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Cost Of Attending Matches Increases


Drew

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www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/23960850

Lunacy.

Instead of trying to make attending matches more attractive and accessible, the ordinary punter continues to have the piss ripped out of him/her.

In saying that, we continue to hand over daft amounts, so it probably isn't any great surprise. We're the mugs in all of this.

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Doncaster was on the radio this morning bumping his gums about season tickets actually being slightly cheaper and Scottish football being excellent value for money because you can go and see Albion Rovers for 30 bob and a jam jar. Apparently clubs are doing everything they can to financially help out the most loyal fans etc etc etc.....

This is all very well, and to be commended in the most part (free child season tickets etc), but he failed to grasp that the most loyal fans will also travel to away games. It's these games we're getting f*cked over in. £56 for me and two kids to go to Tynecastle is a disgrace. Ross County away, £24 was it? ICT away, similar. I won't even mention the green bhigots (not that I would go there anyway).

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I am being forced into picking and choosing my away games, because it's just too damn expensive.

By all means offer as much support as possible to driving attendances and bringing in younger fans, but they have to take visiting fans into more consideration, with robust pricing guidelines. Without away fans, you usually have very little atmosphere. Without atmosphere, the game is not as attractive.

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I wouldn't single out a single club, here, though.

Overall, it would appear that the cost of following top flight football in Scotland has increased. That cannot be a good thing, when (arguably) the 'product' hasn't improved significantly.

I have pretty much stopped going to away league matches as it is increasingly difficult to justify the cost involved. If matches were, say, £12, then I would be much more likely to travel to Motherwell, Kilmarnock, Perth etc.

The game will die on its arse once the ageing hardcore waste away unless something is done to address the cost of following the game. Look around the stands on Saturday and it will be clear that a majority of those in the seats will be over 30. Giving kids free tickets is great, but will they be willing to take the jump to forking out £20+ when they reach 18 or so? I'm not convinced.

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www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/23960850

Lunacy.

Instead of trying to make attending matches more attractive and accessible, the ordinary punter continues to have the piss ripped out of him/her.

In saying that, we continue to hand over daft amounts, so it probably isn't any great surprise. We're the mugs in all of this.

I've got to be honest, if I hear the phrase "financial climate" once more in relation to football clubs I'm going to scream.

Clubs need to understand that there is no financial problem in Scottish football if you can afford to pay someone in your team £1000-£3000 a week to kick a football. I genuinely wish the media would hold the game to account on this misconception because it's being used as an excuse to keep prices ludicrously high.

This is the reason why football is so expensive.

Until clubs start paying players sensible wages (no more than £800 a week - a FABULOUS wage for kicking a ball) we'll not see admission prices drop, fans will continue to drop away and the game will die eventually.

It pains me to see so many apparently successful businessmen utterly unable to see the bigger picture and work together to avoid damaging a loved sport.

Edited by oaksoft
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oaksoft

Posted Today, 10:10

Until clubs start paying players sensible wages (no more than £800 a week - a FABULOUS wage for kicking a ball) we'll not see admission prices drop, fans will continue to drop away and the game will die eventually.

It pains me to see so many apparently successful businessmen utterly unable to see the bigger picture and work together to avoid damaging a loved sport.

I have to say Oaksoft's reply does either reek of tongue-in-cheek, or cloud cuckoo land - can't quite decide!

If a footballer follows his childhood dream and get through the ranks of youth / junior / lower league football to reach the dizzy heights of Premier League football in Scotland he might then dream of a larger pay cheque in the south, but more often then not his dream stops there.

Now how long does that dream last one year, two or at a push even ten, but at the ripe old age of say 30 (if he has been lucky on the injury front) he is more or less getting to the end of that career. What's next - management maybe (proportionally very, very, few make the grade) , coaching........ maybe, re-start his education ..... maybe, but for most very unlikely.

So he uses the £800 (you suggest) he has earned per week (£40,000 per year - less of course tax, living expenses, mortgage, pension, the odd occasional night out etc. etc.) and retires gracefully for the next 70 years on that pension / capital built up during that period of playing football.

A footballer is like any other performer on a public stage - they look for the attention and they get attention - just look at the coverage in the last four pages of every newspaper - they are theoretically entertainers.

What do you pay to go and watch say the Proclaimers - £20 a ticket or even more perhaps? Ok so the Proclaimers might be national, so how much would you pay to see Glasgow Warriors play rugby?

