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Increasing Club Revenue


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4 hours ago, TrentVilla said:

I know many hope or even expect the club to announce a ground expansion, it is clear we currently would have the demand to warrant it. But a ground expansion comes at significant capital expenditure and impacts on other aspects of the club, currently the clubs focus is on spending on the playing squads at all levels and their facilities. I'm pleased that is their focus rather than expansion because due to FFP the ability to do both, no matter how rich they are is limited.

Another aspect to this is that the club don't own the ground. They rent it from another NSWE company. Yes, I know it's al the same, but the football accounts show the rent we pay to use the ground. If it's expanded, that rental might reasonably increase, but aside from the FFP and accounting aspects (already covered above, somewhere) there's an issue with how a business treats its customers and the kind of image that presents of that business.

We know that absolutely no-one got furloughed or lost any wages due to Covid, including temporary staff. The was excellent and shows a social responsibility from the owners.

They need to be very careful about increasing ticket prices. I mean I would say that wouldn't I, as someone who buys them, but realistically Villa can't charge the same prices as some of the Southern clubs, and without Champions league football, it's hard to justify high(er) prices.

The areas to concentrate on for Commercial revenue are related to the team, I think. A good team means demand for corporate stuff, it means better commercial deals, better shirt sales and all the rest. It also means more TV money.

Randy Lerner did some good stuff updating the corporate facilities, and more has been done since, too. The North stand, though could do with being replaced with something more suited to the modern era.

The 4 clubs, Liverpool, Man U, Man City and Chelsea could pull away even more financially from the rest of the league, even Spurs and Arsenal with their big ground, and then there will be a number of clubs - Everton, Villa, West Ham, Leeds and so on trying to keep up or grow, and others just hoping to stay in the league and get the TV money for staying up.

We're luck in that Wolves apart there is no real local rival, whereas in the North West, to an extent the clubs are all competing for the same commercial income to an extent, especially outside the Champs League places. Same applies in London, though it's miles bigger and richer.

But in essence there's the space for Villa (and Wolves) to aim to grab a bigger pie, not just a bigger piece of the same pie, if that makes sense. I think ticket prices will creep up, but don't see a large price increase happening any time soon (and as has also been said) ticket money is a small part of revenue for most PL clubs - it's better to have a full ground every game and lower prices than struggling to fill the ground because of prices being too high for people. And the idea of kind of surfing the edge of the limit of filling the ground v setting ticket prices as high as you can and still fill it is not something that the club should be doing, just to squeeze a bit more cash from the cow. So many games are on the telly, so many games have their kick off times made inconvenient for travel and school and stuff, that it's important to keep looking after the supporters.

 

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36 minutes ago, blandy said:

Another aspect to this is that the club don't own the ground. They rent it from another NSWE company. Yes, I know it's al the same, but the football accounts show the rent we pay to use the ground. If it's expanded, that rental might reasonably increase, but aside from the FFP and accounting aspects (already covered above, somewhere) there's an issue with how a business treats its customers and the kind of image that presents of that business.

 

It is a good point that if the other NSWE company invested in VP that the rent would go up and as such impact our cost base and as such P&S. However, AVFC can invest in improving VP even though it is a rental and by doing so keep the rent static, bar inflationary increases but we would not have to pay an increased premium if there were another 10k seats. I suspect the accountants will determine the most efficient way to invest. The will be nice tax benefits for AVFC to lose money from investing in ground. If we keep making an accounting loss then there is no tax to pay 😀

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There will have to be more “posh seats” at VP in the future. Keep the Holte and Upper North (or wherever) affordable for normal people, but make season tickets >£1000 in Trinity, but you get a free prawn sandwich every match and your kid gets a photo opp with John McGinn. It’s inevitable there will be more corporate elements like that if the club want to tap more revenue.

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7 minutes ago, Peter Griffin said:

Roy Keane would not be impressed with that

Exactly the reference I was going for. Depending on your perspective you can see them as plastic fans (as Roy Keane does), or you can see them as customers who pay over the odds to watch the same football match (as a company should).

