Topic: Was LFC Ticket Pricing Forum Now an Al555 usual mantra topic

[Peter McGurk]

Sorry mate but that is absolute bollocks.

Ok mate. Thank you for your contribution

If you draw the parallell to a manufacturing company; the shareholders fund independently a new production line which adds contribution/profits for the company. No added debt/interest but possibly some minor opex but that is more than absorbed by added revenue. I am not saying FSG/shareholders should do it, but claiming it doesnt add to the book value, revenue generation or value is alternative economics which is actually hard to engage in a serious discussion in

Additional revenue will add value. What some people seem to think is possible is to invest for no additional revenue that actually makes it worth while for the investor.

FSG have already seen a massive increase on their 'investment'.

How much are we looking at for the ARE extension? £60-£80m?

Yes they have. Because they've made sure the club at least gets a return.

[Peter McGurk]

The ticket pricing/availability are linked to revenue generation and capacity. The owners are doing exactly as they are expected to as their characteristics indicate (increase the revenue stream; reduce costs where possible; be very conservative with investments/net spend – and a close-to-crazy focus on cash flow). Increasing ticket prices and the hospitality share are no-brainers in that respect. From a text-book perspective FSG are doing an excellent job and when they eventually sell-out at some stage; they can probably laugh all the way to the bank. From a sporting perspective these features crash.

If you mean they're doing a bad job for the club, I've got to to disagree. A well-founded and sensibly run club is essential for football success.

[BazC]

The argument that FSG should 'pay' for the stadium without a return because they'll get it back when they sell is ludicrous.

If FSG funded (ie., paid, without return) for the stadium, the value of the club would not increase by one penny, so it will not be 'repaid when they sell'. And FSG will not be able to leverage the value of what they pay for a stadium elsewhere either, as there would be no increase in value. The only way that the club will increase in value (from the stadium) is to sell more tickets at a sufficient price to both pay for the stadium and more. And a bigger capacity makes it worse. As the stadium gets bigger and bigger that is harder to do (as the cost per seat goes up and the expectation of price goes down).

So what you are calling for is a straight gift. From owners to fans. Hundreds of millions. For the privilege of owning the club. I suspect it's not even legal. It's certainly spectacularly stupid and it's not going to happen.

If FSG funded a stadium via debt or equity, you’d surely expect there to be an increase in match day revenue - more seats for general admission, more corporate and hospitality seats and more places for the pies and drinks to be bought. That increase should cover the cost of capital needed to build a stadium? The question is whether the rate of return on that project was higher than others available to them.

I suspect the reason a new stadium hasn’t been built is because there was “lower hanging fruit” to increase the value as opposed to the extremely large capital outlay a stadium represents. And the fact is, if they weren’t going to do it over the last 5yrs, when debt has been *extremely* cheap, then they probably won’t get a better opportunity.

From a business perspective it makes sense; they haven’t had to do a great deal by way of capital expenditure to see the value of their investment increase - the tv deals ramping higher alone will allow them to see a return of multiples on their original equity investment. They got extremely lucky they got the opportunity, and they picked up the club relatively cheap. Of course, at the time, capital was hard to come by - they had it and they nailed the value investment.

There’s little chance they’ll increase their equity capital into the club, and with my business hat on, I wouldn’t either. I do think it’s a missed opportunity though - they had an amazing opportunity to build that stadium over the last 5yrs, given the cost of capital would have been cheap - once that project is sustainable, then they can turn their attentions to the other projects. I guess it wouldn’t have been an efficient way of doing it though, again, from a purely business perspective.

And at the moment, the cash the club is generating is going into increasing the quality of the team, as much as it can be - even then, we’re not exactly challenging for titles (although it seems as though the foundation for the team’s been built under Klopp and hopefully we’ll see more success on the pitch in the coming seasons).

It’s an extremely difficult business to be in, given the long term, capital intensive projects, will bleed cash away form the investment in players - but at the same time, that new stadium will get more and more expensive in the coming years, given the cost of capital will increase to fund it. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to Spurs for example - at a time where it’s so competitive in the league, their investment into the football team will be curtailed with that stadium having to be paid off.

I don’t know what the answer is as I haven’t seen the club’s finances or available projects in any depth, but it does seem to me that FSG are extremely competent business people - and at the very least, that means that the club’s going to be in sound financial health, without over stretching. They also seem to have realised that they need to maintain investment into the football team - perhaps that was the consideration taken into account when weighing up stadium expansion vs building a new one.

[Peter McGurk]

The club are cagey about what revenue figures it releases. During the protests it was a complete ball ache to attempt to reverse engineer the pricing bands - including counting the tickets within each band. The public figures were almost wilfully opaque.

This topic is not really the ticket pricing one. That has dropped off the front page. This was originally in the ticket pricing topic, but Al derailed it with his well-worn FSG polemic. Wishing to preserve the interesting discussion that was happening before, it was split out into a new topic.

