Tony Xia (no longer involved with AVFC)

[terrytini]

4 hours ago, TRO said:

Its not about lowering prices.....sorry folks......Its about winning football.

not just about the outer Birmingham catchment area.....we have POTENTIALLY the whole of the M5 corridor down to Exeter.....Its simply about winning football.

Achieve that and the rest will frighten you.

Well I agree however cheap it is you wont get big crowds for losing football, nor for pretty losing football.

But we don't really know what we would get/could get for reasonably attractive, reasonably winning , football - which is about where I think we are to be at. I know at current prices we will get somewhere between 30-34000 this year if we do ok.

So I  do think there is an experiment to be had to discover the reality of latent support, and I think a couple of very cheap games might show quite a bit one way or the other.  It really mustn't be underestimated just how expensive a game of footy is for say an adult and a kid or couple of kids.  When you add in travel, parking, the non-essential essentials like a pie and whatever, you are looking at best part of £100.  I used to take my kids but couldn't afford what would now be £2500 for a season !  And that's not people from the South West corridor, a lot more for them. 

I know we are always expected to assume these things have all been carefully worked out, but I reckon 40000 plus at half the price they charge would work - yes I know overall gate receipts would be lower but there are all the eventual add ons in merchandising, food , etc. 

Truth is nobody knows unless they try it.

Anyway, as regards the original point, IMO we are quite a  way off needing more capacity.

[TRO]

14 hours ago, terrytini said:

Well I agree however cheap it is you wont get big crowds for losing football, nor for pretty losing football.

But we don't really know what we would get/could get for reasonably attractive, reasonably winning , football - which is about where I think we are to be at. I know at current prices we will get somewhere between 30-34000 this year if we do ok.

So I  do think there is an experiment to be had to discover the reality of latent support, and I think a couple of very cheap games might show quite a bit one way or the other.  It really mustn't be underestimated just how expensive a game of footy is for say an adult and a kid or couple of kids.  When you add in travel, parking, the non-essential essentials like a pie and whatever, you are looking at best part of £100.  I used to take my kids but couldn't afford what would now be £2500 for a season !  And that's not people from the South West corridor, a lot more for them. 

I know we are always expected to assume these things have all been carefully worked out, but I reckon 40000 plus at half the price they charge would work - yes I know overall gate receipts would be lower but there are all the eventual add ons in merchandising, food , etc. 

Truth is nobody knows unless they try it.

Anyway, as regards the original point, IMO we are quite a  way off needing more capacity.

Terry, I do accept that, it can be an expensive day out with all the add ons.....and not everyone has the jobs to support that granted.....but some how you find it when the Team is worth it.

....and I do accept some fans have literally got out of the habit of going.....My point was when the team wins with a bit of believability, not just a winnig goal off the refs backside.

Numbers, will return......Its just been so crap for way too long.....There are a lot of " false dawners "out there waiting for a team with a fighting/winning mentality.Fans soon grow weary of a team that throws the towel in at the first sign of reversal.

Edited September 9, 2016 by TRO

[TRO]

13 hours ago, sidcow said:

Ok probably "felt" would have been a better word. For whatever reason people didn't really buy into it,  I was never truly convinced. Plus as someone else said later which I agreed with a lot of the best work was done away from home. . I seem to recall a few occasions when we sold out and I thought there was a chance to cement the feeling we always seemed to lose and it happened a few times it seemed to me. I bet a lot of armchair fans went along and thought... Meh..and we lost them. 

I love winning away from home, it kinda has that strength about it......but in the main,Home form, sells season Tickets.

I was never truly convinced either, Certainly we had a tendency to get better results away from home during that era.

However, to where we are now, its seems like nit picking.

Edited September 9, 2016 by TRO

[bobzy]

15 hours ago, TRO said:

Its not about lowering prices.....sorry folks......Its about winning football.

not just about the outer Birmingham catchment area.....we have POTENTIALLY the whole of the M5 corridor down to Exeter.....Its simply about winning football.

Achieve that and the rest will frighten you.

Disagree - it's massively about lowering prices.  I'd consider going to the vast majority of games if ticket prices were generally around £20 (travelling from Nottingham).

Even during our most successful recent spell (O'Neill) we didn't sell out anywhere near enough.  Reduce ticket prices, get more fans in.

[bobzy]

In addition to that, actually, ticket prices are borderline irrelevant for our club (long term).

If we assume £30 a ticket, with 30,000 tickets selling at that price and having 29 home games in a season, we'd generate £26.1m from those sales.  If we knocked the £30 down to £20, but managed to increase attendances to 40,000 tickets per game, we'd generate £23.2m.  A difference of £2.9m, to gain 10,000 extra fans per game.

Obviously an incredibly simplistic example, and I'm sure there'd be extra costs (more staff needed, more stewards needed etc) that would come with this.  However, for the sake of losing out on maybe £5m a season, surely this is worth it?

