players are playing in front of a capacity crowd week in, week out, that's got to be a good thing hasn't it? Why does stadium size have to be inexurably linked to club success? Portsmouth managed to get into Europe with a stadium much smaller and older than ours, I didn't see them rushing out to expand Fratton Park. And before you say it, no, their demise wasn't down to a lack of seats. At all.
Since we don't sell out our non cat A games at the moment (I did say based on current attendances) plus there is a good chance we would only sell 3-4000 more for our Cat A games
Do you not see that if 40% of games weren't sold out, that means for 60% we could have sold more tickets? Solutions, dear boy, not problems.
they wouldnt go bust because it would be offset against the Sky money...anyway just finishing the odd place higher up the table earns just as much if not more than ticket sales. Where on earth would someone not want to be in a 35,000 stadium that incorporates safe standing compered to what we have now ?
Well, I used the term sell outs to mean 24,000+. In actual fact, that still leaves 1,500 odd seats left unfilled. I don't know how many they need for segregation, but it surely can't be that many.
True, we are being told that ticket sales only make up a small part of income, so even increasing them by 25% wouldn't have a drastic influence possibly going from 6 to 8% and then still having the cost to recoup. 2% gross income will not make a difference or mean we stagnate. Each league position is probably worth more than the income generated from 60k extra tickets a season
It isn't but don't forget in terms of sellouts the away end may not be full either, and that's out of our control. I think 23-24k attendances would generally be regarded as a sellout one way or another taking into account these two points.
