2014/15 accounts released - £10.7m profit

[Pablo ZZZ Peroni]

You're quite right about supply & demand keeping ticket prices in check.

ADUG have followed the Glazers' lead and introduced highly differential pricing (meaning that the price can vary depending on which block and even which part of the block you sit in) and put prices up to the level where demand tails off. Tomorrow night will show that the demand still isn't there yet. As a comparison, the average revenue per seat per game was £35 at our place last season and over £55 at theirs. If we could achieve that sort of figure, we'd be looking at matchday revenue of around £75m. A lot of that is hospitality/premium revenue, whcih is where the money is. I looked at the two premium areas in the Colin Bell Stand on Saturday and they were half-empty. I simply don't believe that's because a load of people failed to turn up. We might sell it all for a Derby or Chelsea game but there will be a dozen or more games when there's significant capacity.

FYI, Premium Seats in the range £1150 to £1750 spread across 4 blocks in Colin Bell - 221, 222, 223 and 225. In total, including East Stand premium there, there are over 2400 premium Seats in the ground. The club is on record as saying they sold over 2000 Premium Seats before the season started so approaching 85% capacity.

 

[Damocles]

Relevant bit from the rags release.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

FYI, Premium Seats in the range £1150 to £1750 spread across 4 blocks in Colin Bell - 221, 222, 223 and 225. In total, including East Stand premium there, there are over 2400 premium Seats in the ground. The club is on record as saying they sold over 2000 Premium Seats before the season started so approaching 85% capacity.

At the swamp, they have around 8,000 premium seats in a stadium with a total capacity of 75,000, meaning over 1 in 10 seats is a premium one and thesebring in 60% of their match-day revenue. I thought we had about 2,000 before the reconfiguration this season so that's a bit of a disappointment to find we've actually only got 2,400 in a 55,000 seater stadium, which is significantly less than 1 in 20.

 

[pardoeofftomexico]

Don’t want to pick holes but for the sake of clarity there is no such thing as a contingent asset. Assets have to be represented in the books at fair value. Sterling will go in the books as a £49m asset, on the liabilities side of the balance sheet cash is reduced by £44m and the contingent liability forms the balancing figure of £5m. Net movement on the bottom line is Nil.

If we have to pay out the extra £5m, cash would go down by £5m and the removal of the £5m contingent liability would be the balancing figure, it would mean there is no change to the bottom line if we pay out in future. The effect is that the full cost of the acquisition is factored into the accounts on day 1. There is nothing unusual about this, its standard stuff.

A contingent liability is a note to reflect something that may become payable in the future which is not otherwise shown in the accounts. If Sterling cost £49M and we paid cash of £44M we either bring him into the accounts as an asset at £49M and show the liability to pay the extra £5M in the Balance Sheet or bring him in at £44M and show the potential additional £5M as a contingent liability. If the full cost is factored into the accounts on day 1 there would be no contingent liability to note. I suspect the bulk of the contingent liability relates to bonuses for long service or winning trophies that may or may not become payable in the future. In other words the contingent liability could represent a significant charge in future years accounts of up to £112M if the full payments materialised because we had won the Champions League three times in a row or whatever else was needed to trigger payment!

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

A contingent liability is a note to reflect something that may become payable in the future which is not otherwise shown in the accounts. If Sterling cost £49M and we paid cash of £44M we either bring him into the accounts as an asset at £49M and show the liability to pay the extra £5M in the Balance Sheet or bring him in at £44M and show the potential additional £5M as a contingent liability. If the full cost is factored into the accounts on day 1 there would be no contingent liability to note. I suspect the bulk of the contingent liability relates to bonuses for long service or winning trophies that may or may not become payable in the future. In other words the contingent liability could represent a significant charge in future years accounts of up to £112M if the full payments materialised because we had won the Champions League three times in a row or whatever else was needed to trigger payment!

Go back a few pages and we've covered contingent liabilities to death. What you do with them depends on the perceived likelihood of the contingency coming to pass.

 

[Saddleworth2]

On the match day revenue I don't think it is our owners keeping prices down, I think they do maximise revenue and that it is the supply/ demand that helps to keep our ticket prices lower. The United/ Arsenal fans have typically a richer fan base and more demand and as such can charge more. It is unrealistic to expect for City to have caught this up in what in reality is a very small period of time.

We are doing so well on all aspects of our accounts and as you say Swiss Rambler explains it really well.

You make a very good point, but maybe it's a bit of both. I guess I was simply thinking that this season we have record numbers of season ticket holders and the additional capacity created by the new stand has been taken up. Therefore the club has pitched the season ticket prices at a level that has achieved that. The £299 seats are to be applauded and even if you take an average of around £700, it still works out at just under £37 per game. Whilst, I know that a lot of money, it is pretty competitive these days. The club could have tried to start to incrementally increase the revenue per seat this season and on the face of it haven't, instead relying on the additional seats to increase the revenue. Maybe they are looking at the hospitality prices as there does seem to be gaps at the games against the smaller clubs - Watford and Bournemouth.

 

[Saddleworth2]

I should have added, if we all bought a pie, that would increase revenue per seat by over 10% at a stroke!

 

[Centurions]

FYI, Premium Seats in the range £1150 to £1750 spread across 4 blocks in Colin Bell - 221, 222, 223 and 225. In total, including East Stand premium there, there are over 2400 premium Seats in the ground. The club is on record as saying they sold over 2000 Premium Seats before the season started so approaching 85% capacity.

Did you ever estimate the number of seats in the different price bands at all? ignoring the Premium seating areas which are a different kettle of fish entirely, do you have any idea of an average ST price for the whole stadium?

 

[Pablo ZZZ Peroni]

Did you ever estimate the number of seats in the different price bands at all? ignoring the Premium seating areas which are a different kettle of fish entirely, do you have any idea of an average ST price for the whole stadium?

I did to a fashion. There were 45,800 seats to select from (excluding corporate, premium, away support etc) at relocationwindow/waiting list sale time. If ALL had been sold at adult gold price the average was pretty much exactly £620.

It is not an exact science tho because we stopped selling intially at 40,000 and I don't know what the price distribution was for those 40,000. Also, of course, I don't know how many concessions we have - junior, young person, OAP etc.

I posted recently in another thread a stat from the 2014/2015 accounts document:

"Seasoncard holders paid considerably less for each home goal scored than fans of any other Premier League in 2014/2015 at just £11.03 per goal, compared to £17.39 for the club offering second-best value for money."

We scored 44 home league goals in 2014/2015 so 44 x £11.03 = average season card price of £485. So, there is your answer of sorts. Presumably this figure DOES include concessions.

 

[Centurions]

I did to a fashion. There were 45,800 seats to select from (excluding corporate, premium, away support etc) at relocationwindow/waiting list sale time. If ALL had been sold at adult gold price the average was pretty much exactly £620.

It is not an exact science tho because we stopped selling intially at 40,000 and I don't know what the price distribution was for those 40,000. Also, of course, I don't know how many concessions we have - junior, young person, OAP etc.

I posted recently in another thread a stat from the 2014/2015 accounts document:

"Seasoncard holders paid considerably less for each home goal scored than fans of any other Premier League in 2014/2015 at just £11.03 per goal, compared to £17.39 for the club offering second-best value for money."

We scored 44 home league goals in 2014/2015 so 44 x £11.03 = average season card price of £485. So, there is your answer of sorts. Presumably this figure DOES include concessions.

Yeah, sorry, I didn't really think that question through did I :(