[Archived] The Old Gate Debate

[stuwilky]

We should just drop ticket prices to £15 for the rest of the season. As Joey says, the revenue loss would probably equate to £1m in transfer funds. A full, or near full stadium every week would more than make up for that though in my opinion.

Sure the season ticket holders will complain, but you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. As one myself I'd much rather watch the team play in a full stadium and just accept that not everyone can pay £25-£30 quid a match.

The season ticket holders certainly will complain, I struggled to get together the £960 I gave in cash to BRFC in June.

Im damned if I then find Im paying more. I can live with offers and the like, in fact I fully support them.

But unless I see something drastic for my season ticket I'll be livid if that happened!

[Paul]

Sure the season ticket holders will complain, but you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. As one myself I'd much rather watch the team play in a full stadium and just accept that not everyone can pay £25-£30 quid a match.

I won't complain. Sunday was a great improvement. If we could have 23000 - 25000 roaring us on to a UEFA final I'd be happy to see everyome inside for £15 all season.

[OhmiBRFC]

I don't buy your numbers old boy. Last season we had 18,000 for the game with at least 2,000 from Bolton; that leaves 16,000 from B'Burn. Given the further declines seen this year, we'd have been lucky to see 15,000 at A+ prices IMO. That would have left more like 2,000 home fans paying versus 7,000, compared to current trend, who turned up on saturday. Many poster said repeatedly that NO-ONE extra would turn up if prices were lowered.

Who knows what would happen at 15 quid for every game next season, plus other schemes to put bums on seats for the less glamourous matches, it's never been tried? A+++ pricing however has been tried and has turned the ground into an embarrassing morgue that will not attract fans, sponsors, corporate guests or live match fees. It's the entire revenue stream of 30m+ that would suffer under your plan to fleece the dwindling b and of loyal diehards.

If it was £15 for every game next season there wouldnt be much point in gettin a season ticket as it would be cheaper just to pay for each indiviual home game

[thenodrog]

And do try and cut out the petty sarcasm.

Petty sarcasm? Kinell Colin thats rich coming from you!

I won't complain. Sunday was a great improvement. If we could have 23000 - 25000 roaring us on to a UEFA final I'd be happy to see everyome inside for £15 all season.

Don't be bloody daft Paul! You'd be on your own with that one. My ST works out at about £20 per match but I would certainly complain if the club discounted the part time walk ons over and above their lifeline supporters. It would come under the heading of 'taking the p1ss'.

I don't think that Gav or I have "alternative suggestions"

I knew that already, it would have been obvious to a blind man on a galloping horse in fact. So if you have nothing to offer to this debate then shut the fcku up and stick to the ICBINF board. You are cluttering up serious debate with your irreverent crap.

btw Same for all. If you have nothing constructive / imaginative / valid / beneficial to offer other than blank closed minds, intellectual sterility and continual criticism then sod off!

Edited October 24, 2006 by thenodrog

[Manchester Blue]

Incidentally does anyone know what is going on with the ticket office? Have they sacked all the staff? I tried three times yesterday on the phone and again today and have so far never got higher than 10th in the queue and cannot justify the wait whilst i;m at work so still have no Uefa tickets. It's bizarre as i've usually got through immediately unless a big game was ahead. No point the club emailing me with offers galore if I can't get through to take advantage is there?

[cn174]

Incidentally does anyone know what is going on with the ticket office? Have they sacked all the staff? I tried three times yesterday on the phone and again today and have so far never got higher than 10th in the queue and cannot justify the wait whilst i;m at work so still have no Uefa tickets. It's bizarre as i've usually got through immediately unless a big game was ahead. No point the club emailing me with offers galore if I can't get through to take advantage is there?

Maybe its just so busy they can't employ enough people to man the phones

[thenodrog]

Incidentally does anyone know what is going on with the ticket office? Have they sacked all the staff?

£15 a ticket........ somethings got to give I suppose. They will prob have to re-locate the ticket office to Delhi.

[stuwilky]

Incidentally does anyone know what is going on with the ticket office? Have they sacked all the staff? I tried three times yesterday on the phone and again today and have so far never got higher than 10th in the queue and cannot justify the wait whilst i;m at work so still have no Uefa tickets. It's bizarre as i've usually got through immediately unless a big game was ahead. No point the club emailing me with offers galore if I can't get through to take advantage is there?

