City Voice - Recognising and rewarding long-term members

[Corky]

Season Ticket prices for adults on the plan showed £449 I think in SSL, I can see this meaning 18/21 or O65 Adults which were £390 G or £440 P this season.

I'm not sure apart from the back of SS3 there will be cheaper ones. However I wouldn't want to go there.

 

[mashipx]

Ive been reading through this thread, but not all. I dont know if its been said already but if there are so many fans with a grievance about ST pricing like myself, then why cant we organise for 3 giant banners, sheet flags, 1 on each stand away from the west stand, displaying a frank and to the point message for all to read, ie, "sort the pricing for loyals or we start to go". Hopefully tv cameras will pick them up too. If their not going to take head via the social media channels, then it needs to be more in their faces..

 

[Cheadle_hulmeBlue]

Its obvious what people want - CHEAPER TICKET PRICES

 

[Shaelumstash]

Bunch of fucking arseholes. Why don't they actually talk to long-term fans face-to-face instead of hiding behind City Voice?

I can tell you exactly what's behind this survey. It seems they're worried that of the 36,000 season ticket holders who were here in the 2003/4 season when we moved, 24,000 have given up. I'm sure there are all sorts of reasons but I bet most are fucked off with things like constant price rises, less and less atmosphere, digital fucking flags, people being moved out of seats they've sat in since we moved so some corporate wanker can sit there for the games he/she chooses to attend, being thrown out for trying to stand up and create an atmosphere, more and more over-priced mercenaries who couldn't give a fuck in the team, never hearing anything from the CEO or them having any meaningful engagement with fans, etc, etc, etc.

What do you want FFS - Khaldoon to pop round to your place to discuss your obviously very deep grievances. Why are you so full of anger about the clubs attempt to give fans a voice? They might act on some of the comments GIVEN A CHANCE!

Opinions or facts??? I don't believe you can possibly know that 24000 "original" fans have given up season tickets!! If so, it demonstrates huge scope for stadium expansion for when these fans are lured back!!

I know how many people have given up because the club contacted people to tell them that they were worried about it and were thinking about a club for longer term fans. Others on here will have had the same email and can confirm this.

For many years the club talked to us face-to-face via Points of Blue. That was an open meeting that anyone could go to if they wanted but it tended to be a core of around 30 people. Virtually all of these were totally committed fans and quite a few posters on here went.

Most were long-term, committed Blues who went home and away. People like de niro & Eccles Blue. They knew the club and spent money year after year. And that was when we had a CEO who basically couldn't give two hoots about the fans but needed us onside when attendances were going down.

Cook genuinely cared about us and missed very few opportunities to mingle with fans and talk to them.

Now we've got Soriano and there's fuck all engagement with the fans any more. Points of Blue has gone by the wayside since he arrived. City Voice has a place but it's not a replacement for meaningful contact with people who've been around the club far longer than they have. There's no guarantee that people on City Voice even go to games.

Have we heard anything from him in the time he's been here? May as well have the Invisible fucking man running the club. All we get is more and more fucking surveys cunningly designed to find out how much more money they can screw out of us. We've had 10% rises 3 years running and there's significant gaps in the crowd almost every game. They've got the pricing strategy totally wrong so that even Newcastle fans don't take the full allocation. They were charging fans £52 last season for a televised Monday night game against West Brom.

You say they might act on comments given the chance. Well we've been giving them the fucking chance for the last 3 years by asking for a Points of Blue meeting and been rebuffed. I don't believe that's what the Sheikh or Khaldoon want. This is entirely down to the Spanish wanker who's slowly sacking the life out of this club.

PB when I read your initial post, I genuinely thought you were bring ironic and taking the piss out of people who had grievances with the current CEO and board for lack of engagement with the fans. It seems you are being serious, and I am in total agreement with you.

Whenever anyone has dared to question Sorriano in the past, it quickly descends in to farce with his supporters taking the piss out of Garry Cook's gaffes. It's like a Mancini / Pellegrini thread, but about the executives. But it seems more and more people are becoming wise to the mistakes the board are making.

Every interview or speech I have seen from Sorriano has been relating to NYCFC, Abu Dhabi, or snippets on CFA. We've heard next to nothing from him on MCFC in over 2 and a half years. I understand that CFG has many arms to it's bow, and I'm supportive of that. But most fans overwhelming interest is in MCFC. Sorriano seems to see us as a minor irrelevance in the scheme of things, but without us, the whole thing falls apart.

