LongsightM13
Well-Known Member
The minimal but annual price increases are very annoying and clearly a ‘softening up’ process, especially when many of our neighbours were freezing prices.I've aired my views on this before, and the club knows them, but some interesting points being raised so I'll give a detailed response.
I don't think anyone expects to watch games for free or for minimal amounts. The club, after all, is a commercial business that has to report a level of profit (or loss) within the requirements of FFP. But, my god, have they lost their way on ticketing & prcing in the last few years. I know from my work, where I deal with major IT implementations and business change, that tinkering often leads to more problems than it solves. And we've tinkered.
We're at a unique moment in our history, where we've been catapulted from a yo-yo club, sometimes facing existential financial crises, but with a remarkably and steadfastly loyal fanbase, to one of the biggest, most successful clubs on the planet. Football itself has changed. Instead of games mostly being at 3pm on a Saturday, with the occasional midweek one, you can watch a game pretty well every day of the week these days.
And people are more mobile, as we moved further away for work and other reasons. They don't roll out of the factory gates, hop on a bus or two and go to a game. I started working in London just before the takeover and we alway had plenty of fans down there, many of whom travelled to games regularly. Now we're global and you'll usually see fans who've travelled thousands of miles to see one game at the Etihad. Yet we still think about tickets the same way as we did in the 1970's.
As much as I have a lot of time for Garry Cook, he started the trend of consistently higher prices. Maybe the owner tasked him with doing this and he had little choice, but that trend has carried on. My understanding is that, a few years ago maybe 4 or 5, the board decided ticket prices were high enough but they were somehow overruled and the increases continued. The majority of our season card holders are over 50 and most of us will be gone as matchgoing regulars in 25-30 years, there's an ideal opportunity to take a step back and look strategically at what we want as a club regarding our fanbase and where we want to be over the next 10/20/30 years.
We have an unparalelled opportunity to capture a new set of fans. One of my colleagues is a Sheffield United fan and was telling me his son has decided he's a City fan. The colleague I work most closely with, her teenage daughter idolises players like Phil Foden & Raheem Sterling. You hear this story time and time again. We are big box office these days and I guess many of us started watching City on an occasional basis with our families.
There's plenty of empitrical evidence that the earlier you get kids coming to games (of any sport) the more chance you have of them becoming regulars. Yet if you want to bring kids to a Category A game, like the one on Saturday, it'd cost a nuclear family of mum, dad and two kids over £200. It wouldn't be that much less to watch a team like Burnley, Brighton or Southampton at the Etihad. That's absolute nonsense. Yet we sell virtually all our tickets (according to the figures we've been given). One issue we're starting to look at is why people who've bought tickets don't turn up and what we can do about it.
From a revenue point of view, we underperform Liverpool, the club who are closest to us in terms of stadium capacity and location outsdie London. We think we know whay; they have far fewer season ticket holders than us (25k v 40k) so sell more matchday tickets, which command a premium. They also charge a single price per block or group of blocks regardless of opposition. Over a season, if you bought tickets on a match-by-match basis, you'd pay more at Liverpool (& united, who have the same pricing approach) than at City. Their range of season ticket prices is a lot narrower than ours.
But would anyone seriously want to reduce the number of season tickets, or get rid of the cheapest ones? I know quite a few who can only afford to come because they pay £325.
There's lots of other questions we can ask about ticketing and ticket prices. We currently have three different prices in many blocks, depending on which row you sit on. I hate that personally but some benefit from it. We have category pricing but Category B games, like Burnley, Brighton or Southampton, are too expensive at £53. We could do what Arsenal do, and charge top whack for Cat A games but significantly less (think it's about £38/28 for Cat B/C games).
There's a huge inconsistency between the relative matchday & season ticket prices across blocks, with some areas attracting a large discount for season tickets whereas some don't appear to. There's the whole question (which I've brought up before) of whether you should actually pay a small premium for a season ticket. , Economic theory would argue that you should, as a season ticket confers various benefits on the owner, that a matchday ticket buyer doesn't get.
We should also be looking at the whole notion of season tickets in this modern round-the-clock-football era. Should they be done on a right-to-buy basis where, instead of the club assuming you will turn up unless you tell them otherwise, they assume you won't be coming unless you confirm you are. So you pay a small sum to reserve your seat and pay a balance before the relevant game. We know that many people simply can't make midweek games and this might solve that issue. Or we could have midweek and weekend season tickets for some seats.
We had the £95 kids' season ticket, which was successful (from a fan point of view). I doubt the club would ressurect that but why not a tenner for kids, matching Liverpool's £9 (although I think there are a limited numbers of tickets for that). As someone said, introduce a family ticket where kids were effectively getting in free. Offer a bundle of 5 tickets - one Cat A, 2 Cat B and two Cat C for reduced price. Have a block or blocks that don't have any season tickets in, where people can get 3 or 4 seats together on a match-by-match basis.
Whatever we do, I want the club to stop tinkering round the edges and think long term, without any preconceived notions or sacred cows. Stop jacking up prices by a few percent, merely because we're playing great football and winning things. Because one day that might not be the case and they'll be wondering where all the fans have gone.
I know Soriano was brought here to increase revenue but he has milked the working class cow more than enough
Fulham in the cup will actually be great because loads of young people priced out by the ludicrous one off matchday prices will be able to go