They appear to have made a mistake with the release of too many matches at the same time.

Chelsea, West Ham, United, UEFA Home, Feyenoord are all on sale.

I waited for 40 mins yesterday before getting to number 2 in the que to be told "the service you require is now unavailable" I swore a bit.

[Scotty]

If you have nothing constructive / imaginative / valid / beneficial to offer other than blank closed minds, intellectual sterility and continual criticism then sod off!

But you have nothing constructive, valid or beneficial to offer either. Just a wildly imaginative "idea" that would actually alienate most of our fans. Whenever your "idea" is debated you come back with nothing in the way of a resoned argument, in fact, your above post is a pretty standard response to anyone who disagrees with you. Which makes me wonder why you don't "sod off".

[thenodrog]

Which makes me wonder why you don't "sod off".

Whhhoooooooo get that.......... Tough talk from the boards regular bullyboy street fighting man! Careful you'll have Col and Gav coming over all cow eyed at your masterful put downs of me.

Tell you what Steven bloody Seigal ........ same question to you. Lets have your alternative suggestions for

1. taking professional football in this area forward.

2. giving us a real chance to compete for the title every season again.

3. to provide regular Champions League football.

4. and for the chance to stop being a bloody small arsed small town feeder club and having the media take the p1ss regularly, and continually lose our best managers and players to the proper BIG clubs.

We are cock a hoop right now and rightly so but at the present rate of progress MH will be lured away before too long and if you cannot see that or are happy with it to happen you are deluding yourself. It's like waiting for the Sword of Damocles to fall and for us one day soon the thread will snap. Like it or not we have not the long term resources or staying power of the likes of such perrrenial 2nd Div luminaries like Sheff Wed, Derby, Forest, Brum, Wolves, Leicester, Leeds, Sunderland etc. Jack Walker's wealth took all that angst away once albeit for half a dozen short years (and has provided a more than useful buffer since). But I for one want it back, preferably and necessarily on a true and sound businesslike footing.

And if you also say that you would rather watch BRFC in the Lancashire combination then I trust you will be good enough to resign from this board forthwith also."

Edited October 25, 2006 by thenodrog

[BRFC4EVA]

Lets say we did lower the prices to £20 Cat A (man u, l'pool, everton, arsenal, city)and £15 for Cat B games (all others), how much money would we really loose? Ticketing revenue must be such a small part of our income when you consider sky tv money, prem finish prize money, sponsorship, player sales etc.

Considering we would average over 25k as oppose to 20k at the more expensive prices im sure we wouldnt actually loose that much money, and it would be worth it to see the ground fuller. We would have to lower the s/t prices as well, but why dont we try something new? Take the 1.5m loss or whatever it would be and try and be pro-active for once, we can be the novelty of the prem! We had 20,500 Rovers fans on against Bolton, more home fans than the total attendance vs wigan, city and chels! Bravo board, now can we take it further?

On a final note, if you consider that under the Taylor report ticket prices were recmomened to be £6, with inflation should have risen to around £12, near enough to what people paid on sunday. This show what the prices should be!

Edited October 24, 2006 by BRFC4EVA

[1864roverite]

"Like it or not we have not the long term resources or staying power of the likes of such perrrenial 2nd Div luminaries like Sheff Wed, Derby, Forest, Brum, Wolves, Leicester, Leeds, Sunderland etc"

Everyone of those clubs TND have spent, bust and burned BIGSTYLE.

Rovers have outstayed them all because they are a well run club, have a sound footing with a sensical business plan. None of the above mentioned clubs come anywhere near to the way Rovers are run.

You can add the following clubs as well, Norwich, Palace,Sheff Utd,Barnsley,Charlton,newcastle,Boro,Spurs,Pompy,City,Wigan,Bolton and so on. Even the likes of Everton,wham and the other so called pretenders that have a bigger rating than Rovers WISH they were as soundly run as BRFC.

YOU should be grateful for what we have. BRFC are a totally different proposition to that of 2 years ago. The whole club is on a change and it matters not that Uncle Jack is no longer with us nor that a sugar daddy is not taking a financial interest in BRFC (yet). Rovers are solid both on and off and it needs ALL supporters to get behind he club.

Listening to the way you are aggravating Scotty is purile. Everyone has a point to make and its hight time YOU accepted it.

