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A Hoad off my mind with KM Group reporter Alex Hoad - Looking at West Ham's announcement of a reduction in season ticket prices in 2016
00:00, 23 April 2015
updated: 11:28, 23 April 2015
Season ticket prices. Three words which serve to raise your pulse and make your credit card go limp and floppy.
Whether it’s paying several thousand pounds to sit (or, let’s face it, stand) on a packed train twice a day, 237 days a year, to whisk you to and from The Big Smoke, or several hundreds for the privilege of seeing your team play 18-plus times a year, hundreds of thousands of people fork out for them year after year.
While a rail season ticket is a necessity for many, saving you a bit of money, helping you avoid queues and occasionally getting you to work on time, it really does not affect your public standing. You are still a passenger. Stood on a packed train. Just like everyone else.
However holding a season ticket at a sports club seems to carry some kind of gravitas – or at least it does in the mind of the owner.
You pay your club a lump sum every summer to help them buy players, pay the ‘leccy’ bill, cut the grass. The club would not be the same without you.
Except it would.
I am getting a little tired of all the bleating from fans of the ‘big clubs’ about season tickets.
When you give a company with a turnover of hundreds of millions of pounds £1,000, once a year, you are, effectively, meaningless. A drop in the ocean compared to the hundreds of millions of TV money from SKY and BT Sport.
It’s not like it’s even a donation. You’re getting to watch every game. You don’t have to worry about online ticketing systems and on-sale dates and queuing for cup tickets.
In fact, the club are actually doing you a favour. Why should you get a discount for the privilege of getting to watch every minute of your club’s home games? If anything you should pay more.
Don’t like it? Well, there are hundreds of thousands of other people who would gladly put their bum on your seat given half a chance. You’re not a fan, you’re a customer. And don't you forget it.
This only rings true for a few clubs of course. Most Football League teams and every single non-league one almost certainly couldn’t operate without season ticket sales.
The idea of supply and demand is almost laughable. If you want one, you can have one. By contrast I’m in my eighth year on the season ticket waiting list at Tottenham.
Now I wholeheartedly agree that Premier League clubs should use the £5.3billion TV deal, which kicks-in in 2016/17, to reduce season ticket prices, get youngsters back involved and ensure the atmosphere – which adds so much to TV games – isn’t lost. And send some cash down the leagues too. It’s only sensible.
West Ham were the first to announce they are cutting ticket prices in 2016, after raising them 5% next season. Isn’t that good of them? Well, yes, but... next year coincides with their relocation to the Olympic Stadium.
For £2m a year in rent, the Hammers will have a 54,000 capacity stadium, 19,000 more than their current Upton Park ground.
To avoid empty seats in their new home they are going to have to reduce prices, and the extra number of seats and low rent means they can still increase overall revenue even with big reductions.
They are in a win-win situation, but I’m not buying these price reductions are entirely down to charity - the influx of Sky and BT Sport money and the need to make a success of the Olympic Stadium seem bigger factors to me.