Mattyblue

Burnley are a red herring, they are keeping hold of residual PL support as most relegated teams do for a while. So I’m not really paying much attention to them. However, in what way are PNE ‘close to the highest they’ve been in years’? They just had their standard mid table second division finish, they’ve been generally where they are now give or take a spell in L1 for twenty years. They’ve sold significantly more because their tickets were reduced significantly, simple as that. For us, it’s a little more nuanced, I believe we need a bit of excitement over appointments/signings or a good season the year before to get some momentum - plus cheaper (not cheap) STs, I.e early bird tickets that aren’t some of the most expensive in the league, this gives you a chance of a big spike. So, the buzz and positivity need to go together with enticing pricing. In 2014/15 we reduced pricing on the back of some decent signings and just finishing out the playoffs under Bowyer - we then sold our most we have in any season between 2012 and now. On the flip side, If we had reduced prices this summer and TM had just been given another year or some scrap heap manager has turned up - no spike. You need to be canny with it. We’ve had half a spike on the back of JDT alone - now in my opinion, if that was coupled with an entry point of say £300/£350 up to £400-ish instead of £429 up to £529 we would be north of 10k already with five weeks to push for more. We are never seeing big sales again outside the PL, but four figure sales? Of course we can do better than that

That paragraph is literally it. Unfortunately, four years in the present CEO still doesn’t get it…

‘50 men’?! Thought it was ‘act like 10 men?’ This inflation ay! 😁

After half ST sales we weren’t actually far from that in the second half of last season. I suppose it depends on how many of those who bought them in the BEnd have renewed, many of them were young lads that are obviously key to atmosphere.

Most things a football club does doesn’t ‘turn a profit’, but they are all part and parcel of a football club, from the Premier League to the Northern Premier. A club at our level exists on owner largesse and TV money, the pennies you are losing on a bloody fortnightly bit of paper is neither here nor there, but symptomatic of a hierarchy that has no interest in the match day experience as one look around the ground tells you. Though maybe we should try and ‘turn a profit’ on the likes of Rothwell and Lenihan instead of consistently reducing what is on offer at Ewood for a saving of buttons, though I imagine the later goes down well on Swag’s profit and loss reports, the former, ‘well, what can you do?’

Still a long way from 10k, only possible if a high percentage of the 2.2k existing season ticket holders who hadn’t renewed by last weekend now do so. Is, say 9k an achievement for a club that wasn’t far off 20k when this lot bought the club? Or even had near 11k under Bowyer? Of course not, however it is bloody preferable to the appalling 6,995 we crawled to last summer and it would get us over the 8.5k we finished the season with, so it’s something to build on. It’s frustrating as we have seen an absolutely horrendous looking seating plan last Monday have a sustained spike since JDT’s appointment, plus the club now postponing the £30 surcharge for a second time can only help, but that spike will still probably see us only with four figures sales, and considerably under other local clubs, just imagine what this positive vibe could’ve seen us sell with attractive pricing! But what it does show is how vital it was the club changed direction, another year of Mowbray or some manager from the managerial scrap heap would without doubt seen a sub 7k total. The next step is in future summers to ensure any momentum around the club (and therefore fan excitement) and enticing pricing go together and just watch sales fly! (alas we would also need a new direction in the CEO chair for that to be a possibility).

‘Yeah so my stats say you can ignore all those comments on brfcs about supposed failures re ticketing policy, they are just a bunch of moaners and half of them don’t even go, so crack on Steve. Same time next week?’

Yep, that many of us turned up at the ticket office they opened up the Blackburn End concourse! I was a lucky one.

Stats for what? This is an message board with a few dozen regular posters, many of whom live away from the area, so any ‘stats’ will mean bugger all and be unrepresentative of the fanbase.

Why does it matter? Can you not have an opinion if you can’t afford it, live too far away or have other priorities in life?