BTW if I see you in Amsterdam I will buy you a pint or a litre

[AggyBlue]

a bloody small arsed small town feeder club

Ha ha ha, we finished sixth, how do you refer to the eighty six clubs that finished below us?

Oh and you missed ' IN EUROPE ' again.

[Scotty]

Whhhoooooooo get that.......... Tough talk from the boards regular bullyboy street fighting man! Careful you'll have Col and Gav coming over all cow eyed at your masterful put downs of me.

Tell you what Steven bloody Seigal ........ same question to you. Lets have your alternative suggestions for

1. taking professional football in this area forward.

2. giving us a real chance to compete for the title every season again.

3. to provide regular Champions League football.

4. and for the chance to stop being a bloody small arsed small town feeder club and having the media take the p1ss regularly, and continually lose our best managers and players to the proper BIG clubs.

We are cock a hoop right now and rightly so but at the present rate of progress MH will be lured away before too long and if you cannot see that or are happy with it to happen you are deluding yourself. It's like waiting for the Sword of Damocles to fall and for us one day soon the thread will snap. Like it or not we have not the long term resources or staying power of the likes of such perrrenial 2nd Div luminaries like Sheff Wed, Derby, Forest, Brum, Wolves, Leicester, Leeds, Sunderland etc, Jack Walker's wealth took all that away once albeit for half a dozen short years (and has provided a more than useful buffer since). But I for one want it back, preferably and necessarily on a true and sound businesslike footing.

And if you also say that you would rather watch BRFC in the Lancashire combination then I trust you will be good enough to resign from this board forthwith also."

It's amazing how you can tell people to sod off (I quoted you remember) yet when I do it I'm the board bully boy. I can't tell if you're a master of irony or just terminally thick.

Anyway, to get to the point in hand yet again. First of all, what's all this "us" sh!t? Your so called solution has nothing to do with "us". There wouldn't be a Blackburn Rovers football club if it was left to you. What you are basically saying is that you want to support a local team, any local team it would seem, that can compete with the current big clubs. Why not save yourself a lot of hassle and just become a United fan then?

Hughes and the rest of the management team seem to be taking Blackburn Rovers forward quite nicely thank you. Hughes will only leave to join a bigger club if he continues to be a success here and, if that happens, it will be up to the board to recruit another manager who can continue Hughes's good work. That's their job, they've got the last two appointments right, let's hope they get the next one right as well.

As for Rovers competing with the bigger clubs, or taking football in the area forward, I and others have already explained that the game as a whole will have to make some fundamental changes before that can realistically happen. Read the earlier posts. At the moment though we are going in the right direction and I'm perfectly happy with that.

Finally, I'd much rather watch a Blackburn Rovers team play in a bloody Blackburn junior schools league than follow some faceless corporate white elephant like "Lancashire United". Personally, things like community, tradition and local pride are much more important to me than watching a team I have no affinity with playing in Europe (not that Lancashire United would like but let's run with your "solution" for the sake of argument). Those things obviously mean nothing to you, a fact that, in my eyes at least, just makes you the crappest sort of glory-hunter - the type of fan that I despise when I go to places like Man U and Chelsea. If anyone should resign from the board it's you.

[colin]

Theno,

I think you have a problem and you need help.

A few days ago a couple of people (one of which was me) suggested that your idea of "Lancashire United" was not a very good one. You replied:

So to the CGBBC (Colin and Gav barnstorming brainstrust corporation) lets have your alternative suggestions for taking professional football in this area forward

to which I replied:

I don't think that Gav or I have "alternative suggestions", quite simply because we don't want them. I'm happy to support Blackurn Rovers. I'm sure he will post himself if he wants.

and then you commented:

I knew that already, it would have been obvious to a blind man on a galloping horse in fact. So if you have nothing to offer to this debate then shut the fcku up and stick to the ICBINF board. You are cluttering up serious debate with your irreverent crap.

btw Same for all. If you have nothing constructive / imaginative / valid / beneficial to offer other than blank closed minds, intellectual sterility and continual criticism then sod off!

followed up later by

Tough talk from the boards regular bullyboy street fighting man! Careful you'll have Col and Gav coming over all cow eyed at your masterful put downs of me.

Now, despite our political differences over the past few years, I am now really worried about your mental health. You have basically told everyone on here to "sod off" if they don't agree with you.

I really think you need to see a doctor. For some kind of anger management training, or at the very least a blood pressure test. (Please do the blod pressure test)

Really deep down I love you as a fellow Rovers' fan.

