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#Post#: 95457--------------------------------------------------
Clearer vision and cheaper tickets needed
DIR By: DOK
Date: September 13, 2022, 7:32 am
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English club rugby needs to be affordable, accessible and run
with far more clarity
HTML https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/sep/13/clearer-vision-cheaper-tickets-needed-to-enhance-premiership-club-rugby-union
--- Quote ---
> It is certainly time to start discussing ticket prices. If you
fancy sitting in the main grandstand to watch Exeter v
Harlequins this month, for example, seats are available for £80.
On the other side of the ground, in the upper tier of the new
stand, it is £65. Behind the posts, an adult ticket is now
somewhere between £40 and £56. With a cost-of-living crisis
looming, these are punchy prices. But as the club’s chairman,
Tony Rowe, likes to say: “All my life I’ve never wanted to be
the cheapest. I don’t like discount. I always think you should
give value for money.” It is a similar scenario at Harlequins
where an adult seat behind the posts for this weekend’s home
game with Saracens is £50. Too much? Not if the product is a
guaranteed dazzler, maybe. But, hand on heart, how many people
watched the first 40 minutes of the kick-heavy Exeter v
Leicester game and felt their spirits soaring. For all the vital
tactical importance of kicking and territorial gains, protracted
“kick tennis” over the heads of two sets of cricked-necked
forwards on the halfway line is not going to woo many floating
voters.
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> how long before someone grasps the tiresome nettle of “second”
jerseys? Wasps made a big thing this summer about returning to
hooped black-and-gold jerseys that reflected the club’s
heritage. So what did they run out wearing at Gloucester on
Sunday? A blue/jade number with barely any sense of identity
attached to it. There is an argument that wearing a different
coloured away shirt, simply because football does so, diminishes
a club rugby brand rather than enhances it.
--- End Quote ---
#Post#: 95459--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clearer vision and cheaper tickets needed
DIR By: Fearless Fred
Date: September 13, 2022, 8:18 am
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Clubs are already struggling financially. Unless you can
guarantee to draw in enough extra backsides on seats to offset
the reduction in individual price (assuming you even have the
seats to fill), then you're only exacerbating the losses.
#Post#: 95461--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clearer vision and cheaper tickets needed
DIR By: Yareet
Date: September 13, 2022, 9:03 am
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--- Quote from: Fearless Fred link ---
>
> Clubs are already struggling financially. Unless you can
guarantee to draw in enough extra backsides on seats to offset
the reduction in individual price (assuming you even have the
seats to fill), then you're only exacerbating the losses.
>
--- End Quote ---
Exactly. Clubs need to maximise revenue and last I checked,
nobody was under any obligation to buy either a seat or a shirt.
#Post#: 95462--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clearer vision and cheaper tickets needed
DIR By: Brown Bottle
Date: September 13, 2022, 9:14 am
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Yes, reducing prices can only work if you have spare capacity.
#Post#: 95463--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clearer vision and cheaper tickets needed
DIR By: Fearless Fred
Date: September 13, 2022, 9:24 am
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--- Quote from: Brown Bottle link ---
>
> Yes, reducing prices can only work if you have spare capacity.
>
--- End Quote ---
Exactly. We're running pretty much at capacity since the end of
restrictions, and we were always well over 90% capacity usage
for a number of seasons before Covid, any reduction in prices
would simply be stupid.
#Post#: 95464--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clearer vision and cheaper tickets needed
DIR By: D-Quins
Date: September 13, 2022, 9:45 am
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If you have 80,000 seat like Twickenham you can reduce the
price. The big game has some of the seats at lower prices so we
get to fill place. However lowering the costs in an already
full stadium just makes your losses bigger. Yes the fans would
enjoy the lower prices but when the club goes to the wall they
would I am sure be unhappy.
#Post#: 95470--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clearer vision and cheaper tickets needed
DIR By: poorfour
Date: September 13, 2022, 11:16 am
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Somewhat in Kitson's defence, across the league as a whole
there's an argument that reducing ticket prices would fill
stadia (and generate more matchday revenue from beer).
Bath, Chiefs, Quins and Saints are averaging over 80% attendance
(though I think the stats for Quins on Wikipedia are skewed
because they've counted BG and BSKO in the % stats - strip them
out and we're up with Bath at over 90%); Sarries, Tigers and
Gloucester are in the high 70s, albeit with very different
capacities.
Everyone else is quite a bit below that. There is room for them
to get more people in. But on the other hand, club execs will be
doing exactly what Lawrie is doing and trying to balance what
they can charge with capacity. Revenue = (ticket price + spend
in ground) x seats sold.
It might actually be better to sell fewer tickets to well-heeled
punters who pay more and buy stuff in the ground, than to sell
more to the cost conscious who bring their own sandwiches and
drink in the Albany before games...
#Post#: 95473--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clearer vision and cheaper tickets needed
DIR By: Brown Bottle
Date: September 13, 2022, 11:28 am
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--- Quote from: poorfour link ---
>
> Somewhat in Kitson's defence, across the league as a whole
there's an argument that reducing ticket prices would fill
stadia (and generate more matchday revenue from beer).
>
> ...
>
--- End Quote ---
Trouble is the two examples he used were us and Exeter.
But, even so, teams like Wasps and Irish must have an idea where
the top of the curve is by now, you'd think
#Post#: 95479--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clearer vision and cheaper tickets needed
DIR By: never sleep
Date: September 13, 2022, 12:30 pm
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Basically, football is funded by TV money. I remember seeing
that some clubs would be better off financially playing all
games behind closed doors.
On the other hand, rugby in England has a really poor TV deal.
So we need ticket money.
The solution. Get better TV deals for premiership, championship
and national 1. Then, you could reduce ticket prices.
#Post#: 95494--------------------------------------------------
Re: Clearer vision and cheaper tickets needed
DIR By: DOK
Date: September 14, 2022, 4:02 am
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I think part of the issue is the Devil's Bargain that is TV
money. You get paid a lot of money by Sky (or someone) but you
then can't show it on terrestrial TV and suddenly a potential
audience of 60m (exaggeration I know) is down to a few hundred
thousand. That doesn't help grow your sport. I thought the deal
where the weekend's rugby games could be rounded up during the
week was a great idea.
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