By your suggestion footballers should be paid roughly a half to 30% of what they are paid, so are you suggesting you pay £8 to £10 per game to watch a SPFL match? That's a way short of where life sits I'm afraid to say.

So a footballer will try to get a wage that reflects what he is worth to the club - be that St Mirren, Dundee United, Aberdeen or Celtic. All have different levels of fan base, all have different approaches to investment and income streams, so to say that a footballer should be paid £800 a week is fundamentally daft.

On that argument, if you were that good in your job, you would happily expect a national average wage even tho' you might bring ten times the average profit into the company as the next man............................................. don't even try and argue that one!

The problem of high prices isn't per se the player's wages, it is the historical inflated amounts of money that was thrown at the game by Sky and the various television companies inflating the amount of money available to the clubs that led to inflation of wages beyond realism. The game now has an after-taste that permeates its way down to the fans at the turnstile. For clubs to pay players a wage that offers a reasonable level of skill they have to compete with the English 2nd or 3rd tier of league - we struggle with that, because in the south the basic crowd level is so much higher - just check out the crowd levels in the English 1st division this weekend and see what I mean (http://www.football-league.co.uk/page/DivisionalAttendance/0,,10794~201225,00.html) they can get so much more due to the population levels.

By all means argue for deals that get bums on seats, by all means argue for juvenile encouragement and get them there and hooked on the idea of supporting the buddies, but wake up and smell the coffee, we aren't living in the 1980's anymore!

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All of my games are 'away' games, so the cost of a ticket, while still too high, is only a small part of my costs. What determines whether I get to a game is if I can get a cheapo flight, if it looks like it could be a decent game (and these have been few and far between), and the TV companies are unlikely to shift it after I've booked my flight ticket. Also, I wouldn't come over for a game against either of the ugly sisters unless it was a cup final.

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I wouldn't single out a single club, here, though.

Overall, it would appear that the cost of following top flight football in Scotland has increased. That cannot be a good thing, when (arguably) the 'product' hasn't improved significantly.

I have pretty much stopped going to away league matches as it is increasingly difficult to justify the cost involved. If matches were, say, £12, then I would be much more likely to travel to Motherwell, Kilmarnock, Perth etc.

The game will die on its arse once the ageing hardcore waste away unless something is done to address the cost of following the game. Look around the stands on Saturday and it will be clear that a majority of those in the seats will be over 30. Giving kids free tickets is great, but will they be willing to take the jump to forking out £20+ when they reach 18 or so? I'm not convinced.

True, but then when we came into the SPL in 2006 I think Saints tickets were £20, and they haven't really changed much have they- whereas with inflation should now probably be £25 or so. I agree that the game is a struggle to convince people to come. Especially as kids now are more used to watching football on TV these days rather than in stands. I can remember being a kid that it was only big games and internationals on TV. Now it is Real/Man U/Dortmund on the TV with football on every day in a way that would be unthinkable 30 years ago.

Cheaper tickets would probably help but marketing from both club and league level needs to step up. It costs money but it really produces returns. I've been impressed with some of the effort the SRU have put into marketing rugby in Glasgow. If we take Glasgow rugby as an example in 2007 they got 1600 against Cardiff. Last week they played them and got 5,052. That's despite increasing ticket prices too. Now I accept they are coming from a low base and football is never going to have the same growth possibilities due to the number of clubs / local loyalties / gruesome twosome hoovering up fans but we could do better from a marketing viewpoint, however it costs money.

On the point that Last season Hearts charged us something like £24 a ticket at Tynecastle. 366 Saints fans went. Now if we assume half were concessions at half price that is something like £6,500. They reduced it to £5 for our last game, 1044 went making them £5,200. Maybe there is a point where lower prices would make more money but I can't see that being £12.

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800 quid my erchie.

Most of the players haven't mastered their trade.

Let them have a full time career outside football and they can dae that till their 65.

Pay them part time wages for their fitba hobby.

Gate prices therefore under a tenner.

All in the world is happy again.

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Is there a more annoying phrase than "its a short career"

So what if you can only play football til your 35, go and get another job,

I agree with oaksoft, the caliber of player we have in scotland is not worth 1000-3000 quid a week. if everyone cut their cloth accordingly the league would level out, yes, you will always get someone paying way over the odds, Hearts and Rangers fans are hardly laughing now though

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I was at a game last week that was value for money. Pollok v Auchin Talbot (or what ever their name).