It's clear that his strategy to distance the fans from the club is so he can monetise our support as much as possible. 50 years of loyalty has no relevance to him if he can fill your seat with a tourist willing to pay 30% more for a ticket. Tom Glick was also instrumental in that, and I'm absolutely delighted he's moved on. Let him go and rip off a bunch of customers who "support" a team which doesn't exist yet and have no family or historical loyalty to a club. In a city where there enough millionaires to fill the stadium every week, and it won't affect attendance figures if you're pricing out middle and low income fans.

One of the buzzwords around the club recently is "cycles". I believe we needed Garry Cook for our first cycle after the takeover. Someone inspirational, who could make people believe in seismic change. A dreamer who saw no reason a club that hadn't won a trophy in 40 years could become the biggest club in Europe.

The next cycle we needed football men. Experience of building a club, setting in best practices on scouting, recruitment, strategy, football operations etc. I think some of the work Sorriano has put in on that will bear fruit in years from now. He's also had to go through a period where prices for fans has had to catch up with the quality of the players and facilities. We were paying mid table PL prices for title winning quality. It's normal that there was a period of adjustment.

Moving fans from the third tier, North stand etc was a pain, but possibly for the long term a neccessary one. I'm sure that was one of the reasons for creating the distance, it's a business decision and he doesn't want to be too connected to the fans.

When the new stand opens, they've got a real opportunity to go in to a new, third cycle. Re-engaging with loyal and traditional fans, as opposed to squeezing every last penny out of day trippers and tourists.

Make season and match day tickets affordable, reward loyalty. Engage with disaffected fans and see what will bring them back. Don't trick them with clever economic model questionnaires about the maximum they could possibly afford. Instead find out what they think would be a fair price, what would be good value.

Instead of exploiting loyalty, reward it.

 

[Damocles]

Every interview or speech I have seen from Sorriano has been relating to NYCFC, Abu Dhabi, or snippets on CFA. We've heard next to nothing from him on MCFC in over 2 and a half years. I understand that CFG has many arms to it's bow, and I'm supportive of that. But most fans overwhelming interest is in MCFC. Sorriano seems to see us as a minor irrelevance in the scheme of things, but without us, the whole thing falls apart.

Soriano gave numerous interviews when he joined regarding his vision for the club, and numerous interviews since then on everything from the new manager to the new Academy. He shouldn't be commenting on City unless he has a reason - he isn't our PR man he's the guy who runs the company.

However the thrust of your post in places is correct but your conclusions are off.

Under his stewardship City have broken every single financial/revenue record in their history. Under his stewardship they have become the fastest growing club in the history of football. Under his stewardship they have won more trophies than any other time in their history. His success or competence should not be questioned by anybody with even an ounce of sense.

Here's my problem with this whole conversation - people want City to spend more than they earn or want Sheikh Mansour to subsidies their tickets. Our matchday revenue is currently dwarfed by almost every major club in Europe. Our commercial revenue is way ahead due to the fact that we have negotiated ours within the last few years unlike many other clubs and we're the new boy on the block. They will catch up. Our TV revenue is around the same as the other English clubs.

What people are suggesting, is that City become a club who competes on the pitch with these other major clubs (remembering the massive outcry we've had recently on getting beaten by a superior Barca team), yet a team who shouldn't compete with them in revenue terms. This isn't just unrealistic it is a complete fantasy.

There are no magic miracle systems in football. People get lucky with a great youth crop or a couple of years where they are ahead on scouting or even intangibles like this but this is not a platform that long term success is built upon. The platform that long term success is built upon is your ability to generate revenue. All football clubs generate revenue in three major sections and we evaluate their long term strength on those.

It's the way of modern football. Nobody could compete with us because we had the Sheikh's backing and we leapfrogged 10 different clubs because we had the financial muscle. Now people want us to shrink our financial muscle and still compete with clubs who are increasing their matchday revenue. The only logic I can see here is that people either want Abu Dhabi to spend some money on us because we're special snowflakes who deserve all of their money, or that people want us to not try to compete with Chelsea, Arsenal, United and eventually Liverpool. Because none of them are giving a shit about rising costs and even the people who freeze their ticket prices have done so knowing they have double the matchday revenue of us.

