Miller11

I’m no fan of the whole early bird thing, but it seems absolutely standard across football for some reason. We pushed on making season tickets available at a pro ratad rate right the way through the season. I think there’s a lot of work to be done on making attending games more attractive. Watching on TV is definitely an inferior experience, but every game at Ewood needs to be treated like a major event to get people off their sofa and in to the stands, particularly with the new TV deal. There is obviously a way to go, but the pricing has certainly taken a move in the right direction, particularly with the focus on affordability for younger fans. This will offset some of the attrition that will undoubtedly occur, particularly in terms of numbers. They could halve the price of all tickets across the board and we’d still get nowhere near to selling out Ewood - people have plenty of reasons they wouldn’t buy them including all of the ones you’ve stated above and more. I expect a higher number of new season ticket holders than normal this year though, along with a decrease in renewals.

There are people who struggle to feed and clothe their families, and it’s an issue than goes far deeper than season ticket prices. Unfortunately some people will always be priced out given their personal circumstances, this applies to everything. In terms of what the club have done with the current season ticket offering though, it’s really good value for families.

I think the club have actually made a real commitment to making it affordable for families. Kids tickets have never been cheaper. Obviously Preston are seen as the benchmark by a lot of our supporters, but when comparing the two complete offerings you can see that we fare a lot better on seniors, young adults and secondary school age kids. The three tickets I’ve bought this year would’ve been a tenner cheaper at Preston, so neither here nor there. If my nephew was 11 rather than 7, we’d be coming in 121 quid cheaper.

If you ring the ticket office and ask them to link the accounts they will do. You will then be able to renew in a couple of clicks. Worked for me anyway.

A complete overhaul of the scouting department could be a real positive. Supposedly we’ve been stuck on the same player lists for every window in recent memory, so hopefully this will represent a clean slate. Our permanent signings over the last couple of years have been very hit and miss, and our loan business has been diabolical. As long as we get replacements in in a timely fashion I don’t think the current exodus is much of a concern.

I sympathise. I was only relying my own experience, which was pretty painless.

I’ve tried to renew mine, my brothers, my nephews, and add a new one for my Dad who is getting one again for the first time since Covid. I managed to get 3 of the 4 pretty painlessly, but it wouldn’t let me do my brothers as he will need to do that renewal on his own account. Can’t really say that’s even a mild inconvenience really. I was fine to do my nephews under 12, and presumably as my Dads was a new seat that was ok. I think the reason my brothers was problematic was due to his seat being reserved. Also, 3 season tickets for 3 generations of support for £600 is really good value I reckon.

- Yes, my language was probably a bit more vague than it should’ve been - Yes - Don’t know. Possibly because we didn’t have a lot of room within p&s rules to spend much on transfers

I honestly couldn’t even hazard a guess. I would expect a busy summer though with both incomings and outgoings though.

He was stressing that the investigation was into the activities of the parent company and not the club itself. It’s all pretty public knowledge what has happened, he has only reiterated that it isn’t any activity the club is responsible for. There was no attempts to be evasive, he was reiterated what is stated in the court documents around the first remittance. He believes that the club will be able to remit funds as required, as that is what Venky’s have told him.

I’m not really following here. For clarity, we weren’t given any assurances that all money generated would be put back into transfers. This is purely my opinion, but… We have been hampered by FFP/P&S rules in recent years. Yes, we have contributed to our own downfall in this regard with failure to properly protect playing assets and losing them on a free rather than generating a fee, but we’ve more or less operated on the cusp of the FFP threshold for a rolling 3 year period since we got back into the Championship. If we had really “gone for it” and failed, we’d then have to basically pay for it the following season or two (expect to see Hull do this over the next 2 years). it’s a risky strategy, and the current board are very risk averse. Avoiding sanctions is massively high on the agenda. Through a mix of factors, we’ve generated a lot of additional funds this year. We’ve obviously needed to use the cash for the ongoing running of the club, but what it has done is put us on a good P&S footing ahead of time. This makes “going for it” a lot less risky - forgetting the cash situation, we have enough leeway in the accounts to increase the wage budget over the next few years and to add significant transfer expenditure to the balance sheet. If Venky’s don’t have the permission to remit funds to us for the forseeable, this won’t happen as the money we do have and are scheduled to receive will just go into running costs - like practically all Championship teams we operate at a loss ordinarily. If Venky’s don’t have the inclination to remit funds for us to fund a push, then the same applies. I’d hope that conversations have happened to highlight that there is currently a window of opportunity to actually progress. They have previously had to provide a breakdown, the basic idea appears to be to show that the funds are not leaving the country and are going in roughly the right direction. There isn’t anything to say they can only use these funds for certain expenses. While the last lot specified things like PAYE and HMTC commitments there wouldn’t be anything to stop them adding any other expenses on there, ie transfer fees.