£5 in, 4 goals, banter between players and fans, a player playing on with what looked like a broken arm, terracing, swapping ends at half time, got chips and curry bought for me, standing in the sunshine, free parking in the Morrisons if you time it correctly (you have 2 hours) oh and they wear black and white, plus they are my local team

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I was at a game last week that was value for money. Pollok v Auchin Talbot (or what ever their name).

£5 in, 4 goals, banter between players and fans, a player playing on with what looked like a broken arm, terracing, swapping ends at half time, got chips and curry bought for me, standing in the sunshine, free parking in the Morrisons if you time it correctly (you have 2 hours) oh and they wear black and white, plus they are my local team

That would be Auchinleck Talbot. Junior does provide good value for the price but not always the best fare. Personally, football has priced itself out of the market for many and I cannot understand why a game costs £20 plus while other entertainment remains fairly low like cinema . There is a reason why attendances across the UK are falling and that is simply the cost of supporting your team and particularly if you have kids who want to go along plus the amount of live football deters even fans of clubs who can save £40 ticket price, petrol, parking and eats while watching it at home in warmth and comfort. Not agreeing this is right as being there is always better (outwith baltic conditions) but Sky and BT Sports have made it easier to make that choice. The game has changed and money talks but for how long?

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I think the game in Scotland has been dying a death since the SPL was formed, clubs were forced to put in 10,000 seats regardless of their average support, and regardless of their local population, and top flight clubs found that a condition of their membership was that they had to be "full time" - without stipulating the minimum hours required for players to be full time players.

The game has become woefully detached from the local population as well. I live around 3 miles away from Motherwell FC and I help run a local kids football team. At the last count our club had something like 360 registered football players all under the age of 21 and 80 odd qualified and fully disclosed coaches. You'd think Motherwell FC would be keen to target their marketing at clubs like ours - yet while their is the odd bit of dialogue - usually when Motherwell want a player from us, and the occasional bit of friendly assistance (usually from a player who's son plays for one of our teams) or from a friend of a friend of Leeanne Dempster there's nothing formal. Crazy when you consider that even at the most basic level working with local juvenile clubs to form a collective buying group would have financial benefits for all.

Look at what happened on here a few months ago when I suggested that St Mirren arrange collection points at home matches for Daily Record Kit for Kids tokens to help local schools and community groups get free kit. I got no formal response from the club of course but the suggestion from one of the people close to the club was that St Mirren were concerned that in doing something like that on behalf of local community groups the club would be providing the Daily Record with free advertising. So because there was no money to be made for St Mirren the club refused to help local community groups.

You can point to similar problems with every senior Scottish Football Club. It's all about the narrow minded grab for cash, rather than seeing the bigger picture and that really is a shame. Senior football clubs can be a force for good - we only need to look across the border at the likes of Wigan Athletic or Stoke City to see what forward thinking clubs can do for their local communities. Unfortunately Scottish Football is run by people too blind to see.

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800 quid my erchie.

Most of the players haven't mastered their trade.

Let them have a full time career outside football and they can dae that till their 65.

Pay them part time wages for their fitba hobby.

Gate prices therefore under a tenner.

All in the world is happy again.

That's a great idea Shull, why has noone mentioned it on here before?
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The problem of high prices isn't per se the player's wages, it is the historical inflated amounts of money that was thrown at the game by Sky and the various television companies inflating the amount of money available to the clubs that led to inflation of wages beyond realism. The game now has an after-taste that permeates its way down to the fans at the turnstile. For clubs to pay players a wage that offers a reasonable level of skill they have to compete with the English 2nd or 3rd tier of league - we struggle with that, because in the south the basic crowd level is so much higher - just check out the crowd levels in the English 1st division this weekend and see what I mean (http://www.football-league.co.uk/page/DivisionalAttendance/0,,10794~201225,00.html) they can get so much more due to the population levels.

According to the BBC survey, entry fees to English 1st and 2nd division grounds on average is lower than SPL!

On the point that Last season Hearts charged us something like £24 a ticket at Tynecastle. 366 Saints fans went. Now if we assume half were concessions at half price that is something like £6,500. They reduced it to £5 for our last game, 1044 went making them £5,200. Maybe there is a point where lower prices would make more money but I can't see that being £12.

On that logic, had it been £12 a ticket and say half of the additional spectators ventured through to Edinburgh i.e 705 @ £12 would have bagged them £8,460 so maybe £12 is about right!

