Seat Counters - 2024/25

[Greenandblue]

Block 306 has 162 seats available, most of which are in 1 block of seats all next to each other. They are returns yes, but not from season ticket holders, they are returns from tout sites or off site hospitality.
If City had just sold them as general admission in the summer, even at the disgusting prices they are on there at, they probably would have sold, but through sheer fucking greed they held them back from proper fans and are now desperately sending texts out informing people that they can have up to four tickets, this is the week before Christmas.
Incidentally, I checked that block yesterday and there were 162 available then, not one ticket has sold, and this is just one example, we’ll be nowhere near a sell out for fucking Boxing Day.

When it comes to ticketing, the club have completely and utterly lost the plot. There is no defending them. I agree with a previous poster, people should be dismissed from their job and a complete reset, with new people and new ideas is needed, otherwise the extension is going to be a disaster.

This is 100% correct.
Leicester city at home on a midweek night 2nd April is "sold out" for some time, only the odd single appears. There is no way the game has been sold out, thousands have been withheld for tout agencies at inflated prices and for hospitality. They will not sell. Thousands will reappear on the site in advance of the game. It happened for Forest and it will happen for Leicester. People are deluded if they think the swathes of seats coming back on sale are genuine season ticket resales. They are not.
The marketing tactic is to declare a "sell out", making it seem like it's a hot ticket, and people think they need to pay for hospitality or agency ticket prices.
The club release back the surplus close to the game, they don't really care if they sell the extras, the numbers have been crunched, they make more from the current tactic. Revenue is up, empty seats don't matter, and making tickets available in good time, at fair prices, to real blues, is not the best commercial model apparently. And that's all that matters.

 

[BungleBear]

This is 100% correct.
Leicester city at home on a midweek night 2nd April is "sold out" for some time, only the odd single appears. There is no way the game has been sold out, thousands have been withheld for tout agencies at inflated prices and for hospitality. They will not sell. Thousands will reappear on the site in advance of the game. It happened for Forest and it will happen for Leicester. People are deluded if they think the swathes of seats coming back on sale are genuine season ticket resales. They are not.
The marketing tactic is to declare a "sell out", making it seem like it's a hot ticket, and people think they need to pay for hospitality or agency ticket prices.
The club release back the surplus close to the game, they don't really care if they sell the extras, the numbers have been crunched, they make more from the current tactic. Revenue is up, empty seats don't matter, and making tickets available in good time, at fair prices, to real blues, is not the best commercial model apparently. And that's all that matters.

The large 3rd tier blocks only come back on for lower demand games, they will be staff, academy, corporate off site, agencies etc. For high demand matches they don't get repurposed back to GA as there is no surplus.

 

[bluesmith]

This is 100% correct.
Leicester city at home on a midweek night 2nd April is "sold out" for some time, only the odd single appears. There is no way the game has been sold out, thousands have been withheld for tout agencies at inflated prices and for hospitality. They will not sell. Thousands will reappear on the site in advance of the game. It happened for Forest and it will happen for Leicester. People are deluded if they think the swathes of seats coming back on sale are genuine season ticket resales. They are not.
The marketing tactic is to declare a "sell out", making it seem like it's a hot ticket, and people think they need to pay for hospitality or agency ticket prices.
The club release back the surplus close to the game, they don't really care if they sell the extras, the numbers have been crunched, they make more from the current tactic. Revenue is up, empty seats don't matter, and making tickets available in good time, at fair prices, to real blues, is not the best commercial model apparently. And that's all that matters.

It isn't 100% correct. People seem to be missing that City tickets are sold differently this season, they are sold in two batches, the first batch of tickets went on sale for all games in July, and then a second batch goes on sale 3 weeks before the fixture.

That's not to say City aren't selling tickets via agencies and then putting them back on the planner when they are returned as its fairly clear they are.

 

[Gone for a Burton]

Theses empty seats are RETURNS!
The game was sold out

These will still probably sell out again before kick off
As for cheap affordable tickets ?,all that will happen is they will still sell them as they are cheap ,people will still not go if they cannot be bothered or even worse ,sold to a third party and end up back on ticket sites at inflated prices ?

I applauded ur Citizen Smith attitude to this ,but I do not think you have really thought it through ?

Hmm ??

The objective of more affordable tickets is to (re) engage with and grow, our wider fan base.

To sell 60.000 tickets for EVERY home game the club probably needs an interested pool of (say) 90.000 fans.

