S-Platt Posted March 2 VT Supporter Share Posted March 2 GA+ or whatever the buzz word is at the moment as in extracting more money for the same seat with some add on is interesting me. I am trying to read between the lines of Hecks reasoning for mothballing the new North Stand. Saying we are adding seats too quick. We all know that is bullshit but maybe if we are not adding the right seats? Is he trying to extract the last pennies out of us all to plug the gap whilst it's rebuilt? Conditioning us to prices? We all love what is happening on the pitch but there is a lot of pain coming it seems after reading the FAB minutes. We do have to compete we all get that but they should follow the German model on what fans pay. Football is a working class sport not elitest. Sure you can cater for all price points but it seems to me to be leading up rather than a happy medium. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheltenham_villa Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 I 10 minutes ago, S-Platt said: GA+ or whatever the buzz word is at the moment as in extracting more money for the same seat with some add on is interesting me. I am trying to read between the lines of Hecks reasoning for mothballing the new North Stand. Saying we are adding seats too quick. We all know that is bullshit but maybe if we are not adding the right seats? Is he trying to extract the last pennies out of us all to plug the gap whilst it's rebuilt? Conditioning us to prices? We all love what is happening on the pitch but there is a lot of pain coming it seems after reading the FAB minutes. We do have to compete we all get that but they should follow the German model on what fans pay. Football is a working class sport not elitest. Sure you can cater for all price points but it seems to me to be leading up rather than a happy medium. I dont think the club have hidden the need to increase revenue and recently commented on the use of GA+ seats as a way of doing this. I particular their preference for more seats vs season ticket price increases. I think we've seen this year that they have a place and that the demand is there. I think the club still needs to work on the quality of the offering but it opens up a market of day tripping tourists who are looking for a seat, food, atmosphere, maybe even accommodation. It's foolish of the club to ignore this. I hope football remains accessible for all, I'm not sure I'd have been a villa fan if today's prices existed when I started following football. Unfortunately I think most of the damage in that regards is done. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post OutByEaster? Posted March 2 Moderator Popular Post Share Posted March 2 I think football pricing in general in the Premier league is settling into three bands and I think our club will be looking to increase the yield on all of them: Matchday tickets - bums on seats stuff, season tickets - I would suggest if you can't afford to pay £1,000 for your season ticket in the near future, you cross "Premier league football" off your list of hobbies - and that's not just a Villa thing, that's where the league is headed. GA+ - soft hospitality, access to a lounge and a decent seat in the stadium - I think clubs are really pushing these, but I'm not sure there are enough fans in the UK who prefer this to a 'bums on seats' ticket and a visit to the pub beforehand. It's a £140 selling of a special day out for those that can't get it otherwise or for those looking a for a special day - but whether there's an appetite in the UK for 10% of grounds to be made up with this type of ticket I'm not sure. I think we have about 900 of these for sale at the moment, I think the club would like to triple that number - I worry about the impact this will have as it nudges people out of the better seats. Proper hospitality - which is an area where unnoticed to most of us, prices in football have spiralled in recent years - if a club can add 100 seats in a tunnel club paying £800 a game, that's the equivalent of almost 2,000 season tickets - if they can sell an experience where you get to high five Luca Digne and shout "and another one" in the tunnel as he comes off the pitch, with a four course meal and a padded seat and get £2,000 a game from it, it'll cover off an awful lot of extra pints not sold in the Upper Ellis. If you look at what some clubs (particularly in London) are adding at the top end of their hospitality, you can see where the temptation comes from to make this a focus - the country has some very rich people who desperately need to spend a lot of money to look good on their Insta - football loves those people. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul514 Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 9 hours ago, S-Platt said: GA+ or whatever the buzz word is at the moment as in extracting more money for the same seat with some add on is interesting me. I am trying to read between the lines of Hecks reasoning for mothballing the new North Stand. Saying we are adding seats too quick. We all know that is bullshit but maybe if we are not adding the right seats? Is he trying to extract the last pennies out of us all to plug the gap whilst it's rebuilt? Conditioning us to prices? We all love what is happening on the pitch but there is a lot of pain coming it seems after reading the FAB minutes. We do have to compete we all get that but they should follow the German model on what fans pay. Football is a working class sport not elitest. Sure you can cater for all price points but it seems to me to be leading up rather than a happy medium. The conditioning is a good point we have long paid lower than other fans. On your German model point, I agree. if you make so much money from stuff brought at the game and corporate stuff. there is an argument to building a very big stadium packing it with cheap tickets and selling us as a brand where the real money is made. alas unless you had a billionaire fan owner who literally is a died hard and doesn’t care about the money I don’t think that will ever happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thabucks Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 (edited) Just read an article that Spurs matchday income went from just under £1mill per game to close to £6 mill … Quote On a very base level, your matchday income, White Hart Lane was just below £1m, where we are now we are just below £6m for matchday income (per game). Doesn’t include obviously concerts, NFL, etc … https://www.football.london/tottenham-hotspur-fc/news/building-tottenham-hotspur-stadium-12bn-28736582 We wouldn’t get such a bump due to locality but would still expect a hefty rise if we were to move. Sticking at Villa Park will hinder us as the years pass - simples Edited March 3 by thabucks 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