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Desnold

Posted Today, 14:46
According to the BBC survey, entry fees to English 1st and 2nd division grounds on average is lower than SPL!
Match Day prices for a sample four teams in the third tier of English football:
Yeovil Town £25 or £23 Main stand or £24 or £22 in opposite side
Shrewsbury Town £24 or £21
Tranmere Rovers £23.50 or £20.50
Sheffield Utd (with average crowds of 18,600) £22 or £18
That's what we compete against in general playing level terms - some may argue that the English 1st Division is a higher standard than Scottish Premier - it may be the case, but the basic cost in these 4 examples are all higher than St Mirren's base cost of £20 for entry into the west stand.
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oaksoft

Posted Today, 10:10

Until clubs start paying players sensible wages (no more than £800 a week - a FABULOUS wage for kicking a ball) we'll not see admission prices drop, fans will continue to drop away and the game will die eventually.

It pains me to see so many apparently successful businessmen utterly unable to see the bigger picture and work together to avoid damaging a loved sport.

I have to say Oaksoft's reply does either reek of tongue-in-cheek, or cloud cuckoo land - can't quite decide!

If a footballer follows his childhood dream and get through the ranks of youth / junior / lower league football to reach the dizzy heights of Premier League football in Scotland he might then dream of a larger pay cheque in the south, but more often then not his dream stops there.

Now how long does that dream last one year, two or at a push even ten, but at the ripe old age of say 30 (if he has been lucky on the injury front) he is more or less getting to the end of that career. What's next - management maybe (proportionally very, very, few make the grade) , coaching........ maybe, re-start his education ..... maybe, but for most very unlikely.

So he uses the £800 (you suggest) he has earned per week (£40,000 per year - less of course tax, living expenses, mortgage, pension, the odd occasional night out etc. etc.) and retires gracefully for the next 70 years on that pension / capital built up during that period of playing football.

A footballer is like any other performer on a public stage - they look for the attention and they get attention - just look at the coverage in the last four pages of every newspaper - they are theoretically entertainers.

What do you pay to go and watch say the Proclaimers - £20 a ticket or even more perhaps? Ok so the Proclaimers might be national, so how much would you pay to see Glasgow Warriors play rugby?

By your suggestion footballers should be paid roughly a half to 30% of what they are paid, so are you suggesting you pay £8 to £10 per game to watch a SPFL match? That's a way short of where life sits I'm afraid to say.

So a footballer will try to get a wage that reflects what he is worth to the club - be that St Mirren, Dundee United, Aberdeen or Celtic. All have different levels of fan base, all have different approaches to investment and income streams, so to say that a footballer should be paid £800 a week is fundamentally daft.

On that argument, if you were that good in your job, you would happily expect a national average wage even tho' you might bring ten times the average profit into the company as the next man............................................. don't even try and argue that one!

The problem of high prices isn't per se the player's wages, it is the historical inflated amounts of money that was thrown at the game by Sky and the various television companies inflating the amount of money available to the clubs that led to inflation of wages beyond realism. The game now has an after-taste that permeates its way down to the fans at the turnstile. For clubs to pay players a wage that offers a reasonable level of skill they have to compete with the English 2nd or 3rd tier of league - we struggle with that, because in the south the basic crowd level is so much higher - just check out the crowd levels in the English 1st division this weekend and see what I mean (http://www.football-league.co.uk/page/DivisionalAttendance/0,,10794~201225,00.html) they can get so much more due to the population levels.

By all means argue for deals that get bums on seats, by all means argue for juvenile encouragement and get them there and hooked on the idea of supporting the buddies, but wake up and smell the coffee, we aren't living in the 1980's anymore!

oaksoft

Posted Today, 10:10

Until clubs start paying players sensible wages (no more than £800 a week - a FABULOUS wage for kicking a ball) we'll not see admission prices drop, fans will continue to drop away and the game will die eventually.

It pains me to see so many apparently successful businessmen utterly unable to see the bigger picture and work together to avoid damaging a loved sport.

I have to say Oaksoft's reply does either reek of tongue-in-cheek, or cloud cuckoo land - can't quite decide!

If a footballer follows his childhood dream and get through the ranks of youth / junior / lower league football to reach the dizzy heights of Premier League football in Scotland he might then dream of a larger pay cheque in the south, but more often then not his dream stops there.

Now how long does that dream last one year, two or at a push even ten, but at the ripe old age of say 30 (if he has been lucky on the injury front) he is more or less getting to the end of that career. What's next - management maybe (proportionally very, very, few make the grade) , coaching........ maybe, re-start his education ..... maybe, but for most very unlikely.