Politics is the art of the possible. FSG have shown they are susceptible to reasonable fan pressure, witness the ticket protests. They have also shown that they are prepared to walk away from what they perceive as unreasonable behaviour - witness the first abortive attempts at supporter engagement. Demanding FSG spend hundreds of millions of their money to increase capacity, whilst cutting overall ticket revenue is never going to fly with them. Real benefits can be achieved, but it will take a great deal of focus. A blanket ticket price reduction is unlikely to succeed yet. Making a case for increasing access to young fans to develop the match going habit and form the bedrock of the future support is a persuasive argument. Moving to a system where the person attending gets credit is similarly persuasive. We should be able to win a host of small victories that shift the ticketing priorities and reduce the touting of tickets. The danger of grandstanding is that you can away with nothing. Present Al's case to them, and you would be politely told to fuck off. The grand gestures during the price protests were perfectly timed, but now feels like a time for constructive dialogue.

It is hard to back-engineer the numbers. I did it once and it turned out to propose a fairly accurate number in the end but I may have well just gone for revenue per seat (the Deloitte way of doing it) which is available in their annual Football Money League. I do believe the club has gone just about as far as it can on the basis of 'normal' (ie., football-related) financial/development logic.

They've pushed the boat out on the Main Stand by going as big as possible and in providing an essentially interest-free loan and not surprisingly, they want their money back quick. A long term loan would have been more expensive for the club (and the fans) because for sure they would have had to impose proper interest rates. On a straight development case, the ARE is a pretty poor investment, so it's all about the best the fans can get.

***

Be that all as it may be, season ticket ownership has gotten older but recently I've seen an increasing number of younger supporters going on a shared basis. So more people going less often. More flexible ticketing could at least be an affordable stop gap for some.

Buying future attendance for the young is a pretty tough call now (and would be pretty hard to police) but I do think once the ground improvements are bought and paid could be the time to look again at 'incentivising' attendance or rather looking a bit more positively to the future. I can't quite imagine how that looks in terms of who goes where but the old system of mad cap lads in the kop and old farts in the stands is as good as any.

Which I think leads ultimately to safe standing (at an increased density), where once the financial future of the ground is absolutely rock solid, the club can relax the stadium's "KPI' at least a little if not a lot.

[Anfield89]

Club have now hired private investigators to get to the bottom of this ticket touting. Hopefully something comes of it.

[Eeyore]

The club are cagey about what revenue figures it releases. During the protests it was a complete ball ache to attempt to reverse engineer the pricing bands - including counting the tickets within each band. The public figures were almost wilfully opaque.

This topic is not really the ticket pricing one. That has dropped off the front page. This was originally in the ticket pricing topic, but Al derailed it with his well-worn FSG polemic. Wishing to preserve the interesting discussion that was happening before, it was split out into a new topic.

Politics is the art of the possible. FSG have shown they are susceptible to reasonable fan pressure, witness the ticket protests. They have also shown that they are prepared to walk away from what they perceive as unreasonable behaviour - witness the first abortive attempts at supporter engagement. Demanding FSG spend hundreds of millions of their money to increase capacity, whilst cutting overall ticket revenue is never going to fly with them. Real benefits can be achieved, but it will take a great deal of focus. A blanket ticket price reduction is unlikely to succeed yet. Making a case for increasing access to young fans to develop the match going habit and form the bedrock of the future support is a persuasive argument. Moving to a system where the person attending gets credit is similarly persuasive. We should be able to win a host of small victories that shift the ticketing priorities and reduce the touting of tickets. The danger of grandstanding is that you can away with nothing. Present Al's case to them, and you would be politely told to fuck off. The grand gestures during the price protests were perfectly timed, but now feels like a time for constructive dialogue.

Except you forget that the entire reason H&G owned us and then in turn FSG was because Moores and the board wanted to bring in investors who could fund a bigger stadium. The keyword there is 'investors'. If it was a case of borrowing to fund a Stadium that the fans would pay for then there would of been no need for 'investors' we could of gone to the banks ourselves.

There is also the huge myth that Stadium and Stadium redevelopment have traditionally been funded by loans and by the fans in effect paying off those loans. That is nonsense, traditionally Stadiums and redevelopment were often funded by raising money by rights issues eg Davivd Moores in 1994 or by floating Clubs on the stock market eg United in 1991.

You look at Moores selling the Club and it was so richer investors than himself and his fellow shareholders could fund a new  Stadium. Then look at the BARcap process and one of the proviso's was that any new owners would need to have the money to fund a new stadium or redeveloped stadium.

Look again at Purslow's email regarding NESV's bid.

"To get it straight, I think we should avoid the natural temptation to jump straight in to the deal with NESV. Whilst they are charming, intelligent and credible their bid is by any standards at the extreme bottom end of the 'right deal' threshold we set for ourselves: it only reduces debt by less than half and is I feel unlikely to yield incremental equity to fund a stadium.

"They may say they have money if necessary but I do not take this very seriously. Their eyes only lit up at the idea of other opportunity improvements. An American deal guy simply can't avoid using other people's money if they can.

"There is no extra money on the table to enable short-term investment in what remains a squad palpably needing more quality if we are to be definitively top four. New American sport team owners with the senior guy being a hedge fund manager could not be worst [sic] from an image standpoint, which is an issue for us independents. I have not even talked about valuation. I leave that to other members of the board. So what is positive? Answer, they exist. Which is not a lot, but it is not to be underestimated in importance."

Purslow makes it crystal clear that the expectation was that the owners should fund the Stadium and that he fully expected Henry to use other peoples money.


To get back to tickets your suggestion is to get back to constructive dialogue but you fail to admit that the ticket protest only came about after the owners completely ignored a year of constructive dialogue.