This ticket issue is nothing to do with Soriano nor Cook nor Tom Glick. It's to do with the Premier League; David Dein, Martin Edwards, Noel White, Phillip Carter and Irving Scholar. Oh and a journalist who somehow rose to the top of ITV who due to his gladhanding with these lot is now the head of the FA; Greg Dyke. They created a league in which there is a financial arms race for clubs and the only way to succeed is to spend. The people who don't spend will be overtaken by the people who will. They took the competitive element of football off the pitch and put it into the boardroom, and the state of football we have now is down almost directly to them and UEFA's utterly ridiculous Champions League compensation packages.

Football clubs including City now have a choice - earn more or win less. Ticket prices unfortunately come into that bracket and FFP has just confirmed it yet again. They will continue to rise and there's nothing that you, I or Ferran Soriano can do about it in anything but a temporary measure.

 

[jrb]

Every interview or speech I have seen from Sorriano has been relating to NYCFC, Abu Dhabi, or snippets on CFA. We've heard next to nothing from him on MCFC in over 2 and a half years. I understand that CFG has many arms to it's bow, and I'm supportive of that. But most fans overwhelming interest is in MCFC. Sorriano seems to see us as a minor irrelevance in the scheme of things, but without us, the whole thing falls apart.

Soriano gave numerous interviews when he joined regarding his vision for the club, and numerous interviews since then on everything from the new manager to the new Academy. He shouldn't be commenting on City unless he has a reason - he isn't our PR man he's the guy who runs the company.

However the thrust of your post in places is correct but your conclusions are off.

Under his stewardship City have broken every single financial/revenue record in their history. Under his stewardship they have become the fastest growing club in the history of football. Under his stewardship they have won more trophies than any other time in their history. His success or competence should not be questioned by anybody with even an ounce of sense.

Here's my problem with this whole conversation - people want City to spend more than they earn or want Sheikh Mansour to subsidies their tickets. Our matchday revenue is currently dwarfed by almost every major club in Europe. Our commercial revenue is way ahead due to the fact that we have negotiated ours within the last few years unlike many other clubs and we're the new boy on the block. They will catch up. Our TV revenue is around the same as the other English clubs.

What people are suggesting, is that City become a club who competes on the pitch with these other major clubs (remembering the massive outcry we've had recently on getting beaten by a superior Barca team), yet a team who shouldn't compete with them in revenue terms. This isn't just unrealistic it is a complete fantasy.

There are no magic miracle systems in football. People get lucky with a great youth crop or a couple of years where they are ahead on scouting or even intangibles like this but this is not a platform that long term success is built upon. The platform that long term success is built upon is your ability to generate revenue. All football clubs generate revenue in three major sections and we evaluate their long term strength on those.

It's the way of modern football. Nobody could compete with us because we had the Sheikh's backing and we leapfrogged 10 different clubs because we had the financial muscle. Now people want us to shrink our financial muscle and still compete with clubs who are increasing their matchday revenue. The only logic I can see here is that people either want Abu Dhabi to spend some money on us because we're special snowflakes who deserve all of their money, or that people want us to not try to compete with Chelsea, Arsenal, United and eventually Liverpool. Because none of them are giving a shit about rising costs and even the people who freeze their ticket prices have done so knowing they have double the matchday revenue of us.

This ticket issue is nothing to do with Soriano nor Cook nor Tom Glick. It's to do with the Premier League; David Dein, Martin Edwards, Noel White, Phillip Carter and Irving Scholar. Oh and a journalist who somehow rose to the top of ITV who due to his gladhanding with these lot is now the head of the FA; Greg Dyke. They created a league in which there is a financial arms race for clubs and the only way to succeed is to spend. The people who don't spend will be overtaken by the people who will. They took the competitive element of football off the pitch and put it into the boardroom, and the state of football we have now is down almost directly to them and UEFA's utterly ridiculous Champions League compensation packages.

Football clubs including City now have a choice - earn more or win less. Ticket prices unfortunately come into that bracket and FFP has just confirmed it yet again. They will continue to rise and there's nothing that you, I or Ferran Soriano can do about it in anything but a temporary measure.

That maybe true Damocles, and I except some of your points, but there's a major difference.