[Guest av1]

13 minutes ago, bobzy said:

Disagree - it's massively about lowering prices.  I'd consider going to the vast majority of games if ticket prices were generally around £20 (travelling from Nottingham).

Even during our most successful recent spell (O'Neill) we didn't sell out anywhere near enough.  Reduce ticket prices, get more fans in.

Agreed. Me and my son have attended every cup game at home for the last couple of seasons, which form the majority of our total attendance for that period. 

Thats not because I'd prefer to watch Wycombe over West Ham, its because the reduced prices make it affordable for me to justify. And as @terrytinisaid, if a reduction in prices meant i could afford to go to 2 games a month rather than 1, it would also mean an extra couple of pies, a couple more beers etc, i really don't see it being a big loss to the club. 

[Dodgyknees]

I just want my club to be fun to support again. Then I would like to see us play football which I enjoy and finally I would like to see some form of success. I think if all these happen we will see fans return. I've seen so many Leicester fans down here the past few months, I reckon I have seen 50-60 people wearing their shirts, before that I can't really remember seeing any. Maybe I forgot? Possibly, but then I remember seeing Fulham, Wolves and other fans. I always take notice of football shirts.

Simply put, if we are successful the fans will come. Most will boast that they have always support Villa - when you know it's not true!

[TRO]

1 hour ago, bobzy said:

In addition to that, actually, ticket prices are borderline irrelevant for our club (long term).

If we assume £30 a ticket, with 30,000 tickets selling at that price and having 29 home games in a season, we'd generate £26.1m from those sales.  If we knocked the £30 down to £20, but managed to increase attendances to 40,000 tickets per game, we'd generate £23.2m.  A difference of £2.9m, to gain 10,000 extra fans per game.

Obviously an incredibly simplistic example, and I'm sure there'd be extra costs (more staff needed, more stewards needed etc) that would come with this.  However, for the sake of losing out on maybe £5m a season, surely this is worth it?

I'm sure if your argument is economically sound.....they would do it.

You could say, lower the price of cars and you will sell more.

Hey, I'm not saying from our point of view its not an attractive proposition, I just happen to think raising the standard of the product has a more sustained effect for the club.....I subsequently put that first.

There will always be individual cases where the cost of tickets are the prime motivation, but that is governed by folks disposable income and that varies from fan to fan.

I'm a pensioner now, so affluence is not my bed partner.

There is also the theory, that if the football is of a standard that it becomes a major attraction, a new breed of fan who can afford it,takes the place of those that can't.....mercenary I know, but way of the world I'm affraid.

[blandy]

32 minutes ago, TRO said:

I'm sure if your argument is economically sound.....they would do it.

They seem to think it's the case in Germany.

[TRO]

 

1 minute ago, blandy said:

They seem to think it's the case in Germany.

The fascination of opinions, Pete

[blandy]

Aye, they're like, er, y'know, everyone's got one.

[TRO]

Just now, blandy said:

Aye, they're like, er, y'know, everyone's got one.

concurred

[Dr_Pangloss]

2 hours ago, bobzy said:

In addition to that, actually, ticket prices are borderline irrelevant for our club (long term).

If we assume £30 a ticket, with 30,000 tickets selling at that price and having 29 home games in a season, we'd generate £26.1m from those sales.  If we knocked the £30 down to £20, but managed to increase attendances to 40,000 tickets per game, we'd generate £23.2m.  A difference of £2.9m, to gain 10,000 extra fans per game.

Obviously an incredibly simplistic example, and I'm sure there'd be extra costs (more staff needed, more stewards needed etc) that would come with this.  However, for the sake of losing out on maybe £5m a season, surely this is worth it?

Yes but accountants and MBA's will not agree with that. Losing £2.9m wouldn't be seen as good 'business' regardless of attendance gain.

[Demitri_C]

Quote

 

Championship: Aston Villa’s big spending could lead to financial disaster

Alex Keble•Sep 9, 2016, 1:31 PM

View photos

English soccer club Aston Villa CEO Keith Wyness (L) and Recon Group CEO Tony Xia attend a news conference for Recon Group's acquisition of soccer club Aston Villa in Beijing, China, July 18, 2016. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo

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When Tony Xia purchased Aston Villa for £76 million in June he vowed to turn the club into one of the “top three in the world – even the best well known in the world – in less than ten years”.

This almost child-like optimism, reflected in his remarkably frank Twitter account, has reinvigorated some sections of the Villa faithful but caused anxiety in others. Having so recently seen an enthusiastic owner misdirect funds before losing interest in the project, Villa fans are understandably wary of a man displaying apparent naivety in his first few months in charge.

Alarm bells are already ringing. Xia has invested £51 million in new recruits over the summer, outspending Real Madrid and eleven Premier League clubs in a bid to bounce straight back up.

But what happens if Roberto di Matteo fails to win promotion this season? There is no doubt that any losses Villa make in 2016/17 will be immediately wiped out should they return to the Premier League – where a new £8 billion TV deal has catapulted all 20 of its members into the top 30 richest clubs in the world – but does Xia’s spending represent a reckless gamble?

