Quote:
Originally Posted by JEFF
How do you expect the Club to survive if prices aren't increased. It has been proved that we cannot survive with the prices that are currently being charged. Ilyas cannot make up the shortfall indefinately. The increase in prices will certainly not wipe out the difference between income and expenditure but it will help a little. The price of everything has increased dramatically over the last few years. Have you all stopped smoking ? Have you all stopped drinking ? Have you all stopped buying petrol ? Probably not, so why stop buying a season ticket ?
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I haven't said that I am against a price increase, I think it would have been more sensible to pitch it around the £200/ £210 mark with a deadline cut off of around the 15th May. Like Rob has said, I think it is now upto the clubs personnel to step up to the plate on the commercial side and start putting together a good strategy to help promote the Stanley brand to the business world. We need a ground sponsor, a shirt sponsor, matchday sponsors, matchball sponsor, commercial partners like Burnleys BOA and sponsors for the boards around the ground. Getting these things sorted is a basic requirement as part of the solution to solving the cashflow problems at Accy.
The second part should be reasonably priced season tickets designed to follow the community club ethos that would help to bring new people in and keep the current fans feeling like they are wanted. This means reaching out to the local people in numerous ways whether that being involved in local festivals such as having Winstanley down at the food festival from last week or properly advertising discounted tickets in the local papers, on the radio and advertising boards in areas of large footfall. Why dont we have tie ins with the shops in the centre of Accy such as maybe a free drink with every matchday ticket, this gets people into the bar and use the voucher as a loss leader. We should also be getting the players out into local schools or arranging coaching schools for after school to help start getting the younger fans in for the next generation of supporters. These are all basic things that when brought together can help to allieviate the problems of the past and help us move forward into a more solid financial footing. But this will take a good few years to put fully into place.
There is also the simple fact that if you have more bums on seats then they are more likely to spend money on merchandise, programs, beer, food etc. If the increase in season ticket prices means less people renew then this means we are no better off financially and will suffer from a loss of reputation just at a time when we had finally broken free of the ghosts of the past. As a fan I would seriously urge a rethink on the current process for season tickets including an extension of the early bird deadline to the 15th May and the idea of charging to get in the supporters bar completely dropped.