Whether the club and those running it care to admit it or not, or even take it into consideration, the vast majority of our support is still working class and local. We don't have, and probably won't ever have a rich, national, and international fan base. Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern, United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, etc can all call on their wealthy fans and hordes of tourists/day trippers to fill their stadiums. OT is once again full of them for the Sunderland match. Watched the 1st half. Barcelona away, 99 Euros printed on my ticket.(thank God for the good
Pound/Euro exchange rate ATM) And that's probably the cheapest ticket for the match. Others tickets are priced 200 Euros and upwards. And Barcelona will still sell out.(home fans)

Unfortunately the club can't do anything about it's land-locked support. That's the way it is. It's always been like this, and probably always will be. So they have to find a fine dividing line. A diving line where they can increase revenues without pricing out and alienating the majority of the working class and local fan base.

Put it this way. In 10 years time Sorriano probably won't be here, And if it should go pear shaped on the pitch, and City's new breed of fans start to drift away, who's going to pick up the pieces on the terraces? Not us, because we'll have been priced out a long time before then.

 

[Cheadle_hulmeBlue]

This ticket issue is nothing to do with Soriano nor Cook nor Tom Glick. It's to do with the Premier League; David Dein, Martin Edwards, Noel White, Phillip Carter and Irving Scholar. Oh and a journalist who somehow rose to the top of ITV who due to his gladhanding with these lot is now the head of the FA; Greg Dyke. They created a league in which there is a financial arms race for clubs and the only way to succeed is to spend. The people who don't spend will be overtaken by the people who will. They took the competitive element of football off the pitch and put it into the boardroom, and the state of football we have now is down almost directly to them and UEFA's utterly ridiculous Champions League compensation packages.

Football clubs including City now have a choice - earn more or win less. Ticket prices unfortunately come into that bracket and FFP has just confirmed it yet again. They will continue to rise and there's nothing that you, I or Ferran Soriano can do about it in anything but a temporary measure.

How is it nothing to do with them they set the prices and choose which strategy in terms of pricing we go down. Higher ticket prices is there fault. Your other point is just an excuse ticket revenue is nothing to the club and with the new tv deal that covers that ten times over pretty much. bayern and dortmund and other german teams manage to charge a hell of a lot less yet are still successful. We dont have to charge high prices at all its about the club being greedy and trying to rinse as much money as possible out of us. The club needs to care about its fans as it is losing them- long standing ones.

 

[Damocles]

This ticket issue is nothing to do with Soriano nor Cook nor Tom Glick. It's to do with the Premier League; David Dein, Martin Edwards, Noel White, Phillip Carter and Irving Scholar. Oh and a journalist who somehow rose to the top of ITV who due to his gladhanding with these lot is now the head of the FA; Greg Dyke. They created a league in which there is a financial arms race for clubs and the only way to succeed is to spend. The people who don't spend will be overtaken by the people who will. They took the competitive element of football off the pitch and put it into the boardroom, and the state of football we have now is down almost directly to them and UEFA's utterly ridiculous Champions League compensation packages.

Football clubs including City now have a choice - earn more or win less. Ticket prices unfortunately come into that bracket and FFP has just confirmed it yet again. They will continue to rise and there's nothing that you, I or Ferran Soriano can do about it in anything but a temporary measure.

How is it nothing to do with them they set the prices and choose which strategy in terms of pricing we go down. Higher ticket prices is there fault. Your other point is just an excuse ticket revenue is nothing to the club and with the new tv deal that covers that ten times over pretty much. bayern and dortmund and other german teams manage to charge a hell of a lot less yet are still successful. We dont have to charge high prices at all its about the club being greedy and trying to rinse as much money as possible out of us. The club needs to care about its fans as it is losing them- long standing ones.

Because the ticket price rising is just the symptom. The problem is that football is a financial arms race because success is intricately linked to spending on the squad.

Bayern are in a one team league. Their revenues absolutely dwarf anybody else in Germany, most of them many times over. Due to this (and numerous other factors), Bayern Munich have a ridiculously high commercial revenue - larger than both Madrid and Barca too.

And despite their ticket prices their matchday revenue is about £20m a year more than ours. This is due to a couple of things, but mainly that Bayern's ticket prices are the same myth as our £299 season tickets are. You can theoretically buy them cheap but the demand far FAR exceeds the supply of them.

As distasteful as this sounds to us, the club doesn't want us as fans any more. We aren't rich enough, we aren't numerous enough and we have an inflated expectation that a tourist won't have. The days where we as a core group of long term local fans are powerful enough to sway the club in a big way is disappearing. Simply because there will be more fans in the future that don't carry our baggage and are willing to pay more, and football despite our romanticism about it is at its core a business.