It also means the posh seats would have to get the attention for renovation and fancy sandwiches and Dyson hand dryers, but those of us in other stands still piss into one large pot.

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Ticket prices should be set similar to how airlines do it. The majority of their profit comes from business class and first class seats and not Economy. It's a fine line to frustrating fans with higher season ticket prices and match day prices. 

I think the biggest discounts should be applied to season ticket holders and as we have inflation we need to be raising ticket prices too to just maintain revenue. 

Also in terms of the stadium, all improvements are outside FFP for all clubs. It's different for us as we sold our ground. But still it's not a factor in how NSWE want to expand as they invest in an asset they own increasing its value.

 

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30 minutes ago, Xela said:

Who is our official tractor sponsor, thats what I want to know. 

Considering we have Jed Steer it surely has to be John Deere?

Only Steer's and Deere's come from Brum...

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2 hours ago, Enda said:

There will have to be more “posh seats” at VP in the future. Keep the Holte and Upper North (or wherever) affordable for normal people, but make season tickets >£1000 in Trinity, but you get a free prawn sandwich every match and your kid gets a photo opp with John McGinn. It’s inevitable there will be more corporate elements like that if the club want to tap more revenue.

No season tickets at Villa Park should ever get remotely close to 1k. 

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2 minutes ago, rodders0223 said:

No season tickets at Villa Park should ever get remotely close to 1k. 

Well the top 1-5% can be as long as the vast majority aren’t. They’ll always be a few people happy to pay premium prices for a premium product.

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3 hours ago, blandy said:

Another aspect to this is that the club don't own the ground. They rent it from another NSWE company. Yes, I know it's al the same, but the football accounts show the rent we pay to use the ground. If it's expanded, that rental might reasonably increase, but aside from the FFP and accounting aspects (already covered above, somewhere) there's an issue with how a business treats its customers and the kind of image that presents of that business.

We know that absolutely no-one got furloughed or lost any wages due to Covid, including temporary staff. The was excellent and shows a social responsibility from the owners.

They need to be very careful about increasing ticket prices. I mean I would say that wouldn't I, as someone who buys them, but realistically Villa can't charge the same prices as some of the Southern clubs, and without Champions league football, it's hard to justify high(er) prices.

The areas to concentrate on for Commercial revenue are related to the team, I think. A good team means demand for corporate stuff, it means better commercial deals, better shirt sales and all the rest. It also means more TV money.

Randy Lerner did some good stuff updating the corporate facilities, and more has been done since, too. The North stand, though could do with being replaced with something more suited to the modern era.

The 4 clubs, Liverpool, Man U, Man City and Chelsea could pull away even more financially from the rest of the league, even Spurs and Arsenal with their big ground, and then there will be a number of clubs - Everton, Villa, West Ham, Leeds and so on trying to keep up or grow, and others just hoping to stay in the league and get the TV money for staying up.

We're luck in that Wolves apart there is no real local rival, whereas in the North West, to an extent the clubs are all competing for the same commercial income to an extent, especially outside the Champs League places. Same applies in London, though it's miles bigger and richer.

But in essence there's the space for Villa (and Wolves) to aim to grab a bigger pie, not just a bigger piece of the same pie, if that makes sense. I think ticket prices will creep up, but don't see a large price increase happening any time soon (and as has also been said) ticket money is a small part of revenue for most PL clubs - it's better to have a full ground every game and lower prices than struggling to fill the ground because of prices being too high for people. And the idea of kind of surfing the edge of the limit of filling the ground v setting ticket prices as high as you can and still fill it is not something that the club should be doing, just to squeeze a bit more cash from the cow. So many games are on the telly, so many games have their kick off times made inconvenient for travel and school and stuff, that it's important to keep looking after the supporters.

 

I don't really see the reasoning for the ground rent increasing, it isn't a real rental its purely a FFP tool. Yes in commercial terms you'd expect rent to increase from an improved property but I'm fairly sure that any rental agreement includes provision for this eventuality in order to satisfy observers.