Which is why I suggest you need a bit of help and some TLC

Regards

Colin

[philipl]

Well said Colin.

Back to the Gate Debate and Waddle has waded in with a typically misinformed opinion.

From what I have seen of the Premiership this season, the number of entertaining games has increased compared with last season which contained a lot of truly dire encounters. If Waddle wants to finger a boring club, he should look at Bolton and clubs with small gates should highlight Watford.

Edited October 25, 2006 by philipl

[OscarRaven]

Well said Colin.

Back to the Gate Debate and Waddle has waded in with a typically misinformed opinion.

I thinks he has some good points can anyone really argue that the breakaway EPL didn't decimate lower league football and reduce competitiveness?

[thenodrog]

And do try and cut out the petty sarcasm.

Now, despite our political differences over the past few years, I am now really worried about your mental health. You have basically told everyone on here to "sod off" if they don't agree with you.

I really think you need to see a doctor. For some kind of anger management training, or at the very least a blood pressure test. (Please do the blod pressure test)

Really deep down I love you as a fellow Rovers' fan.

Which is why I suggest you need a bit of help and some TLC

Regards

Colin

What a plonker.

[3rdpillar]

£15 a ticket........ somethings got to give I suppose. They will prob have to re-locate the ticket office to Delhi.

( perfect )

Edited October 25, 2006 by 3rdpillar

[thenodrog]

"Like it or not we have not the long term resources or staying power of the likes of such perrrenial 2nd Div luminaries like Sheff Wed, Derby, Forest, Brum, Wolves, Leicester, Leeds, Sunderland etc"

Everyone of those clubs TND have spent, bust and burned BIGSTYLE.

Rovers have outstayed them all because they are a well run club, have a sound footing with a sensical business plan. None of the above mentioned clubs come anywhere near to the way Rovers are run.

Your point just illustrates what I have been saying. What would be the potential of BRFC if they could command the potential support enjoyed by some of the above clubs? I choose the term 'potential support' cos that is something that BRFC will NEVER have.

I'll tell you what 1864 when BRFC end up back in the lower divisions, unable to pay the milk bill and playing in front of 6500 again, just how many of the currently highly indignant 'I wouldn't go anymore if the merged with 'a n other' club cos I'm a true fan' brigade will have found other things to do on Sat afternoons? How many will come from afar (e.g. Manchester?) to attend? How many of our kids will be traipsing about in MU merchandise? Don't forget I've seen all this once. Will you still be cheering em on from the terraces?

We have aprox 18000 fans now but they are not to be relied on if the producy quality drops I can assure you. 5-8000 from a town full of whites was the norm. With current economics and demographics I cannot see us surviving another spell like that thats for sure. There is no denying that negotiating from a position of weakness is a mugs game, any initiatives need to be driven from a period of relative strength.

Anyway can we have your long term plan for BRFC along the lines of the stipulations that I have put on Colin, Gav and Scotty? (Other than simply waiting for some alternatively agenda'd Russky to buy the club of course.)

[Jimbo]

I was listening to The Game Podcast from the Times during my commute this morning and Danny Kelly was chatting to Aki Riihilahti about life with Kaiserslautern, the German second division football club - a town with a population of 110,000 - so comparable to Blackburn, the difference is they have gates of 40-50,000 - are sold out 2 weeks before each game.

Edited October 25, 2006 by Jimbo

[mattym]

I was listening to The Game Podcast from the Times during my commute this morning and Danny Kelly was chatting to Aki Riihilahti about life with Kaiserslautern, the German second division football club - a town with a population of 110,000 - so comparable to Blackburn, the difference is they have gates of 40-50,000 - are sold out 2 weeks before each game.

Yes but in a 150 mile radius of Kaiseslauten there are only 2 other bundesliga Clubs, Frankfurt and Cologne

How many round blackburn ??

Edited October 25, 2006 by mattym

[92er]

Coming back to the issue of offers on tickets, Williams has said that the club would continue to regard the season ticket holders as the most important people. On this basis there might well be more offers, but only in the context that it still has to work out better to be a season ticket holder.

[yorkblues]

my season ticket works out at £13.20 a game

[3rdpillar]

Queues for over an Hour at Ewood at the moment......

Not making it a pleasurable experience for the casual fan.....

shooting and feet come to mind AGAIN!