I’m not sure there will be that many more night games, as the season is kicking off a week earlier, and two weeks of the Championship WC shut down period would’ve been the usual November international break anyway. Suppose we’ll see on Thursday.

And even if they’ve not been to a game they could still have an account due to buying some merchandise in recent years. Typical half arsed, ‘we’ll look into it’, ‘Can’t’, ‘done all we can’.

There’s nothing wrong with local firms getting involved with club sponsorship, indeed it’s obviously a very good thing as it binds together two important civic strands of any town with a professional team - the local business community and the football club. Nothing better than seeing the lounges full of local companies supporting the club. My question is more (I’m not getting into the moral part of it), is a local e-cig firm, that is so close to Ewood the pub next door is a pre game fan favourite, really the best principal sponsor that a club that was chasing promotion to the Premier League at the same time a sponsor search was presumably taking place, could’ve have got? As they were already in the tent, it certainly made sense as a short term stopgap when the other lot went bust, but as a long term principal club sponsor?

Ten days left of him in my calendar as Mr June, don’t go yet, Ben!

The UK GDPR replacement kicked in on the 1st January 2021, so he is correct re there being a UK regulation to abide with, hiding behind it as a reason to not bothering trying to get lapsed ST holders back is another issue…

That Riverside though! The original stand was a thing of beauty, so it always amuses me that some fans get all wistful about it’s early 90s, done on the cheap, shed replacement - it’s only two years older than the re-built Darwen End! Jack had planned for it have long gone by now, the fact it looks like an old relic has made some fans forget that it isn’t, just a cheap one.

Ha, I wouldn’t look too deeply into it Glen, the Chadster has obviously just googled ‘famous Indian companies’.

Yet Swag is crowing because we’ve just about scraped over last summer’s abysmal 6,995, neatly sidestepping the fact we had 8,500 by the end of January. I mean, if you ever wanted a prime example of how that fool has diminished this football club. The only hope for a respectable figure is that this second extension pushes a high number of the 2,250 existing ST holders who hadn’t renewed into doing so. But if they hadn’t renewed by now, will re-taking £30 off the price make much difference? I suppose we’ll see on the 1st July. But not to worry, ‘he knows’ about all the disquiet around pricing, so here’s hoping for some sensible offers by about 2030.

I’m seeing changes on the football side, but of course we haven’t signed anybody, we haven’t played a game against anybody, so I’m not getting carried away, but it’s certainly promising. However on the commercial side it sounds like SW is saying all the right things, however another season is upon us and yet we are still seeing the same mistakes. So he is either a very slow learner, doesn’t have the authority to make the changes he wants or he is just fobbing folk off and will carry on running the non playing parts of the club as he has since he arrived - short term profit and loss over strategic and long term growth. Fair play to anybody trying to keep communication channels open, but unfortunately, commercially, I see little improvement (and sadly that isn’t ‘bollocks’) so will continue to bang this drum until I do, as it is vitally important for the future wellbeing of this fantastic club we all hold dear.

As much as I’d love to see Swag depart, I’m just not getting that vibe at all. The way I see it is, yes, he’ll now be doing less on the football side with a DoF in situ, so he’ll just be focusing on the commercial/revenue side (🤦‍♂️)

The fact I really enjoy this tallying investigation shows how sad I really am. (But glad it’s not just me 😁).

Indeed, it’s all very ‘Scunthorpe Skip Hire’ “Think Big”… to “That place next to the Havelock, Rovers fans, aren’t they? Yeah they’ll do”

Think you’re right… had to read it a couple of times though! 👏 Swag, takes some doing to make such a convoluted mess.

It was 6,995, the 7,300 was quoted by Waggott in November’s FF meeting and he was including the half STs that had been sold to date. So yes 6,995 full, 8,500 including half STs

He got rid of A+ , A was kept, though they did stop using Cat A too in the run in (I.è Blackpool, Stoke and AFCB all could have been made ‘A’ and weren’t) to help boost walk ons,