Don't for one second believe that the club is engaging with the 1894 group or doing these £299 season ticket deals as anything other than protection for their brand. Football fans are the absolute worst in the entire world when it comes to deluding themselves into thinking that they are "important" in some way to the people at the club. You're a customer of theirs and have the same importance as every other customer and this doesn't matter if you have supported them for 20 years or 20 minutes.

Our club is not competing for us as customers. Not really. We're too small of a market to affect their bottom line. They are competing against the Uniteds, Barcas, Bayerns and Madrids for the Chinese markets and the Indian and American markets. Manchester City is a sports entertainment brand that happens to have Manchester in its name and it is where one of the company's offices is based.

We're ASDA now and not the local butchers. There are drawbacks and positives within this. We'll be much more successful and we'll get to see much better and much more entertaining players strut their stuff at the Etihad. But we traded that for the power we had as consumers at the club.

Whether this is a trade off worth having is something that is for each City fan to decide.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Football clubs including City now have a choice - earn more or win less. Ticket prices unfortunately come into that bracket and FFP has just confirmed it yet again. They will continue to rise and there's nothing that you, I or Ferran Soriano can do about it in anything but a temporary measure.

In one sense you're right and I've said on here & in KOTK a number of times that our ticket revenue has lagged behind our peers. But when you look more closely at ticket revenues across Europe, we actually match Bayern Munich on a revenue per seat basis and do significantly better than Dortmund. We lag behind the rags, Chelsea and Arsenal in the PL and Barcelona & Real Madrid in La Liga but that's about it.

Looking at our PL rivals, the difference lies in the prices charged by the London clubs and the relative mix of their standard & premium offerings. Taking the rags, they have around 8,000, or just over 10% of their seats, set aside for some sort of premium package. We have around 2,000, which is less than 5% of our available seating. The reconfiguration of EL & CB Level 2 is designed to address this. If we wanted to match the mix at The Swamp, once the South Stand extension is operational then we'd need to convert something like 4,000 seats to a premium configuration. That sounds about right with the plans announced. If we can sell those seats, we should be able to move from a seat-per-game average of less than £40 currently to possibly closer to £50. That would see an overall revenue increase to something like £60m.

We're not going to be able to charge London prices so we're unlikely to ever catch Arsenal or Chelsea but overall, ticket revenue is going to be relatively insignificant in the overall revenue stream, certainly once the new PL deal kicks in. I reckon that ticket revenue from the ordinary (i.e. non-premium) fan is no more than £25m. When net profits should be close to £100m in 2 or 3 years time, would it kill us to give up £2-3m of that revenue?

 

[pardoeofftomexico]

This ticket issue is nothing to do with Soriano nor Cook nor Tom Glick. It's to do with the Premier League; David Dein, Martin Edwards, Noel White, Phillip Carter and Irving Scholar. Oh and a journalist who somehow rose to the top of ITV who due to his gladhanding with these lot is now the head of the FA; Greg Dyke. They created a league in which there is a financial arms race for clubs and the only way to succeed is to spend. The people who don't spend will be overtaken by the people who will. They took the competitive element of football off the pitch and put it into the boardroom, and the state of football we have now is down almost directly to them and UEFA's utterly ridiculous Champions League compensation packages.

Football clubs including City now have a choice - earn more or win less. Ticket prices unfortunately come into that bracket and FFP has just confirmed it yet again. They will continue to rise and there's nothing that you, I or Ferran Soriano can do about it in anything but a temporary measure.

How is it nothing to do with them they set the prices and choose which strategy in terms of pricing we go down. Higher ticket prices is there fault. Your other point is just an excuse ticket revenue is nothing to the club and with the new tv deal that covers that ten times over pretty much. bayern and dortmund and other german teams manage to charge a hell of a lot less yet are still successful. We dont have to charge high prices at all its about the club being greedy and trying to rinse as much money as possible out of us. The club needs to care about its fans as it is losing them- long standing ones.

The new TV income will come into our 2017 accounts. It is not here yet. When it is I am almost certain that regular ticket prices will stabilise. In fact, I think they may do before then. To read your comment you would think we have been making money hand over fist. We have been making huge losses.

The only really successful club in Germany is Bayern. A good job we are not in the same position as Dortmund this year. I dread to think of the
meltdown on here.

If we sold the tickets for less what would you have liked us to cut down on to break even. I suppose poor Scott Sinclair is to blame!