Meis’ frame of reference here is US sport and specifically football and basketball (baseball is often played in half empty stadia in day games!). American Football has inherent scarcity (only 8 regular season home games). Basketball played indoors automatically means smaller capacities. Both sports (& Ice Hockey)/sell a high proportion of their seats to above median wealth individuals at eyewatering price points (I paid $140 for a pretty standard ticket for a regular season Chicago Bulls game vs. Detroit). All these sports have aggressive secondary ticketing markets supported by scarcity. The Knicks/Rangers prices at Madison Sq Garden are astronomical even though both suck!
Everton sell two thirds of our tickets as either concession or to individuals who identify as at or below national media income (extrapolating from club surveys). To drive up income we need both to expand the supply to this group (where there is untapped demand) and drive up availability of premium tickets, where we are severely limited. Capacity matters for the first, design for the latter. Nobody wants a half-empty stadium but EFC cannot afford to turn away business every week either. Scarcity will not let us drive up the majority of seat prices due to fan demographics unless we want to be Anfield/OT filled with tourists.
Having ‘excess’ capacity in football is often important for capturing and hooking new fans/youngsters by having a couple of thousand tickets in corners, backs of stands available at shorter notice and cheaper price points. This also helps to cater for the significant local fan base who can not justify/afford a season ticket but want to attend a few games and often decide late. We have lost this in recent years with tickets at Goodison like gold dust. Culturally I think most of us would rather have 2-3k empty seats scattered around unobtrusively for Stoke at home rather than getting ripped off on StubHub!! I think Meis would be genuinely shocked if someone sat him down and explained this.
If we still had e.g. Alan Myers at the club he could explain this to Meis and adjust his reference points. Kenyon/Elstone won’t because ‘scarcity’ makes their jobs easy. I think the bombardment on twitter and at the forums is making Meis rethink. Is suspect we will ultimately settle at c.56k which might not be terrible as the site footprint is constrained and I think many of us also want the quality to be spot on rather than feeling cramped.
We should be just as concerned at making sure they go for c.5-6k premium seats rather than say 2-3k as that is where the money is. That would put the club’s commercial team firmly in the spotlight to fill them but that is the really critical aspect to making this pay.
I appreciate the sentiment, but have maybe a different take, in agreement with what I think Meis means with his "scarcity" comments.
The financial prospects of a club like Everton are, and increasingly, in TV broadcast money. This will certainly change in the long term, or at least plateau, but money flows through TV rights, competition purses, and commercial sponsorship. Gate receipts are an afterthought for many larger clubs, and so the primary focus of a ground is not how it sells in the book of accounts, but how it sells to TV advertisers and brand partners.
A club needs a few things to make this work: identity, history, success, recognizable players, and a product that people want to watch. While a happy Goodison is great, and angry Goodison makes good TV as well, far better than an annoyed, apathetic Goodison. While the product on the field is the primary cause, the feedback between supporters in the stands and players on the pitch is palpable, and it matters for the TV viewer as well (although their feedback is ratings and $$ only).
For "large" clubs this becomes difficult when so many of the "home supporters" are transient. Not that all visiting supporters are bad, but if 1/3 of your stadium or more is filled with day-trippers, you've lost some of the environment that makes the event watchable. While West Ham have the worst stadium in the PL by miles, a soulless-when-full Emirates isn't far behind. So I can see why Meis would prefer to build a slightly smaller, but always full and, whether angry or happy, loud stadium. There may be a time soon when some clubs give tickets away (although free tickets are dangerous for the reasons above) just to fill the stands because while people may watch a bad football team on TV that play in a full stadium, far fewer will watch a bad football team playing before an empty stadium.
While I'm in agreement that we don't want to see a situation unfold in which scarcity of tickets drives up prices and in turn prohibits access by core supporters--lifelong STHs--and I generally agree that the stadium should expand premium access, if anything, in order to capitalize gate receipts, I primarily read Meis to mean "scarcity of seats" = getting the size right so that the stadium is near max capacity every week, a cauldron that energizes/intimidates the players on the field and excites those millions watching across the world.
I'll hang up and listen.