So he uses the £800 (you suggest) he has earned per week (£40,000 per year - less of course tax, living expenses, mortgage, pension, the odd occasional night out etc. etc.) and retires gracefully for the next 70 years on that pension / capital built up during that period of playing football.

A footballer is like any other performer on a public stage - they look for the attention and they get attention - just look at the coverage in the last four pages of every newspaper - they are theoretically entertainers.

What do you pay to go and watch say the Proclaimers - £20 a ticket or even more perhaps? Ok so the Proclaimers might be national, so how much would you pay to see Glasgow Warriors play rugby?

By your suggestion footballers should be paid roughly a half to 30% of what they are paid, so are you suggesting you pay £8 to £10 per game to watch a SPFL match? That's a way short of where life sits I'm afraid to say.

So a footballer will try to get a wage that reflects what he is worth to the club - be that St Mirren, Dundee United, Aberdeen or Celtic. All have different levels of fan base, all have different approaches to investment and income streams, so to say that a footballer should be paid £800 a week is fundamentally daft.

On that argument, if you were that good in your job, you would happily expect a national average wage even tho' you might bring ten times the average profit into the company as the next man............................................. don't even try and argue that one!

The problem of high prices isn't per se the player's wages, it is the historical inflated amounts of money that was thrown at the game by Sky and the various television companies inflating the amount of money available to the clubs that led to inflation of wages beyond realism. The game now has an after-taste that permeates its way down to the fans at the turnstile. For clubs to pay players a wage that offers a reasonable level of skill they have to compete with the English 2nd or 3rd tier of league - we struggle with that, because in the south the basic crowd level is so much higher - just check out the crowd levels in the English 1st division this weekend and see what I mean (http://www.football-league.co.uk/page/DivisionalAttendance/0,,10794~201225,00.html) they can get so much more due to the population levels.

By all means argue for deals that get bums on seats, by all means argue for juvenile encouragement and get them there and hooked on the idea of supporting the buddies, but wake up and smell the coffee, we aren't living in the 1980's anymore!

£42,000 is an ASTOUNDINGLY good salary for kicking a ball.

Let's compare it with something useful.

The scientist who design the drugs which cure you when you are ill.

Let's call her Katie.

Katie will have to spend 5 years at uni earning her 1st class masters degree.

To get that classification (which she will need to be allowed anywhere near drug design these days) she's likely to have had to give up her entire social life and probably rack up tens of thousands of pounds in loans.

She'll then need to do a PhD. Many of those require 4 years of 80 hours a week for pay of about £13-14,000 a year.

So far we're at 9 years and she hasn't got a job yet!

She'll then have to scramble like hell for temporary postdoctoral jobs (12 months duration) for at least 3-6 years to get enough experience.

Her pay will probably be around £20-30k per year.

Then, if she's lucky, she'll get a job designing drugs on a salary of perhaps £30k a year.

So in comparison, she's spent 12-15 years having to get to the start line and will earn £30k for creating new life saving drugs.

We pay footballers £41k.

Do you see the problem?

You could remove the scientist and replace it with teacher or doctor and the figures would be comparable (although doctors will generally earn good money after perhaps 15 years experience).

BUT, and here's the difference. You don't have people on forums bitching about their low pay.

They know IN ADVANCE of starting their career that this is what they face and make decisions appropriately.

If footballers have a problem with the short career they could easily make a decision not to do that.

It's not as if there's a shortage of decent footballers out there.

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On that logic, had it been £12 a ticket and say half of the additional spectators ventured through to Edinburgh i.e 705 @ £12 would have bagged them £8,460 so maybe £12 is about right!

True, but that assumes it's linear. It probably is more complex than that.

That's also just looking at away support although looking at Hearts homes support is difficult to do as they've been in crisis. Any cost saving has to increase the home support too and Motherwell proved that the fairweather support wasn't there enough even when tickets went down.

Only a fiver for new Embra students to go see hibs v Saints next week.

http://www.hibernianfc.co.uk/news/20130912/fresh-student-ticket-offer_2262950_3455861

The sort of thing the Buddie management are no doubt pushing...?

Can't see anything about buying tickets on the day? I expect that's always possible in the SPL.

We've done similar before. We had offers at Paisley University back even when we were in D1.

Interesting to hear Doncaster praising us on the BBC over the Panda Club too (and rightly so the idea is good).

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