Today it has come to light that the Club have been hiring private investigators to clamp down on ticket touts. For me that is about cutting out the touts and for the Club to cash in on the hiked prices fans pay. Why pay a tout £200 for a  ticket when we will sell you a ticket, a meal and a bit of entertainment for that £200.

It is all about selling corporate tickets to ordinary fans who desperately want to see the team play. For me this is being looked at in the wrong way. It shouldn't be a case of the Club getting the £200 instead of the tout it should be about addressing the supply and demand issues that fuel the obscene prices.

The problem as I see it is that we have been brainwashed into seeing it from the Clubs perspective. The club went looking for investors and have instead found owners who just want to maximise their profit and their return without actually investing.

As the likes of Parry and Purslow have made absolutely crystal clear buying the Club wasn't supposed to be the end of the investment it was supposed to be the beginning. What we have ended up with is owners who are just here to arrange loans that the fans will pay back.

[Eeyore]

Club have now hired private investigators to get to the bottom of this ticket touting. Hopefully something comes of it.

What will come about is that ordinary fans will be forced to pay the Club hundreds of pounds for corporate hospitality rather than the touts. The vast majority of fans just want the chance to watch their heroes at a reasonable price.

[Anfield89]

What will come about is that ordinary fans will be forced to pay the Club hundreds of pounds for corporate hospitality rather than the touts. The vast majority of fans just want the chance to watch their heroes at a reasonable price.

Tickets need to go back to the club regardless of the outcome. Fans will be paying less through the club than the touts.

[Eeyore]

Tickets need to go back to the club regardless of the outcome. Fans will be paying less through the club than the touts.

Agreed that tickets should go back the Club. Regarding the motives though.

Honest question time. Why does adding £2-5-10 on tickets make us competitive?

The match day revenue figure in public domain isn’t solely ticket revenue. We all know this I believe. So the question for me always becomes by increasing prices what is the gain? It’s not a significant revenue leap so that can’t be it. It’s not making us competitive really by that “giving Klopp resources” bollocks as it won’t fund a superstar.

It just seems to be wanting more for more’s sake. The sad fact is that in the first meeting secondary market figures were being highlighted as a reason for folks willingness to pay more.  That just makes me feel very uncomfortable about why any football club wants to increase ticket prices. Peoples take home pay isn’t going up (for many). Cost of living is going up (for many). TV money is going up (for many).

So why do ticket prices need to? Premier league alone it’s 19 home matches. Let’s keep it simple with it being just say general admission tickets. For arguments sake, and I don’t have exact figure to hand, let’s say 20,000 general admission give it is around 27k season tickets excluding hospitality.

I add £5 to each ticket. Irrespective of where that seat is. £100k a match then so £1.9m a season. TV money goes up by how much? 2m a season is less than 1% of overall 2015/16 revenue.

No guarantees on cup runs or European competitions. How the heck will £1.9m a season make us more competitive or give us a resource for Klopp?

Hope that helps shape discussion rather than just going around in circles. Fix figures against known home matches and ticket circulation for general admission (so not season tickets). You then see it isn’t a big shift in income.

[BazC]

Except you forget that the entire reason H&G owned us and then in turn FSG was because Moores and the board wanted to bring in investors who could fund a bigger stadium. The keyword there is 'investors'. If it was a case of borrowing to fund a Stadium that the fans would pay for then there would of been no need for 'investors' we could of gone to the banks ourselves.

There is also the huge myth that Stadium and Stadium redevelopment have traditionally been funded by loans and by the fans in effect paying off those loans. That is nonsense, traditionally Stadiums and redevelopment were often funded by raising money by rights issues eg Davivd Moores in 1994 or by floating Clubs on the stock market eg United in 1991.

You look at Moores selling the Club and it was so richer investors than himself and his fellow shareholders could fund a new  Stadium. Then look at the BARcap process and one of the proviso's was that any new owners would need to have the money to fund a new stadium or redeveloped stadium.

Look again at Purslow's email regarding NESV's bid.

"To get it straight, I think we should avoid the natural temptation to jump straight in to the deal with NESV. Whilst they are charming, intelligent and credible their bid is by any standards at the extreme bottom end of the 'right deal' threshold we set for ourselves: it only reduces debt by less than half and is I feel unlikely to yield incremental equity to fund a stadium.

"They may say they have money if necessary but I do not take this very seriously. Their eyes only lit up at the idea of other opportunity improvements. An American deal guy simply can't avoid using other people's money if they can.

"There is no extra money on the table to enable short-term investment in what remains a squad palpably needing more quality if we are to be definitively top four. New American sport team owners with the senior guy being a hedge fund manager could not be worst [sic] from an image standpoint, which is an issue for us independents. I have not even talked about valuation. I leave that to other members of the board. So what is positive? Answer, they exist. Which is not a lot, but it is not to be underestimated in importance."

Purslow makes it crystal clear that the expectation was that the owners should fund the Stadium and that he fully expected Henry to use other peoples money.


To get back to tickets your suggestion is to get back to constructive dialogue but you fail to admit that the ticket protest only came about after the owners completely ignored a year of constructive dialogue.

Today it has come to light that the Club have been hiring private investigators to clamp down on ticket touts. For me that is about cutting out the touts and for the Club to cash in on the hiked prices fans pay. Why pay a tout £200 for a  ticket when we will sell you a ticket, a meal and a bit of entertainment for that £200.

