The Diary

Cod Almighty | Diary

Build it and they might come

29 May 2019

No news is good news, right? You certainly hope that has to be the case with Town as the pre-season tumbleweed spirals on. Richard Hallam on Twitter has done some research and he pointed out that signings last season began in the week beginning 4 June. So let's just bask in three or four more days of sedate musings about Our 'Arry's call-up for Wales until the Fishy erupts because we've signed someone who only scored thee goals in four years.

Of course there was a little bit of news yesterday with the announcement of the pre-season fixtures, with the obligatory starter against Clee Town. In among the others was another home game against Doncaster but we finish our pre-season campaign against Peterborough. This fixture was apparently part of the Siriki Dembele sale last year and is worth approximately 12 grand for the club.

This is because all season ticket holders have the opportunity to attend one home game before the season opener for free. Thunderdiary welcomes this little bonus but it remains to be seen if it contributes to selling many more season tickets.

Town always sell 3,000 season tickets. Last season average attendance was 4,430 so if we assume that the 430 will cover the away fans that means an average 1,000 extra Town fans paid to see each game. Let's look at some maths behind that.

Let's say, for example, that the average cost of a season ticket is about 250 quid: that equates to £750k. Let's also say that, with concessions, 1,000 matchday tickets are sold at an average of £15 a game, so £15,000 x 23 games gives an additional 345 grand across the season.

So the sum of home matchday income is around £1.1m. If Town followed other models and charged the £150 Bradford do, then they would have to sell 5,000 season tickets in order to produce the same sort of revenue they already do.

Now I am not saying they shouldn't lower it to try and attract that extra 2,000 – but you can see why they don't. The model stays as it is because nobody in the club is prepared to take that bold step of short-term pain for getting more people in the ground.

This forward thinking may or not work, but Town have to think about the future, and how to get the fans of the future invested. £250,000 worth of ground improvements is all well and good. But when you're doing it because you have to, rather than improving the experience and encouraging attendance because the supporters are important, then that is why we never sell many more than 3,000 season tickets every year.