Not all of that 'pool' of fans will want , or afford to go, to every game, but will go as a 'casual regular' to several games IF affordable tickets are easily available.

Having this 'pool' of fans that 'churn', is a win win for all parties, and the bigger the 'pool', potentially the bigger the wins.

As opposed to alienating a declining existing 'core' fan base via a 'profiteering' pricing policy, make all catagories of tickets more affordable and accessible, grow the 'pool', increase the churn and win,win,win.

Keep the finance/commercial guys away from ticketing policies and get the ground sold out with happy Mancunians !!

 

[EastMidlandsBlue]

It isn't 100% correct. People seem to be missing that City tickets are sold differently this season, they are sold in two batches, the first batch of tickets went on sale for all games in July, and then a second batch goes on sale 3 weeks before the fixture.

That's not to say City aren't selling tickets via agencies and then putting them back on the planner when they are returned as its fairly clear they are.

They do it in 2 batches so they can spend months trying to sell tickets as part of offsite hospitality packages and god knows where else they go.

Then when we get to 3 weeks or so before the game, they take any they haven't sold and advertise it as the "2nd batch" of tickets.

 

[Prophet of Doom]

They do it in 2 batches so they can spend months trying to sell tickets as part of offsite hospitality packages and god knows where else they go.

Then when we get to 3 weeks or so before the game, they take any they haven't sold and advertise it as the "2nd batch" of tickets.

Exactly !!! The idea that City are holding back this second batch of tickets until 3 weeks before is yet more bullshit to disguise what they are up to.

The ‘second batch’ have been in the hands of agents for months and any they can’t flog for hugely inflated prices get slung back to City to try and sell to proper supporters.

The whole set up stinks and shame on everybody at City involved in this seedy operation.

 

[bluesmith]

They do it in 2 batches so they can spend months trying to sell tickets as part of offsite hospitality packages and god knows where else they go.

Then when we get to 3 weeks or so before the game, they take any they haven't sold and advertise it as the "2nd batch" of tickets.

If that was the case so many wouldn't have gone on sale for the likes of Arsenal and utd.

 

[EastMidlandsBlue]

If that was the case so many wouldn't have gone on sale for the likes of Arsenal and utd.

That's because they siphon more away to begin with for these big Cat A games.

Go on the website and look how many offsite hospitality packages there are available for the game vs Liverpool in February. Now look at the brighton game which is the following home game, there's hardly any offsite hospitality available.

So using made up numbers as an example they might siphon off 500 for brighton and sell 300 so they put 200 back on the site.

But for liverpool they might siphon off 1000 and sell 800 so they put 200 back on the site.

In both instances the same amount have been put back on the site, but a different amount has been sold as packages

 

[M18CTID]

That's because they siphon more away to begin with for these big Cat A games.

Go on the website and look how many offsite hospitality packages there are available for the game vs Liverpool in February. Now look at the brighton game which is the following home game, there's hardly any offsite hospitality available.

So using made up numbers as an example they might siphon off 500 for brighton and sell 300 so they put 200 back on the site.

But for liverpool they might siphon off 1000 and sell 800 so they put 200 back on the site.

In both instances the same amount have been put back on the site, but a different amount has been sold as packages

Also, someone posted a link to offsite hospitality at TAST the other week for the derby. It was either £540 or £560 from memory - for a 3 course Tapas, a welcome drink on arrival, and a seat in the stadium…..oh, and make your own way to the stadium!

I looked last week and they’d reduced it to £299 as clearly the packages weren’t selling at the original inflated price. Could also be that they put some of the seats earmarked for that particular hospitality package back on sale to regular fans.

 

[EastMidlandsBlue]

Also, someone posted a link to offsite hospitality at TAST the other week for the derby. It was either £540 or £560 from memory - for a 3 course Tapas, a welcome drink on arrival, and a seat in the stadium…..oh, and make your own way to the stadium!

I looked last week and they’d reduced it to £299 as clearly the packages weren’t selling at the original inflated price. Could also be that they put some of the seats earmarked for that particular hospitality package back on sale to regular fans.

Offsite hospitality as a whole wind's me up. The whole point in hospitality is that its meant to be an expensive city experience, and we've got many great examples of these such as the Tunnel club and the legends lounge.

Offsite hospitality however, is basically just a meal before the game. Something which has a value of £150 at most being sold for £540 has the single aim of preying on tourists that don't know any better