It is all about selling corporate tickets to ordinary fans who desperately want to see the team play. For me this is being looked at in the wrong way. It shouldn't be a case of the Club getting the £200 instead of the tout it should be about addressing the supply and demand issues that fuel the obscene prices.

The problem as I see it is that we have been brainwashed into seeing it from the Clubs perspective. The club went looking for investors and have instead found owners who just want to maximise their profit and their return without actually investing.

As the likes of Parry and Purslow have made absolutely crystal clear buying the Club wasn't supposed to be the end of the investment it was supposed to be the beginning. What we have ended up with is owners who are just here to arrange loans that the fans will pay back.

Moore’s fucked up, pure and simple - he sold the club to owners who bought the asset with leverage - at a time just as the financial crisis was happening. There was no way they were going to be able to get more debt to build a stadium after that. FSG came in and bought a distressed asset, as the banks (who were under the kosh massively at the time) wanted their money back. When they bought the club, everyone who had a financial stake in the club (mainly the banks), will have been so desperate, I doubt they’d have *really* cared if they would commit to building a stadium, they just wanted their money back.

The interesting question here is why they didn’t increase debt to build a stadium, at a time when the credit environment has been *heavily* favourable to increasing debt financing. Incredibly favourable in fact. If they weren’t going to do it then, they probably won’t in the future, as cost of capital to finance that will increase. Fans wouldn’t have been able to borrow the money themselves to fund the stadium either, unless there was a bank at the head of any fan consortium, the rates would just not be as favourable as they would be under credible investors like FSG (and even H&G at the time they took over). Moores had no ambition to do it, otherwise he would have.

It may have been traditional to fund stadia by raising equity financing in the past (IPOs or private equity), but that would just not be prudent in this environment - the return demanded from equity capital would be higher than debt capital. Although maybe there’s an argument that there are enough Liverpool fans to put some money in to buy that equity - but any institutional investor or even retail investor would demand a high return on the equity they give to the club.

What these owners have done is increase the value of the investment, but they’ve done it with the low hanging fruit - not as capital intensive as building a new stadium. There’s no question further projects to increase revenue will focus on more low hanging fruit - the commercial side of the business. The good thing there, as fans at least, is that a lot of that depends on on the field success - they’ll have to build a winning team to truly maximise that. And it’d need to be sustained success - truth is, the likes of Man Utd, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern.. they’re all far, far ahead of us in creating that commercial revenue. A lot of it comes from their recent successes on the field.

[Anfield89]

If the club wants the money in their arse pocket rather than a touts it’s fair enough. Talks will continue about the clubs eventual view of raising ticket prices and hopefully the talks will have the right outcome for the fans. Until a league wide cap happenens then it’s always going to be a fight.

[Eeyore]

Moore’s fucked up, pure and simple - he sold the club to owners who bought the asset with leverage - at a time just as the financial crisis was happening. There was no way they were going to be able to get more debt to build a stadium after that. FSG came in and bought a distressed asset, as the banks (who were under the kosh massively at the time) wanted their money back. When they bought the club, everyone who had a financial stake in the club (mainly the banks), will have been so desperate, I doubt they’d have *really* cared if they would commit to building a stadium, they just wanted their money back.

The interesting question here is why they didn’t increase debt to build a stadium, at a time when the credit environment has been *heavily* favourable to increasing debt financing. Incredibly favourable in fact. If they weren’t going to do it then, they probably won’t in the future, as cost of capital to finance that will increase. Fans wouldn’t have been able to borrow the money themselves to fund the stadium either, unless there was a bank at the head of any fan consortium, the rates would just not be as favourable as they would be under credible investors like FSG (and even H&G at the time they took over). Moores had no ambition to do it, otherwise he would have.

It may have been traditional to fund stadia by raising equity financing in the past (IPOs or private equity), but that would just not be prudent in this environment - the return demanded from equity capital would be higher than debt capital. Although maybe there’s an argument that there are enough Liverpool fans to put some money in to buy that equity - but any institutional investor or even retail investor would demand a high return on the equity they give to the club.

What these owners have done is increase the value of the investment, but they’ve done it with the low hanging fruit - not as capital intensive as building a new stadium. There’s no question further projects to increase revenue will focus on more low hanging fruit - the commercial side of the business. The good thing there, as fans at least, is that a lot of that depends on on the field success - they’ll have to build a winning team to truly maximise that. And it’d need to be sustained success - truth is, the likes of Man Utd, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern.. they’re all far, far ahead of us in creating that commercial revenue. A lot of it comes from their recent successes on the field.

Agree with that mate.

I think the next lot of low hanging fruit is likely to be cutting out the touts and driving up the revenue per seat.

There is far less risk increasing revenue by hiking prices and forcing people down the corporate route than there is in actually investing in infrastructure.

The conundrum for me is why we allow FSG an easy ride on running the Club as a pure business but allow them to say that there are far easier ways of making money and that they are here because of their love of sport.

For me the way forward is to strike a balance between what is best for the Club and what is best for FSG. I happen to believe that there can be a middle ground that is mutually beneficial to both.

