The Fan is King

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Cravingawin

Cravingawin

Well-Known Member
Mar 23, 2011
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I've just watched a short clip BBC sport about Borrusia Dortmund strategy to attract on average 80000 to every home game. The best in Europe.

1000 brits go to home game as they're fed up with prices in UK football and also for the new football experience etc. BVB really do connect with their fans through their wallets though. Cheapest season ticket is £160. Not bad for a top team. They have looked atbthe Premier league and learnt from its mistakes.

What could Fulham learn from this approach? Perhaps we already do connect with the fans but where could we improve?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/29618299
 
I suspect Fulham with it's low capacity stadium would have to look to the likes of Mainz 05, Freiburg maybe Wolfsburg for their equivalent model in the Bundesliga.
Because of their fanbase and big stadium Dortmund can take a chance on selling out at lower prices to gain more revenue than if the stadium was half empty a higher prices.
A few years back when MAF was deciding about our stadium, I said we should look at the model that Bayer Leverkusen had. At the time they had a 22,500 capacity stadium but a new state of the art stadium, and were getting good crowds despite being near FC Koln who were a top team then. Since then they have increased their stadiums capacity to 30,000 and have cemented their place in the Bundesliga, but still struggle to compete against the likes of Munich and Dortmund, because they don't get the same revenue in.

To back up what the report says you do get value for money on your ticket in Germany.
The other week I was in Frankfurt and went to see FSV Frankfurt v St.Pauli in the 2nd Bundesliga, the standing ticket was 13 Euros and the most expensive seat 40 Euros. The match ticket included all city travel to and from the game. They had vendors selling beer and food inside and outside the ground, during the game selling Beer and icecream in the stands. The crowd was just under 9,000 and St.Pauli had bought about 4,000. The atmosphere was a good one, some of us complain about the clappers we get, but St.Pauli had 3 blokes with Megaphones keeping the crowd singing, (I swear they hardly turned round to watch the game !!!) and the game finished 3-3. FSV had a drummer and both had massive flags waving that would obscure half the pitch when waved.

In Germany the Corporate money goes back to mostly subsidise the fans tickets and some on players wages not the other way around.

Would it work in England ? No because this is rip-off Britain, and we the fans let it happen from stadium prices, to players wages, to the disgusting food and hiked up prices, we pay.
 
SBM are you working in Germany, I cant remember, or is that Demps Revenge?

I take your point but I still think Fulham could steal a march on the competition with a similar approach. We're clearly not going to attract 80k to CC but could we be getting bigger gates than we are getting currently.

Food for thought.

There was also a piece on a Man Unfan that used to travel to Old Trafford but now watches Dagenham every week as he couldn't connect with players earning more in a week than him in a decade.
 
Cravingawin said:
SBM are you working in Germany, I cant remember, or is that Demps Revenge?

I take your point but I still think Fulham could steal a march on the competition with a similar approach. We're clearly not going to attract 80k to CC but could we be getting bigger gates than we are getting currently.

Food for thought.

There was also a piece on a Man Unfan that used to travel to Old Trafford but now watches Dagenham every week as he couldn't connect with players earning more in a week than him in a decade.
Click to expand...
I use to work in Germany many years ago, that's were I got interested in German football, and traveled round to many grounds then. Even then (80's) it was as cheap to get into their grounds and they had the free travel included, so I guess it's built in to their way of football.
Fulham had a survey at the beginning of this season and I did suggest that they tried to do schemes similar to Germany on ST pricing and also try to get a like for like pricing on away games, but it hasn't happened, going down to the Championship was a great opportunity missed by the club to get things right with the pricing policy, but they failed and now they will suffer the consequences in future, as I know of people who have gone to local clubs and found the experience a lot better than the experience we put up with and have ditched the ST in favour of the local club.
On the positive side when we were in the Premier lots of surveys had Fulham down as one of the better clubs they wanted to visit time again.
 
Robbie Savage is now jumping on the bandwagon. He's admitted that players don't worry about the cost of a ticket. They wouldn't have a clue.

In generalistic terms thee TV money thats come into the game has only gone in to players pockets. This is a generalisation, I appreciate that it costs a lot of maney to run a club but nonetheless when the large percentage of outgoings is salary its fair to say it.

If 'football' had taken another angle and put the money in to grass roots football, youth set ups, looking after the fans with better value ticket prices rather than employing overpaid overseas players and indeed overpaid home grown players, would English football be in a better state? Albeit with slightly less international appeal.

Its no wonder that a player would say 'only £100 for a ticket!' if told it costs £100 to watch a game.

Ive worked it out to cost me over £400 per game if I took my family to Fulham on a Saturday. Totally affordable if you're earning £100k a week.
 
Cravingawin said:
Its no wonder that a player would say 'only £100 for a ticket!' if told it costs £100 to watch a game.
Click to expand...

About two years ago a friend of mine was selling something to a well known player and said, "They’re three fifty each". The player’s reply was, "Okay, I'll have two" and getting a wad of notes out of his pocket, started pealing off fifties. He thought my friend meant £350 when of course, it was .. £3.50 !!

True story. Can’t give any specific details since my friend would like to keep his job. However I tell it to re-inforce the point that money is almost an irrelevance to these high earners.


And in support of Cravings other point about how Clubs ought to better use their money:

TV has been a two-sided devil; generating a wodge of new revenue, and also creating such a high profile for PL and European games that clubs have been lured into believing they’ve corned a niche market.

One solution is for a levy/percentage of TV money to be diverted to subsidising all the things Craving listed - and perhaps the FA Cup as well.
 
Reading a survey done by the BBc on ticket prices, and going through them, we have the dearest
season seat prices in the championship £837, even dearer than 10 of the premiership sides.
In the riverside stand there are many empty seats, some of the fans I have spoken to said some of the regulars
have refused to renew due to prices, and these are not fair weather fans either, some have relocated to cheaper areas of the ground.
 
My season ticket is £100 cheaper than last year and I got two free Carling cup games. On the whole I'm very happy with what I pay. There are £837 tickets but there are also £256 tickets (albeit restricted view)

What I don't like is the £30+ tickets for away games. When you add on train tickets and beer, it is an expensive day out. People have to make a choice and I don't think it makes you a lesser fan if you don't or can't go to games.
 
For myself to get over for a game I have to pay to get to the airport, flights, travel from airport to the hotel, the hotel, match tickets, beers + food, and all the transport for the way home too, making visiting the Cottage an extremely rare treat unfortunately. It would probably cost me around the €500 mark per game. Obviously that's not all the clubs fault as the match ticket would only make up about 10% of this. It is so outrageous though that for the cost of me getting over to a single Fulham match I could purchase both a Barcelona and Real Madrid season ticket, and probably have a bit left over for beer.
 
The best seat in the house will cost almost 900 a season. But I remember the club giving out early bird deals to renew last season which I did think was a great idea. £260 is great value.
 
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