I also buy tickets, I still think we as fans have to expect them to rise. I've at no point said by how much or in direct reference to specific other teams, I don't for one minute think they can charge the same as the London clubs or those with CL football. However in any ticket price comparison table you see Villa are regularly amongst the cheapest clubs. Far cheaper than many clubs that don't reside in the capital or get to play that shitty song every other Wednesday. Tickets at Villa are on the cheaper end of the PL spectrum and that will I think change for the reasons I've already given.

I agree with you re other commercial revenue streams, as I think I originally said increasing matchday revenue would only be part of trying to close the gap. I don't personally think it is realistic to expect us to see tickets not increase.

I'm not predicting substantial or rapid increases, just that prices will increase and that expansion won't happen until after they've generated as much as they can from the existing capacity. 

I don't agree that they would risk failing to fill the ground as a result of increased ticket prices.

I agree it is important to keep looking after supporters but personally, and it is only my view, I think people have to be a little more realistic on this topic even if its unpalatable.

We shall have to see what this season and ticket price renewals bring next summer.

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2 hours ago, rodders0223 said:

No season tickets at Villa Park should ever get remotely close to 1k. 

I have bad news for you about how much money corporate boys have.

A dude in my department only flies first-class whenever he’s going transatlantic. That’s two or three grand for seven hours. If he liked Villa, £1k is small change.
 

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11 hours ago, QldVilla said:

I don’t necessarily agree with this. There’s a lot of Villa fans around the world and always been a lot in Australia.

The club hasn’t done anything to engage with its world wide base, ever. We’ve had Manure, Everton, Liverpool, Spurs and Man City out here in the past few years before COVID, City even bought a club in Melbourne.

My primary schools football jersey was based on Villa and dated back to the 1950’s there’s also a club in Bundaberg called Brothers Aston Villa which dates back to the 1960’s.

I look at the Championship play off and there was no way as a fan from outside of England to buy a ticket for the final through the club. It was only because I was able to buy a ticket through the Wembley club that I was able to go to the game and a 24hr flight.

The club needs to look at ways to engage with its fans outside of England because it’s mostly all one direction at the moment.

As a Villa fan living abroad I totally agree with this.

I'm based in Thailand and football is huge here. Leicester are Thai owned so you'd expect to see a big presence for them but you also have football academies run by other clubs like Arsenal and Chelsea. 95% of the shirts you see the locals wearing are the obvious Liverpool, Man Utd, Man City, Chelsea & Leicester 

It's near on impossible to find any Villa merchandise here or anything promoted by the club. I'd imagine it's similar all around the region (India, China, Japan, Korea etc) and is a really untapped market.

Increasing the fan base globally will have an effect on direct revenue such as shirt sales and merchandise but the main benefit is we would be more likely to attract larger sponsorship deals if we had a truly global fan base, this is where the big money is. 

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3 hours ago, ismail-villa said:

Would it be allowed, in case it could be seen as a chance to unnaturally inflate the deal?

Who sponsor Manchester City? It's what gets by "market rate". We sold Villa Park at "market rate". 

I think we'll likely go with Adidas for reasons stated earlier in this thread. 

Also in terms of revenue growth, the US Market is a big one and Wes will need to be key there. We need to get fighting top 6 for next few seasons to help that. We have advantages, our club name is unique and claret and blue is also. We need to become totally dominant in the midlands too to expand supporter base. HS2 and more remote working will also help prosperity in Birmingham area meaning more chances for Corporate seating in an expanding Villa Park etc..

 

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8 hours ago, Enda said:

A dude in my department only flies first-class whenever he’s going transatlantic

Most companies have a corporate policy for flying business / first class. Where I work, if the flight is over 5 hours we fly in business class. Just because I regularly fly in the nice seats does not mean I would be prepared to nor want to pay 1k for a season ticket

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4 hours ago, Peter Griffin said:

Most companies have a corporate policy for flying business / first class. Where I work, if the flight is over 5 hours we fly in business class. Just because I regularly fly in the nice seats does not mean I would be prepared to nor want to pay 1k for a season ticket

Yeah of course, but yer man I’m talking about pays out of his pocket. I don’t know about Birmingham specifically, but I have learned that plenty of people are absolutely loaded. A thousand pounds is a day’s pay to the one percenter types.

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