[Jake]

What will come about is that ordinary fans will be forced to pay the Club hundreds of pounds for corporate hospitality rather than the touts. The vast majority of fans just want the chance to watch their heroes at a reasonable price.

Club take a positive step, of which very little info is presented to you, and you even use that as a way of bashing the club by speculating what might happen in the future.

Amazing

[Eeyore]

If the club wants the money in their arse pocket rather than a touts it’s fair enough.

Only if you believe that it is okay to have a monopoly and look to charge extortionate prices.

Talks will continue about the clubs eventual view of raising ticket prices and hopefully the talks will have the right outcome for the fans. Until a league wide cap happenens then it’s always going to be a fight.

There was a year of talks that led to the Club ignoring everything the fans said and hiking the prices to £77. I agree wholeheartedly about a league wide cap but the only way that will happen is if we stick together and stop making excuses. We all have an emotional attachment to the Club but that doesn't mean we should look to defend morally reprehensible decisions because of that.

If we went in to a supermarket on Xmas eve and they had hiked the price of the last few Turkeys to an exorbitant price we would go elsewhere. With a Football Club you don't get that choice and for me that is why there should be government intervention.

[Eeyore]

Club take a positive step, of which very little info is presented to you, and you even use that as a way of bashing the club by speculating what might happen in the future.

Amazing

From one of our own and a fans representative.

It just seems to be wanting more for more’s sake. The sad fact is that in the first meeting secondary market figures were being highlighted as a reason for folks willingness to pay more.  That just makes me feel very uncomfortable about why any football club wants to increase ticket prices. Peoples take home pay isn’t going up (for many). Cost of living is going up (for many). TV money is going up (for many).

[Anfield89]

Only if you believe that it is okay to have a monopoly and look to charge extortionate prices.

There was a year of talks that led to the Club ignoring everything the fans said and hiking the prices to £77. I agree wholeheartedly about a league wide cap but the only way that will happen is if we stick together and stop making excuses. We all have an emotional attachment to the Club but that doesn't mean we should look to defend morally reprehensible decisions because of that.

If we went in to a supermarket on Xmas eve and they had hiked the price of the last few Turkeys to an exorbitant price we would go elsewhere. With a Football Club you don't get that choice and for me that is why their should be government intervention.

I’ve disagreed with tickets prices for years and years way before the current owners, there hasn’t been a sudden hike it’s been happening for too long. If you buy a business your going to be competitive and try not to lose ground on others which is understandable but as clubs earn so much from elsewhere more should be done to make it affordable.

[Eeyore]

I’ve disagreed with tickets prices for years and years way before the current owners, there hasn’t been a sudden hike it’s been happening for too long. If you buy a business your going to be competitive and try not to lose ground on others which is understandable but as clubs earn so much from elsewhere more should be done to make it affordable.

There has been a sudden hike though.

Here is an example



Package includes:

    Elevated Main Stand views of the pitch with walk-through access to your seat
    An exceptional four-course match day menu
    Welcome drink on arrival
    Matchday complimentary beer, wine and soft drinks (Please note bar service not available during the game)
    Tea, coffee and refreshments at half and full-time
    Visit from Former Liverpool FC player
    Complimentary match day programme
    Matchday gift
    In-lounge betting facilities
    Satellite TV broadcasting the LFCTV channel and match highlights

 

Limited availability.

 

GAME CATEGORIES & PRICING

Gold

Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea, Everton

£363 + VAT per ticket

 

Silver

Southampton, West Ham United, WBA, Stoke City, Leicester City, Bournemouth, Watford, Crytal Palace, Newcastle United, Swansea City

£277 + VAT per ticket

 

Bronze

Brighton & Hove Albion,  Huddersfield Town, Burnley

£213 + VAT per ticket 


Now the actual package doesn't change depending on the opposition so if for instance you say the package is worth £150 then the Club are charging around £100 for the match ticket against Brighton and £300 for a match ticket against Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea, Everton.

So the price of match tickets has gone through the roof.

[BazC]

Agree with that mate.

I think the next lot of low hanging fruit is likely to be cutting out the touts and driving up the revenue per seat.

There is far less risk increasing revenue by hiking prices and forcing people down the corporate route than there is in actually investing in infrastructure.

The conundrum for me is why we allow FSG an easy ride on running the Club as a pure business but allow them to say that there are far easier ways of making money and that they are here because of their love of sport.

For me the way forward is to strike a balance between what is best for the Club and what is best for FSG. I happen to believe that there can be a middle ground that is mutually beneficial to both.

I think there is a middle ground that’s mutually beneficial. Only problem with that is that I don’t think any one group (owners, fans, players) truly understands the position the others are in. There’s a romantic notion of being one club, family or whatever, but it’s not really true.

The way I would do it - get tickets into the hands of more core supporters - the younger local fans who will be the next generation to go week in week out and carry on and set the fan culture going forward. That would require cheaper seats for a contingent, but also massive crackdown on touts - so those cheap tickets don’t just end up getting touted to the day trippers.

Even if you’re a pure business head, surely the “product” you are trying to sell and commercialise is vastly easier to buy into when you have a roaring Kop every game? I think it’s a small price to pay, and they can leverage the romance and monetise it elsewhere. If you put it as a business case, it would be investing for the future of the brand I guess. I’m sure a lot of you would hate me putting it that way, but it’s one of those instances where surely everyone wins out?