The statement was us minuting what we were told during our MOU meeting. In that meeting it was reiterated that the club wasn’t the subject of any investigation and that future remittances would be allowed to happen, providing a break down of proposed expenditure was given. We weren’t party to the legal discussions and only saw the publicly available court documents, so we can only go by what we are told by the club. Similarly they can only go by what they have been told by Venky’s. I expect it will become very clear in the coming weeks if Venky’s are able and/or willing to continue to send funds over.

Most football clubs are technically insolvent. All that historic money has long since gone on running costs, the rest of the income we are due will go the same way. The difference at the moment is we don’t need an immediate cash injection from Venky’s to keep P&S compliant and to pay immediate creditors. If they are willing (and more importantly able) to continue to stump up circa £13 million, then there is a lot of leeway for once.

The 5 year sponsorship deal with Venky’s began in July 2023 and those accounts were up to June 2023, so that increased revenue will show on the next set. As stated above I agree that unless there is radical changes to the season ticket offer, numbers will be drastically down this season for a multitude of reasons. We’ve conveyed these concerns very strongly and suggested ways to address this. I’ve seen the rumours of the price increase on here and Twitter, I don’t know where they originated but I hope they are incorrect. Steve Waggott has stated on several occasions that he is set very specific financial targets that he has to meet, and I get the impression that failure to do so would not be met with any sympathy or leeway from Venky’s. The entire operation is extremely risk averse in terms of this, and I’d say his overarching objective is ensuring we avoid administration, never fall behind with wages or HMRC payments, and ensuring we don’t find ourselves in a points deduction or embargo situation. Having said that I think now is the opportune time to take a risk considering that immediate FFP and P&S issues are not a concern after the last 12 months or so - of course cashflow might present a bigger issue though.

It’s not entirely true that he doesn’t care, in fact he’s mentioned the additional income at the Newcastle game quite often. When I heard the average spend per head it seemed quite low to me (I can’t remember the exact figure off the top of my head). We’d no doubt do better if we got people in Ewood at half one instead of ten to three, and of course got more fans through the gates. Most clubs now outsource it. Some of the other clubs with Sodexo are PNE, Wigan, Newcastle, Brighton, Fulham and Celtic. While you lose a percentage of the revenue, you save on the cost.

It would be disappointing. It’s also be a bit discussion point for our AGM next month.

Only that there is a period of time where Totally Wicked have the option to negotiate an extension. I’m fairly sure this window has now passed. This is just a hunch but I’m guessing we’d have heard by now if a new deal had been agreed. The details of any of the negotiations would obviously be commercially sensitive and not discussed with us, particularly before they were concluded. It’s absolutely a low bar, but it’s a long time now since our attendances have been remotely decent. We’ve had loads of discussions around how to improve them significantly. It’s no secret that there are financial targets that have to be hit and this is the main consideration. The club have very little faith that they could still maintain those revenue levels by a significant reduction to season ticket prices - they don’t believe that a price reduction would lead to enough additional sales. Steve Waggott is well aware of what Preston charge, he’s also well aware of how much higher our ticket revenue is. There isn’t a magic wand that anyone can wave to fill Ewood. It’s a long term project that needs to be done much better and much more creatively. I suppose we will see what the club think about progressing the numbers over the next few days. Personally I think numbers will be significantly down unless there is something radically different with the season ticket offering. We’ve made our thoughts on this very very clear. Our initial proposal for the season involved a number of initiatives including: - Reduction in standard ST price - Introductory priced adult ST for £149 in undersubscribed areas - Decent family discounts in all areas - additional category for younger children - a number of “bolt on” options to maximise revenue from willing spenders, rather than rinsing the hardcore - flexible and “pay as you go” options to accommodate people who can’t commit to every game We initially pitched this months ago, around Christmas and certainly before the January fiasco, the drop off in form, and the managerial change. Since then we have repeatedly stressed the mood of the fanbase will see sales badly impacted. Then of course the details of the new TV deal have since come out.