allani Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 1 minute ago, Villa_Vids said: Hopefully along with other commerical deals. You think they could selling Villa Park naming rights to cover it? I wouldn't be surprised if we announce some sponsorship deals in the next couple of months. It doesn't need to be as "big" as naming rights for the stadium. But in America it seems like they can sell "rights" to individual parts of the stadium (even down to the scoreboard) - there's some interesting information around about some of the things that Philadelphia did around raising the revenue the clubs earned from the stadium (Comcast and Heck were both heavily involved in this). It's probably quite complicated to announce this kind of thing mid-season (without impacting on existing contracts). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GingerCollins29 Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 17 minutes ago, Villa_Vids said: Hopefully along with other commerical deals. You think they could be selling Villa Park naming rights to cover it? Quite happy for them to sell the naming rights as it will still forever be known as villa park to me 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thabucks Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 5 minutes ago, allani said: in America it seems like they can sell "rights" to individual parts of the stadium (even down to the scoreboard) Can see The Terrace View and Trinity Road lounge towers becoming branded given the visibility of the premier league world wide and prominent positions on camera. Can also see them entering a partnership with say for example BrewDog with the warehouse bar area once completed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OutByEaster? Posted March 3 Moderator Share Posted March 3 One of those in the tower is already the Heineken Lounge I think. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa4europe Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 50 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said: One of those in the tower is already the Heineken Lounge I think. It is but then they're also our beer partner aren't they? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidcow Posted March 3 VT Supporter Share Posted March 3 5 hours ago, thabucks said: Just read an article that Spurs matchday income went from just under £1mill per game to close to £6 mill … Doesn’t include obviously concerts, NFL, etc … https://www.football.london/tottenham-hotspur-fc/news/building-tottenham-hotspur-stadium-12bn-28736582 We wouldn’t get such a bump due to locality but would still expect a hefty rise if we were to move. Sticking at Villa Park will hinder us as the years pass - simples How does the location change that? It's surely what's at the location that changes the game. We'll buy more land around the ground and do more stuff in the locality that drives income. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam2003 Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 Exactly how much will we get for a CL/PL double next season? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
allani Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 On 02/03/2024 at 08:16, S-Platt said: GA+ or whatever the buzz word is at the moment as in extracting more money for the same seat with some add on is interesting me. I am trying to read between the lines of Hecks reasoning for mothballing the new North Stand. Saying we are adding seats too quick. We all know that is bullshit but maybe if we are not adding the right seats? Is he trying to extract the last pennies out of us all to plug the gap whilst it's rebuilt? Conditioning us to prices? We all love what is happening on the pitch but there is a lot of pain coming it seems after reading the FAB minutes. We do have to compete we all get that but they should follow the German model on what fans pay. Football is a working class sport not elitest. Sure you can cater for all price points but it seems to me to be leading up rather than a happy medium. GA+ doesn't need to be about fans spending more to watch Villa than before. It can just be about changing where they spend their money. I'm sure there's a fair few people who stop for a drink and maybe a bite to eat before the game and possibly another drink on the way home. Getting them to spend that money at Villa Park (or Villa owned establishments) rather than elsewhere - improves the club's revenues and wouldn't necessarily increase the amount that those fans spend on the day. I suspect adding different types of packages available will ultimately be the solution but it will take some time to have the facilities in place to allow that to happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thabucks Posted March 4 Share Posted March 4 3 hours ago, sidcow said: How does the location change that? It's surely what's at the location that changes the game. We'll buy more land around the ground and do more stuff in the locality that drives income. Meant Birmingham vs London as we will never be able to attract London prices for our top hospitality packages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul514 Posted March 4 Share Posted March 4 (edited) 2 hours ago, thabucks said: Meant Birmingham vs London as we will never be able to attract London prices for our top hospitality packages. We could if we won a load of stuff over next 5/10 years..... Realistically that ain't happening with a load more revenue, though. Man City have obviously cooked the books, but they haven't cooked them so much that the vast majority of their revenue isn't the truth in 2024 Edited March 4 by paul514 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaJ100 Posted March 4 Share Posted March 4 This will be an unpopular opinion but of course the club will wring the fans for more cash and they sort of largely have to. All the big clubs do and to compete we probably need to be charging more than them to earn more revenue from it to close the gap. The club will see a season ticket as a front row pass to seeing a top team in the most elite league in the world's most popular sport, they aren't going to be giving them away for 50 quid, they will be charging an absolute premium for it, four figures. To a certain degree we need to expect it's going to be bloody expensive, food drinks everything. If you want cheap footy go watch St. Mike's. They probably seen people paying 200 quid for some dippy Pink concert tickets or whatever in the summer and thought Christ we can say for 5 times that you get 19 Villa games, we can argue that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