The stadium’s an interesting one, and to be honest I just don’t know, as I said in a previous post earlier on the page. I do think, though, that it’d be such a heavy burden on the club in terms of paying back the cost of the capital, that it would effect the investment into the first team. And that’s something that they need to balance, given it’ll potentially have a massive impact on other sustained revenue - CL revenues, TV revenues (to the extent we get shown on TV less) and future commercial deals. I can see why it’d be more attractive to expand the stadium in stages, although it sounds as though they’re not over enthusiastic about further expansion at this point; again, the cost of capital in funding that will increase in the future, so it’ll get more and more expensive to do so.

I’m also not sure what the relative plans were for a new stadium (revenue per seat) vs Anfield expansion. I’m guessing a new stadium would have far higher average revenue per seat, given you’d think there was far more corporate and hospitality services built in, and more availability of the food and drinks courts or whatever, than expanding, but it sounds like it wasn’t high enough to justify the outlay required to build it. That’s taking into account the potential impact on first team investment and therefore, impact on other sources of revenues as discussed above.

Looking into the future, 5-10yrs down the line, I’d hope that at the very least, they can build a winning team which has sustained success. They’ll be able to maximise the commercial revenue, and if there’s further increases in tv revenue, we might be able to have enough sustained revenue from those sources to look at another stadium expansion, if not a new stadium, without hastringing the first team much. It doesn’t sound like it’ll be happening any time soon though.

[Anfield89]

There has been a sudden hike though.

Here is an example



Package includes:

    Elevated Main Stand views of the pitch with walk-through access to your seat
    An exceptional four-course match day menu
    Welcome drink on arrival
    Matchday complimentary beer, wine and soft drinks (Please note bar service not available during the game)
    Tea, coffee and refreshments at half and full-time
    Visit from Former Liverpool FC player
    Complimentary match day programme
    Matchday gift
    In-lounge betting facilities
    Satellite TV broadcasting the LFCTV channel and match highlights

 

Limited availability.

 

GAME CATEGORIES & PRICING

Gold

Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea, Everton

£363 + VAT per ticket

 

Silver

Southampton, West Ham United, WBA, Stoke City, Leicester City, Bournemouth, Watford, Crytal Palace, Newcastle United, Swansea City

£277 + VAT per ticket

 

Bronze

Brighton & Hove Albion,  Huddersfield Town, Burnley

£213 + VAT per ticket 


Now the actual package doesn't change depending on the opposition so if for instance you say the package is worth £150 then the Club are charging around £100 for the match ticket against Brighton and £300 for a match ticket against Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea, Everton.

So the price of match tickets has gone through the roof.

Hang on you have just been talking about the £77 ticket ie general fans which there hasn’t been a sudden hike. You can’t use hospitality to back your point up. Hospitality has to be run different as it’s ‘used’ by people/fans/businesses different to the general tickets.

[Eeyore]

Hang on you have just been talking about the £77 ticket ie general fans which there hasn’t been a sudden hike. You can’t use hospitality to back your point up. Hospitality has to be run different as it’s ‘used’ by people/fans/businesses different to the general tickets.

That is only true if you don't get GA fans buying hospitality tickets because there are simply no GA tickets available. Look at the carsberg hub tickets the seats for the Carsberg hub are normal seats in the main stand in the wings near the kop or ARE end. They aren't corporate seats but the only way you can buy them is if you pay over the odds for a package.

We are brainwashed into believing that the ARE isn't suitable for corporate seats . Strangely enough though they will sell you a package with a hotel room at well over the odds with a ARE ticket thrown in.

[Harinder]

Agreed that tickets should go back the Club. Regarding the motives though.

Al - they don't want fucking £200 a ticket instead of a tout. They want that revenue spread across the park so a larger spread of the tiering or increases on current ones (presumed).

One thing that isn't presumed. A £42 ticket being sold for 5/10 times that amount isn't equating to club wanting £200 plus for that very same ticket

They SEE the demand to pay that amount and think they can therefore increase things overall

[Harinder]

There has been a sudden hike though.

Here is an example



Package includes:

    Elevated Main Stand views of the pitch with walk-through access to your seat
    An exceptional four-course match day menu
    Welcome drink on arrival
    Matchday complimentary beer, wine and soft drinks (Please note bar service not available during the game)
    Tea, coffee and refreshments at half and full-time
    Visit from Former Liverpool FC player
    Complimentary match day programme
    Matchday gift
    In-lounge betting facilities
    Satellite TV broadcasting the LFCTV channel and match highlights

 

Limited availability.

 

GAME CATEGORIES & PRICING

Gold

Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea, Everton

£363 + VAT per ticket

 

Silver

Southampton, West Ham United, WBA, Stoke City, Leicester City, Bournemouth, Watford, Crytal Palace, Newcastle United, Swansea City

£277 + VAT per ticket

 

Bronze

Brighton & Hove Albion,  Huddersfield Town, Burnley

£213 + VAT per ticket 


Now the actual package doesn't change depending on the opposition so if for instance you say the package is worth £150 then the Club are charging around £100 for the match ticket against Brighton and £300 for a match ticket against Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea, Everton.

So the price of match tickets has gone through the roof.