In the short-term, Villa’s reduced wage bill means their summer spending was not as lavish as it seemed. But when calculating their finances on the assumption that Villa will spend two or more years outside the top flight, the picture becomes a lot more worrying.

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Villa’s current financial situation

Estimating Aston Villa’s finances is extremely difficult for two reasons. Firstly, the most recent financial data available only covers the 2014/15 season (which means changes to transfers, wages, and commercial revenue for 2015/16 can only be very roughly estimated). And secondly, something called player amortisation affects the finances of a club in ways that are tricky to calculate.

Amortisation is a universal accountancy method used to spread the cost of a transfer fee over the length of a player’s contract. For example, if a player is signed for £15 million on a three year contract this is recorded in the books as a £5 million cost in each of the next three seasons. Crucially, any incoming transfer fees are recorded as single payments – meaning that, in theory, a team could spend three or four times the amount it recoups in a single summer and still balance the books. This process is extremely important when calculating Villa’s messy financial state.

Villa made a £28 million loss in 2014/15, largely thanks to their £84 million wage bill. A detailed account can be found here. Villa are believed to have cut as much as £5-10 million off their wage bill over the course of last season, and made a net profit of £28 million in transfers - having accrued £45 million in player sales (although they spent £52.5 million in the summer of 2015, divide this by three - remember amortisation – and this figure comes down to £17.5 million per year). In both 2014/15 and 2015/16 around £20 million would have been spent on player fees from previous years, meaning that we can exclude these figures from our estimation of the 2015/16 accounts.

Assuming Villa’s incomings and outgoings in all other departments remained relatively consistent between 2014/15 and 2015/16 it is likely that Aston Villa broke even last season (the £28 million loss being reduced to roughly zero thanks to the £28 million profit in player sales).

 

Quote

Just click it

 

[Kingman]

Well let's split the difference and call £25 a ticket and sell 42,500  

[dont_do_it_doug.]

It's only reckless should he "do a Lerner" and pull the plug if it doesn't work out as initially planned. 

[Guest av1]

9 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

Yes but accountants and MBA's will not agree with that. Losing £2.9m wouldn't be seen as good 'business' regardless of attendance gain.

Some of that would be offset by those extra fans spending money at the ground. Another aspect is prize money, whilst that can never be quantifiable, it is generally accepted that a vociferous support can benefit a teams performance/placing. 

This is all guesswork of course, but if a relatively small drop in ticket prices led to another 10k or so fans at the ground every week, i think the overall cost to club would be negligible. 

[AvfcTheObsession]

3 hours ago, bobzy said:

In addition to that, actually, ticket prices are borderline irrelevant for our club (long term).

If we assume £30 a ticket, with 30,000 tickets selling at that price and having 29 home games in a season, we'd generate £26.1m from those sales.  If we knocked the £30 down to £20, but managed to increase attendances to 40,000 tickets per game, we'd generate £23.2m.  A difference of £2.9m, to gain 10,000 extra fans per game.

Obviously an incredibly simplistic example, and I'm sure there'd be extra costs (more staff needed, more stewards needed etc) that would come with this.  However, for the sake of losing out on maybe £5m a season, surely this is worth it?

We would lose a lot more money than that. I'm not against reducing the prices (it would benefit me too of course!), but take this weekend's game as an example.

We play Forest at 1.15PM on a Sunday, live on Sky. Say average adult ticket price is £30, projected attendance circa 30k, by reducing this to an average of £20 an adult ticket, no way that will add anything like 10k on to the crowd. You might get a couple of thousand at most that are put off by the price as the main factor, but we are in the hands of Sky and sadly that is one of the more important factors as it had messed up the kick-off time, the day of the game, coupled with the fact it's a second-tier match with us not having a great start after a few bad years, and I don't see a lot of extra fans willing to justify the overall cost of the day out (petrol/parking or train fare, food/drink, their kids tickets if applicable), just because the price of one of the 3-4 things they have to pay for reduces by a third.

[It's Your Round]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

Aye, they're like, er, y'know, everyone's got one.

Everyone has them, some people are them *

 

 

 

Not talking about you of course, or anyone specifically. 

[blandy]

This is a bit off topic, but pricing people out of attending games prices them out of not just that game, or games, but basically a lifetime, or good period of attendance. And maybe their kids, too. Or if they are a youngster, they don't turn into a lifelong fan.

So I'd kind of hope that Dr T and the rest maintain the approach where at least the prices on match days this season, for some of the games are pretty OK. Being able to get tickets for some games for 25 quid is decent-ish. I think they've got the price wrong for a televised sunday dinner time game v Forest, but hey ho.

If we go up, I'd really hope that the huge increase in revenue would mean that the club don't go back to charging 45 quid and so on for tickets. If Dr. T really wants to grow attendances, then enabling younger and less well off people to attend through genuinely reasonable, across the board, pricing has to be a part of that.