Today's gate

[Warren]

From the Bycars it is possible to judge the gate pretty well. I thought the gate figure was about right, I know it was Barnet, but I was disappointed with the attendance figure. Ronnie Moore is back at Tranmere and they managed 6,500 against Orient after a bad spell, so I was looking for the same sort of figure at Vale Park. Tranmere are a good benchmark for support having similar history over the last 25 years and similar ground capacities.

[Mcphee4Scotland]

I've just finished moving all of my stuff down to my new flat in Southampton this weekend, starting my new job tomorrow.

 

That's my reason for not attending yesterday. Rest assured I will be making the effort to attend the Southern-based grounds like Swindon and Aldersot to get behind the lads before the end of the season.

[valiantms]

Clubs like Vale have a perfect opportunity to be creative with their pricing structure as they effectively have a 3/4 empty stadium (that's not meant to be a dig by the way).

 

They could have a season ticket price of say £276 for adults (£12 a game), and £138 concessions (£6 a game), half season tickets of 12 games at £196 (£14 a game) and £84 concessions (£7 a game), and a 6 game ticket at £96 (£16 a game) and £48 concessions (£8 a game).

 

With the 12 and 6 game tickets you effectively just trade the ticket in your booklet for a match day ticket before or on the day of the match, with the ground never being full it's easy to administer. Perfect for shift workers or exiles that have to pick and choose their games, the club are still getting a discount but contributing up front allows the club to manage their budget accordingly.

 

The walk in price on the day could be say £18 adults £9 concessions which is still slightly cheaper than this season but not too cheap as to hamstring the club financially

 

The Family Stand should also be increased in size and moved to the Lorne Street on completion. Under 7's should not pay more than £23

for a season ticket (£1 a game) and 7-14 year olds £115 a season ticket (£5 a game) with a fully paid adult.

 

At The Brit the Family Stand has been a massive success, the concourse has been kitted out for kids, play station terminals, bouncy castle, the club mascot is there before the game posing for photos. It makes it a far more enjoyable experience for families and encourages kids to come back.

 

Whoever the new owners are really need to be as radical as they can afford to entice people to the club and there's no reason why enhancing the match day experience coupled with steady progress on the pitch shouldn't have floating fans heading back to Vale Park

 

Ideas like that are great, and exactly what we should be doing. It wouldn't cost us a fortune to do for a season and could bring us more money in, both short and long term. Sadly we've been ran by idiots for far too long for the club to have came up with any kind of idea other than 'put the price up.'

[Tumbleweed_MVF]

Disappointing.

 

Would love to know from those that did not go today why not..

 

Stockport had more at home in the conference.

 

I was expecting 6500 to 7000.

 

I didnt go reason I have loads of course work to do - so a 7 hour round trip wasnt top of my list yes i regretted not going wanted to be there but my job comes first but listening to the game I didnt miss much......................anyway away games are better!!!

[WEMBLEY OF THE NORTH]

Clubs like Vale have a perfect opportunity to be creative with their pricing structure as they effectively have a 3/4 empty stadium (that's not meant to be a dig by the way).

 

They could have a season ticket price of say £276 for adults (£12 a game), and £138 concessions (£6 a game), half season tickets of 12 games at £196 (£14 a game) and £84 concessions (£7 a game), and a 6 game ticket at £96 (£16 a game) and £48 concessions (£8 a game).

 

With the 12 and 6 game tickets you effectively just trade the ticket in your booklet for a match day ticket before or on the day of the match, with the ground never being full it's easy to administer. Perfect for shift workers or exiles that have to pick and choose their games, the club are still getting a discount but contributing up front allows the club to manage their budget accordingly.

 

The walk in price on the day could be say £18 adults £9 concessions which is still slightly cheaper than this season but not too cheap as to hamstring the club financially

 

The Family Stand should also be increased in size and moved to the Lorne Street on completion. Under 7's should not pay more than £23

for a season ticket (£1 a game) and 7-14 year olds £115 a season ticket (£5 a game) with a fully paid adult.

 

At The Brit the Family Stand has been a massive success, the concourse has been kitted out for kids, play station terminals, bouncy castle, the club mascot is there before the game posing for photos. It makes it a far more enjoyable experience for families and encourages kids to come back.