Hospitality hikes happened a while back. It's not the same as General admission. There aren't 20,000 hospitality tickets

[Harinder]

That is only true if you don't get GA fans buying hospitality tickets because there are simply no GA tickets available. Look at the carsberg hub tickets the seats for the Carsberg hub are normal seats in the main stand in the wings near the kop or ARE end. They aren't corporate seats but the only way you can buy them is if you pay over the odds for a package.

We are brainwashed into believing that the ARE isn't suitable for corporate seats . Strangely enough though they will sell you a package with a hotel room at well over the odds with a ARE ticket thrown in.

Al, the Carlsberg Dugout is match day hospitality. Sorry if you think otherwise but it 100% is and it's around 2 or 3 blocks either side of main stand

[Groundskeeper Willie]

Al, are you seriously using Purslow to back up your opinion of FSG??

[Peter McGurk]

... I’m also not sure what the relative plans were for a new stadium (revenue per seat) vs Anfield expansion. I’m guessing a new stadium would have far higher average revenue per seat, given you’d think there was far more corporate and hospitality services built in, and more availability of the food and drinks courts or whatever, than expanding, but it sounds like it wasn’t high enough to justify the outlay required to build it. That’s taking into account the potential impact on first team investment and therefore, impact on other sources of revenues as discussed above...

A new stadium would have had a higher revenue per seat but only because all tickets would have been more expensive to cover the increased costs. Getting a 60k seat stadium by adding 15k seats to what the club already has instead of 60k new is and always has been a no-brainer.

There would have been no more hospitality in a new stadium than what there is now, as the amount that Anfield has is to suit what the club feels it can safely sell without risking the extra cost of building more boxes, suites, etc etc., which it might not sell.

[Eeyore]

Al - they don't want fucking £200 a ticket instead of a tout. They want that revenue spread across the park so a larger spread of the tiering or increases on current ones (presumed).

One thing that isn't presumed. A £42 ticket being sold for 5/10 times that amount isn't equating to club wanting £200 plus for that very same ticket

They SEE the demand to pay that amount and think they can therefore increase things overall

I haven't said they want 200 quid for that seat but what they will look at is the fact that people are prepared to pay that amount so why not offer them a package for 200.

[BarryCrocker]

Any initiative by the club that takes money out of the hands of touts and back into club revenue is a winner for me. The caveats being that the funds are used for any of the following:

> an increase in the number of cheaper tickets available for local kids/families.
> the increased income is used to offset any potential increase to members tickets.
> funds are directed to improving Anfield facilities or subsidise match day costs, food, etc.
> money goes back into youth/squad development.

[Johnny Foreigner]

On the Carlsberg dugout the club allows re-selling match-by-match. quite a big secondary market. Buyers and sellers are quite a few "normal" fans but with money. There are probably more Norwegians than locals having those now. Again : fantastic business but tragic development

[Johnny Foreigner]

And enligthening posts BasC. And if the club wants financing of ARE. Link up with a company to borrow money and link the downpayments to a proportion of the increased revenue . I could have sent over the details as it has been done

[Eeyore]

On the Carlsberg dugout the club allows re-selling match-by-match. quite a big secondary market. Buyers and sellers are quite a few "normal" fans but with money. There are probably more Norwegians than locals having those now. Again : fantastic business but tragic development

That is the situation that a lot of fans face. My brother in law is an exiled scouser who lives down south and earns good money. When he comes down to visit he buys the cheapest hospitality package he can in advance and then comes the pub with us and doesn't even use the hospitality part of the package. He is forced to do that because he abhors touting and cannot buy a GA ticket from the club.

If the club get rid of touting then the only way to get into the game for a lot of people will be to purchase a hospitality package. Look at the Thomas cook packages 269 for a ticket, a room one drink and the chance to buy more drinks and street food.

[clinical]

Ok mate. Thank you for your contribution

Additional revenue will add value. What some people seem to think is possible is to invest for no additional revenue that actually makes it worth while for the investor.

Yes they have. Because they've made sure the club at least gets a return.

You seriously think a brand new stand, increasing the capacity doesn't add a penny onto the value of the club? Yeah laughable.

[Groundskeeper Willie]

Al, are you seriously using Purslow to back up your opinion of FSG??

[WisconsinRed]

Just extend the ARE so I can get me own season ticket! 

[Johnny Foreigner]

Purslow might have been s snake but those comments were nothing wrong from a business perspective

[BazC]

A new stadium would have had a higher revenue per seat but only because all tickets would have been more expensive to cover the increased costs. Getting a 60k seat stadium by adding 15k seats to what the club already has instead of 60k new is and always has been a no-brainer.

There would have been no more hospitality in a new stadium than what there is now, as the amount that Anfield has is to suit what the club feels it can safely sell without risking the extra cost of building more boxes, suites, etc etc., which it might not sell.

As I said, I don’t know the list of alternatives available for them when it came to this. But what about more seats? A 70k, 75k stadium, together with regeneration of the surrounding area; better transport links etc. It’s that sort of thing that makes a football club transcend its business and sport and embeds it into the local community as well. It also has the added benefit of allowing for a bigger stadium.

Also, I’m not sure what impact other factors have on average revenue per seat - more concourses for food and drink, museum tours before/after the match, all that jazz. And how those factors can be increased in a new stadium vs an expansion.