allani Posted March 5 Share Posted March 5 2 hours ago, OutByEaster? said: I think it's worth considering the value of the current North Stand and where our biggest shortfalls in income are. Our matchday income will have gone up in these figures and again in the figures for this season (higher prices, more games) and we're heading in the right direction, albeit miles behind the likes of Spurs who lead the field by a distance. But in the grand scheme of things, the North Stand brings in about £6m a year - or about 2.5% of our income (and falling as our income rises) and it's replacement wouldn't be expected to bring in more than about £15m. Now £6m isn't nothing, but there are other areas where we are so far behind that it's ridiculous and they should be our priority. We make around £14m a year for our three main sponsorship opportunities - our shirt manufacturer, our main shirt sponsor and our sleeve sponsor - almost all of the teams we want to compete with have shirt sponsorships at around £40m and sleeves at £6m+. Spurs make £14m a year from their sleeve alone (and around £85m for the big three sponsorships) We concentrate a lot when we talk about income and revenue on extra pints, quicker service, season ticket prices and so on, and yes, those things make a difference - but the big one for us has to be getting better value for the big three - hopefully Adidas makes a difference and we can renegotiate on our existing partnerships in the summer - but if we're in the Champions league and we're exciting to watch, there's a £25m opportunity right there, right now - that's why we have Heck and why he's given the licence to do the job in whatever the hell way he likes. If we can get £20-30m a season more for those three things, starting this summer, that's more than we'll get from next years season ticket sales. That's our weakest area, that's the opportunity,, that's the difference maker. And without becoming boring on this - Atairos and Comcast have access to a whole heap of companies that could easily afford and easily justify a substantial increase in our sponsorship numbers almost without the added benefits of CL or Europa League football. They are experts in this field in the US and have plenty of contracts already in place that they could use to say that Company A spends $50m on sponsoring a team in a US sports market of 350m people - so it's absolutely market rate for them to spend the same (or more) to break into the European market and wider global TV market. They provide us with such a huge opportunity to discuss potential partnerships, sponsorships, etc that we didn't have before (even with NSWE's connections). It's also likely that these arrangements will be less susceptible to pressures if we miss out on Europe in any given season. Atairos / Comcast have a vested interest in increasing the value of the club as much as possible so the odd dip in viewing numbers becomes less important in future negotiations. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CVByrne Posted March 6 Share Posted March 6 9 hours ago, OutByEaster? said: The key over the next three years isn't reducing the wage bill, it's raising the income - as long as we're focusing on that our ambitions remain in place and I think it's pretty clear we're definitely focusing on that. For sure that's the primary aim. We will and are restructuring the squad makeup so we have less older experienced players and a better blend of young and older. Young players signed from abroad cost less on the balance sheet and have more upside in terms of sell on value. However get too many young players and your team has no leaders or cohesion so it's finding the right mix. The revenue growth needs to come mainly from USA the massive market there and the market our club owners (NSWE and Atarios) know best. We need to continue to do preseason tours there, we need to grow the brand and club there. Americans are used to competitive sport and following teams who don't win titles or trophies regularly. If we market the 150 and the history of Villa as founder of the football league, oldest club in the PL etc. While Emery and team keep the entertaining football going and us competing. We can close the gap with the top teams in the financial sense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CVByrne Posted March 6 Share Posted March 6 I think the Match day income is an embarrassment to this club. Southampton made 17m on match day income last season. Brighton made 21m. To me it's abundantly clear there is no financial business case to knock down North Stand and increase the capacity by 20% if that gives us a boost of £3-4m in match day income. West Ham make over double ours. Leeds made 25m last season. Leeds! For me the right course of action is to get our match day revenue up to £30m+ at a minimum by the 3000 extra seats and doing work to the Match day experience for all fans. We appear to be the most underperforming team on this metric when you compare to other PL clubs in revenue per fan 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ender4 Posted March 6 Popular Post Share Posted March 6 2 minutes ago, CVByrne said: I think the Match day income is an embarrassment to this club. Southampton made 17m on match day income last season. Brighton made 21m. To me it's abundantly clear there is no financial business case to knock down North Stand and increase the capacity by 20% if that gives us a boost of £3-4m in match day income. West Ham make over double ours. Leeds made 25m last season. Leeds! For me the right course of action is to get our match day revenue up to £30m+ at a minimum by the 3000 extra seats and doing work to the Match day experience for all fans. We appear to be the most underperforming team on this metric when you compare to other PL clubs in revenue per fan Oh I was going to say the opposite. Looking at our terrible matchday income, a new stadium or new North stand is the only way to add tens of millions to the matchday figure. Were not going to add significant millions by tinkering with the existing stadium. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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