mervyn":2fbgfd4t said:
I was intrigued by Bradford City's strategy when in this division of charging half the normal ticket price, and gaining at least double the average crowd for Div. 2.
Whilst it may have been revenue neutral at the gate, they must have benefitted hugely from catering and shop sales, whilst creating crowd sizes which must have helped promotion.
Me too. But, I think you would have to be very brave to try this out (Bradford were a bit desperate at the time I think) and it would be very difficult to know the level to pitch the price at. We have seen previously that reductions for individual games don't necessarily result in a boost in crowd (although there could be all kinds of contributing factors such as schemes only being tried for less attractive games). It is quite easy to imagine that dropping the cost of a ticket by 50% would not result in a doubling of attendances (or pro rata for different reductions).
If I was going to try something like this I would tie it to season ticket sales and thereby create an incentive for existing season ticket holders to persuade others to join them (so creating a massive 'sales force' of existing customers who would benefit if they persuaded others to also become customers). The price of a season ticket could be set so that there was a maximum cost that then reduced when total sales passed various thresholds. For example, say the 'normal' cost was £400 per season with 4000 being sold now. That price could be dropped to, say £350 if 6000 were sold and £300 if 8000 were sold etc. (note that these figures are just plucked from thin air to illustrate the idea and haven't been thought through in detail). I would arrange things so that the discount was not applied automatically, but rather was available by request (via a simple process) because I think that way you would find a surprising number of people would decide not to claim the discount but, rather, to 'donate' it to the club.
The idea is to increase the revenue whilst also increasing the financially-committed (at the outset of the season) customer base.
[Just checking my example figures a bit...
4000 @ £400 = £1,600,000 = £800,000 per 2000 sales
6000 @ £350 = £2,100,000 = £700,000 per 2000 sales or £500,000 per last 2000 additional sales
8000 @ £300 = £2,400,000 = £600,000 per 2000 sales or £300,000 per last 2000 additional sales
]