Charlton fan in peace. Always liked your Club, and been going to Portman Road for 30 odd years (including the Play Off in the 80s) Just seen Ipswich is charging us £32.50 to get in this season. This is disgusting, and reflects very badly on your Club Whats it all about, fleecing the ordinary fan ?
Preaching to the converted over here my friend. One of the biggest talking points for the past couple of years is the ticket pricing strategy. We seem to be warming to the idea of worthwhile ticket promotions throughout the season.... ..but (this is the case around the country) the home side can price the away end at the top end of the stadium prices.. in other words equal to the amount of some of the best seats in the house. We aren't the only ones to do it but our top end is quite high and we seem to religiously stick to this strategy.. whereas others have offers extended to away fans or at least undercut the top end slightly. We are not the only ones, but we seem to be one of the worse offenders during the course of a season.
as KOPR says preaching to the converted. It's my biggest bug bearer with the club over the past 5 years or so, the match day tickets at our club are generally absurd!!
For the Watford match, four days before Christmas Day, they are grading it a B match, and thus are charging £27.50, makes absolutely no business sense whatsoever, many people will find it financially difficult in this period, you would have thought they would have graded it C, like our last two home matches, and charged £21.00, its just poor public relations
How about your club when I went, charging us £30, I assume that's ALSO disgusting? For the record, that day we took 2500 despite the price to Valley Parade. Lets see how many you bring to Portman Road shall we - I predict 800. If you blame price for your abysmal numbers, how come we were capable of taking a bucket load ? While I'm irritated and annoyed by our prices, other clubs are also guilty of taking the complete p*** with prices too. Have any of you noticed in the Premiership, some clubs are coming up with joint deals for BOTH away games at a fixture this season, an arrangement I guess. Norwich and Swansea have one, with both clubs charging away fans £20 a ticket. Good hey!
" For the Watford match, four days before Christmas Day, they are grading it a B match, and thus are charging £27.50, makes absolutely no business sense whatsoever, many people will find it financially difficult in this period, you would have thought they would have graded it C, like our last two home matches, and charged £21.00, its just poor public relations " Remind me of how " magnifiicently effective " the grade C prices have been, lets look at the Blackburn and Huddersfield crowds...... 14000 odd for Blackburn, 15000 odd for Huddersfield - the Huddersfield game on a Saturday too! Infact the Blackburn game was such a success, it was our lowest gate since 1999! While I would prefer cheaper prices, I think we all would, it makes ZERO business sense to lower the prices if we aren't going to see roughly a 25% increase needed on people buying matchday tickets. The club are simply just losing £££££ in real terms. Sad, but true. People need to start coming back to Portman Road, especially on the C game to show the club price DOES matter.
As I've always said I don't think lowering the prices throughout the season changing from game to game makes much difference. It's about having a reasonable price all throughout the season, then you'd gradually see numbers coming back IMO. Most 'fair weather' fans go when it is convenient for them to go rather than if the ticket is cheap but then when it's convenient and you see an extortionate price, it'll probably put people off and in future they won't even consider going again.
It makes very little difference whatsoever ITFCPTC. The club has ZERO idea on the marketing front either, so when they do lower prices, who here's this news? Next to no one. We're being slightly more creative with offers ( at last ) at least. The Charlton idea for NY day is very good, junior blues being able to bring adults along for free. Kudos to the club. Season tickets do need to come down slightly, and lets get the matchday prices down to a sensible figure next season. This A/B/C system clearly is achieving absolutely nothing. Midweek games should be cheaper at all times. At least the club appears to understand this with C bracket chosen for this. The club often shoots them self in the foot on prices. The ONE TIME it would have made sense for tickets to cost a lot, was the Arsenal semi final game. They were cheap for this. That said, perhaps we were tied in with an agreement by Arsenal due to the leg at the Emirates also being cheap. The club have at least got the FA Cup prices spot on in my eyes. 15 a ticket is a decent price. What remains to be seen is what areas of the stadium the club are choosing for this. I wonder if it will only be the lower tiers at 15 and other areas more.... I hope not, however this club often misses any opportunity sadly. People may say the lowest figure we're able to charge is 10 pounds, which is the lowest figure for this season newly introduced by the FA. Brighton and Reading have agreed this, fair play to them. However, were we really likely to see a 33% increase on the gate should the tickets have been 10 instead of 15? I don't think so, however I could be wrong!
I think it's a major problem, really the only people who hear about the ticket prices offers are season ticket holders or real loyal supporters who don't have a season ticket but go when they can. I think we certainly need to be more creative but also as you say with regards to the grading of games not over complicate things, I think this is something that really stops people from coming. As I've said most people go to games on convenience, not neccessarily due to price but when they want to go to a game and see it's a grade A game and the ticket is really expensive they're not going to want to go and then that puts them off in the future even considering going, as it would be that extra bit of effort to look at the grades of tickets and for fans who aren't hardcore supporters that's just another barrier to them attending. As I've said I think games should be a standard price throughout the season of say no more than £25, perhaps with the odd ticket promotion say around Xmas and Easter to get a full house and for cup games. Then in the future those that come then might attend more matches in the future. I think whilst not cheap the season tickets aren't extortionate but it seems like while quite rightly the club want to look after the season ticket holders they're not really think that those others who buy match day tickets might potentially be season ticket holders in the future.