We’re Liverpool FC, I don’t think it’d be too hard to fill such a large stadium, at least for all PL games - again, it comes down to the success on the pitch needed to solidify the whole package, and maybe it is more impactful that they build that winning team first. When it comes to corporate boxes and hospitality, what’s the situation now? How many are left empty, how many are waiting for one? I’ve been to a lot of corporate events, and get invited to many more in London - the 02, Wembley, Stamford Bridge, Emirates etc - the London clubs have it much easier to fill those boxes, but there’s a lot of love for Liverpool (and Man Utd) down there too - it’d be interesting to know how many of those boxes get used by people from London, and what the opportunity there is. We can also charge them a shit load more money for the “experience”, which has the added benefit of keeping lower priced tickets for the regular fans.

There has to be a way of making it all viable, as I said above, I just don’t think the appetite is there from the owners to do it - which is fair enough in my opinion - it is a massive risk to put on the club, and it could be seen as too big a bite unless the team’s performing consistently and winning trophies over a number of years.

[BazC]

And enligthening posts BasC. And if the club wants financing of ARE. Link up with a company to borrow money and link the downpayments to a proportion of the increased revenue . I could have sent over the details as it has been done

I think that’s how they would fund it - I think the argument they’d have against it is that the extra revenue generated to cover the costs of that capital (equity + debt) wouldn’t be high enough. Developing the stadium further must also have implications for the surrounding area, transport links etc, which they may also need to stump up for.

I would love to know more about the in depth numbers and assumptions and how they decide between their different projects, but of course, unless I worked with them I wouldn’t know.

[El Lobo]

Al, we all respect your passion on this particular subject but you'd honestly get a lot more if you just came out and said what you want. And that's a sugar daddy owner. You've skirted around the issue for as long as I've been on RAWK mate.

[Johnny Foreigner]

Any comments to three previous pages with good discussions Lobo ? What do you want ?

[El Lobo]

Any comments to three previous pages with good discussions Lobo ? What do you want ?

From who? The owners? The manager? Scouting team? Football in general?

Tickets for English football are too expensive, which is a wider issue. Again, its a pipe dream to think we'll just reduce ours when no-one else does.

The issue that Al, and a few others have had, is that without knowing in detail how certain things work at the football club....its FSGs fault. Not just tickets, because I'm sure we all agree that tickets are too expensive and need to be reduced. But everything. How transfers work, how scouting works, the stadium, the training ground, sponsorship, the way we sell shirts, the club store. Every point that Al makes is completely drowned by this very clear theme that the lad just doesn't want these guys to own us. They don't take money out of the club (or if they do, its negligible as fuck). The money that has been made has been put back into the club. We've got a top class manager who they signed, and he's been backed. That's what we asked for when we had the cancers. Rodgers got sacked and we asked for something better, not a project manager but a top class one. And we got him. We've gone out and got players that he wants. Top players. But its this toxic environment created that doesn't suggest that they've done okay but could do better (which is what every 'pro-FSG' person actually believes), rather that every problem we have is because of the way we run the club. We lose against Swansea and within minutes the problem wasn't that we sometimes do struggle against bus parkers. It was that FSG sold Coutinho because that's what they do, and why we'll never move forward under their ownership.

The stadium thing is fascinating. On what planet would it be sensible to go and build a brand new stadium which would cost the thick end of a billion pounds? That's got nothing to do with the owners not wanting to put their money where their mouth is. That's sensible owners (which is what we asked for) being sensible. The only owners who do that, or go and sign big name players on huge wages for the bench, are sugar daddies who don't have a care about money. Which we keep saying we don't want. So what is it?

[WisconsinRed]

From who? The owners? The manager? Scouting team? Football in general?

Tickets for English football are too expensive, which is a wider issue. Again, its a pipe dream to think we'll just reduce ours when no-one else does.

The issue that Al, and a few others have had, is that without knowing in detail how certain things work at the football club....its FSGs fault. Not just tickets, because I'm sure we all agree that tickets are too expensive and need to be reduced. But everything. How transfers work, how scouting works, the stadium, the training ground, sponsorship, the way we sell shirts, the club store. Every point that Al makes is completely drowned by this very clear theme that the lad just doesn't want these guys to own us. They don't take money out of the club (or if they do, its negligible as fuck). The money that has been made has been put back into the club. We've got a top class manager who they signed, and he's been backed. That's what we asked for when we had the cancers. Rodgers got sacked and we asked for something better, not a project manager but a top class one. And we got him. We've gone out and got players that he wants. Top players. But its this toxic environment created that doesn't suggest that they've done okay but could do better (which is what every 'pro-FSG' person actually believes), rather that every problem we have is because of the way we run the club. We lose against Swansea and within minutes the problem wasn't that we sometimes do struggle against bus parkers. It was that FSG sold Coutinho because that's what they do, and why we'll never move forward under their ownership.

The stadium thing is fascinating. On what planet would it be sensible to go and build a brand new stadium which would cost the thick end of a billion pounds? That's got nothing to do with the owners not wanting to put their money where their mouth is. That's sensible owners (which is what we asked for) being sensible. The only owners who do that, or go and sign big name players on huge wages for the bench, are sugar daddies who don't have a care about money. Which we keep saying we don't want. So what is it?

Why not though? Why can't we be different? I do understand the reasons why not but there is nothing stopping us saying enough is enough. If we do others might follow, other sets of fans may demand the same from their club.