 

Whoever the new owners are really need to be as radical as they can afford to entice people to the club and there's no reason why enhancing the match day experience coupled with steady progress on the pitch shouldn't have floating fans heading back to Vale Park

 

They are great ideas.

 

I also think we need to have an on-line facility for purchasing tickets as many people can't be bothered to queue on match day or are unable to get up to the ground before a match day to purchase.

[Timothius]

They are great ideas.

 

I also think we need to have an on-line facility for purchasing tickets as many people can't be bothered to queue on match day or are unable to get up to the ground before a match day to purchase.

 

And a system with no surcharge for using a card to pay

[WEMBLEY OF THE NORTH]

And a system with no surcharge for using a card to pay

 

I agree, but a lot of businesss do this.

 

I wonder if Waterworld operate this system?

[Valiant Rising]

Some great ideas on this thread, and I'm hopeful that if/when we get a new owner they are full of the same stuff.

 

But the main point of the thread is disappointing, same as I commented after Tuesdays gate. I appreciate some people had valid reasons, some people were skint, but IMHO there was still a lot of people who really couldn't be ****ed, and that wasn't the message required to give out to prospective investors. The day after we go into admin - I'm sure some more of us could have tried.

Hearing some of the excuses trotted out Saturday night to me on why a few mates didn't go I half expected one of them to start singing the old Kenny Rogers lines:

'You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille,

with four hungry children and crops in the field....':(

Such was their plight

[Bails]

I was dissappointed with both attendances this past week. I genuinely thought they would have been more :( I also yhought the Paddock seemed MUCH busier than Tuesday... particularly around where I was sitting

[vog]

I can't help thinking that we need to remember that any attendance that we have is made up, in the vast majority, of home fans. While we may have gotten higher average attendances in previous years, how much of this was down to a higher number of away fans?

 

To be perfectly honest though, our average attendance to before the Crewe game was around 4700? If we are now getting around 5700, that's 1000 extra fans, or an extra half a million pounds per season. That is a huge upturn for a club of our relevant size!

 

1000 extra fans due to the board leaving must not be scoffed at!

[pete vale]

I think the Barnet gate was reasonable all considering, not poor.

 

Remember this:-

 

We have lost some supporters for good

 

Some supporters will need further enticement unfortunately

 

The walk up price of £20.50 is ludicrous

 

2 games in a week have affected the gate

 

The 'passive' supporters' a-la the Shrewsbury game will turn up to watch a top of the table clash and may not be tempted with Barnet

 

The chances are that the increase in gate during the last 2 games were due to full-price paying adults, rather than the 'free' or budget priced juvenile or under 12's season tickets that boosted previous attendances.

[Ruislip_Valiant]

I'll just leave this here. Average attendances at Vale Park since 1965:

 

[tisdeano]

We have tended to have a few "myths" about our average attendances over the years and what number we could and should attract.

 

Its obvious that since the board have left we had added 15-20% on the gate, this for ****** awfull league two football.

 

The reality is if we can continue to average around 5300 home fans the club will be very attractive to potential buyers as I believe based on this figure we can give the manager a decent budget and not loose money [ assuming the business is ran correctly ]

[smithie]

I'd love to know which marketing expert suggested in pre-season that £20.50 would be achievable as a walk-in admission fee.

 

They've made some howlers down the years, but that one ranks pretty badly.

 

As a priority, admission charges MUST be reviewed.

 

Thanks to the massive inequalities in football finance, clubs such as Villa regularly offer tickets for £20.00

 

Sanity has to return at some point when it comes to the cost of watching football in the UK.

[cheeky]

I'd love to know which marketing expert suggested in pre-season that £20.50 would be achievable as a walk-in admission fee.

 

They've made some howlers down the years, but that one ranks pretty badly.

 

As a priority, admission charges MUST be reviewed.

 

Thanks to the massive inequalities in football finance, clubs such as Villa regularly offer tickets for £20.00Sanity has to return at some point when it comes to the cost of watching football in the UK.

 

You can go and watch Wigan and Blackburn for about £15 too.