We’ve had quite a lot of discussion around commercial performance over the last couple of years. The recent accounts show commercial income has grown from £4.8 million to £6.1 million per annum. Turnover was up 25% year on year. Similarly, average attendance and number of season ticket holders is up again this year. 14% up over the last 2 years. Average attendance the highest since we were relegated. Match day revenue up £1.7 million in the last year. I get asked on a near daily basis why aren’t we challenging the club on dwindling attendances and decreased commercial revenue. Obviously we can’t attack the club or anyone who works there based on misconceptions. What we can do is express our desire for things to grow at a quicker rate and provide feedback and suggestions on how this might be achieved.

I’ve provided a playlist for every game since about January. Previously the club were using a very small pool of songs. In the early part of the season you’d often hear most of the same songs I provided for the fans takeover games being played on repeat. At one game they got someone external in as a one off to do the PA and he turned up with his decks and played World of Our Own by Westlife at the final whistle, after another crap result, which loads of people felt strongly enough about to email in complaints. Every home game there is almost an hour and a half of music to play before kick off. Most of it is played to a very small audience, but I’ve tried to stick to the general rule of thumb of never picking the same song twice (with one or two exceptions), and every game songs are played that are by local bands or supporters who are in the crowd. They won’t change the actual walk out music from that rubbish Red Hot Chilli Peppers rubbish, this was apparently picked by the players - I complain about this on a weekly basis, but I’m hoping that will be different next season. My biggest bugbear is that if my timings are slightly under they fill the gap with Thunderstruck by AC/DC which is about as generic and unimaginative a song as is possible to play - it’s Clitheroe’s (and almost every other non-league teams) walk out song for gods sake. Off the top of my head the following have all been played in the 15 minutes before kick off over the last few months… Oasis, Stone Roses, Metallica, Motörhead, New Order, Joy Division, Judas Priest, Faithless, Fatboy Slim, Basement Jaxx, Green Day, Status Quo, Hard-Fi, Charlatans, Kasabian, Led Zeppelin, Reverend and the Makers, Talking Heads, Bowie, Buzzcocks, Prodigy, The Clash, The Who, Shed Seven, Chemical Brothers, Thin Lizzy, James, K-Klass, Kiss, Dario G, Depeche Mode… As mentioned above, Hardcore Uproar was played against Newcastle, and in fact has been played every single time I’ve compiled a playlist this season. It’s THE Blackburn acid house tune and was basically born in Ewood Mill. The feedback on this has been really positive and it was trending on Twitter when it got played in the FA cup game. Another myth that still persists is that the version of Wild Rover by Morning Call still gets played. Well, at the start of the season this was accidentally deleted by someone at Rovers so they don’t even have a copy of it. I sit in the Riverside with the singer who has provided me with it, so if it does make a comeback you can blame/thank me. As for 2Unlimited as the walk out music, I’m not dying on that hill. During the build up on occasion, no bother.

You’ve got a very generous bookie offering 90/1 on that! Who is the bet with? Unfortunately the above scenario is a lot more likely than those odds would suggest.

Haven’t heard anything, just had discussions. This would be very disappointing.

“We love it when the away team bring a big following. Like Preston and Wrexham. There is really only an atmosphere when the away end is full. We want to play in front of a full house.” - Aynsley Pears. In that infamous meeting at the start of February. Gallagher and Hyam were in agreement.

Just witnessed a very good performance from the U21s who came back from 2 down to draw with Arsenal. I’d start Leo Duru on Saturday and have Nsangou on the bench.

Michalski Carter O’Riordon McFazdean Pickering JRC Tronstad Dolan Szmodics (c) Gilsenan Big Billy

Brilliant that. The perfect reaction. Great to see Carter back, he makes a big difference and for me is our best defender. I was very nervous when McFadzean came on but he was excellent today. JRC MOTM. You’d have to say that Eustace executed the perfect game plan today. With no excuses around P&S/FFP this summer we should be in a position to build a proper squad again based around things other than just “the numbers”. Obviously the cashflow and court case issues will be the biggest factor though unfortunately.