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New In-House Ticket Re-Sale Platform (no more StubHub!)

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Took my family 2 adults and 2 kids to a game last season for £45. This’ll price out some people. Club may also miss out on ancillary sales. Should have reached an agreement with stub hub about a cap rather than this.
 
@GrandOldTeam it's just over 80% of all tickets in the ground are ST holders and if you took away the hospitality (e.g. looked at GA) it'd be higher.

The club have issued press releases over the years saying 9 in every 10 seats in the stadium are sold out before a season starts. I assume that headline must include hospitality.

It sounds impressive, but as I've often said on here - I think it's a shame. I ramble on in this thread in 2016 as to why - it's mainly around accessibility of tickets and this;

In terms of atmosphere, I agree as I feel that it can have a negative impact on the atmosphere because for me it can become stale and/or repetitive.

Where I sit, there's a good mixture of people who get behind the team and others who are more inclined to sit, chat and often grumble rather than sing or cheer.

A healthier balance of ST holders and general admission might help rectify that by freshening it up, but for the club I suspect it means a lesser chance of a sell out.

Agree. The club sent a survey out asking how to improve atmosphere and the only comment I made was the concerns around atmosphere coincided with pretty much everyone now being a season ticket holder/the club increasing the season ticket cap.

You need 'day-trippers' (for want of a better phrase). Everton used to have one of, if not the biggest 'walk ups' in the league. That's gone, and I think the negatives outweigh the positives.

It's not just about atmosphere either, you need to ensure tickets are accessible just because it's the right thing to do. The young family in Kirkby who can only afford the odd game - currently they're told season ticket, or buy a membership for the lottery to buy a ticket.

I know we've spoke about StubHub in the past and admittedly I was unaware of its benefits - I had a preconceived view that it was a poor and misused system

Yeah most are the same as you mate - most who make the noise anyway and it's why StubHub was always on borrowed time. It brought in pittance, and it wasn't worth the negative PR.

But as you point out, this will mean that the club will sell their tickets first (at full price) before allowing resale and again there'll be no cheap tickets or cash to fans.

This is again partly another reason why I chose for us to have the card because like usual I can simply give it to someone if we can't go.

Yeah - as I keep saying, I don't think there is a infallible resale system but I think any system that prioritises accessibility, and value wins.

In my view, StubHub filled that gap as Everton forced 9/10 tickets to be a season ticket holder.

Everton have told the fans that unless they have a season ticket, they need to buy a membership to even have a sniff at buying any tickets.

StubHub allowed substantially reduced tickets for most games, and accessibility to the game to a lot of people who otherwise couldn't go. I must have used StubHub 50+ times and never once paid over face value.

The new system prices out a lot of fans and for what? So a handful of people cant list tickets for daft prices for the derby, Man Utd and the boxing day game on StubHub. Those will still be able to sell their tickets for well over the odds privately.

Even the card is on borrowed time - the club are moving to mobile/digital tickets.

I hope they cap the season tickets at much lower % of capacity at Bramley-Moore Dock.
 
I think they've brought in this new system, effectively giving store credit instead of letting people attempt to get their money back, because they knew that a lot of ST holders aren't going to want to attend matches under government restrictions.

I'd happily just take a refund now, but I doubt I'll even get a response to my email.
 

I think they've brought in this new system, effectively giving store credit instead of letting people attempt to get their money back, because they knew that a lot of ST holders aren't going to want to attend matches under government restrictions.

I'd happily just take a refund now, but I doubt I'll even get a response to my email.
Ring them and they'll give you a full refund
 
StubHub are a business who pay a commercial fee to club. They have to cover their costs - their whole infrastructure/marketing costs to sell tickets and earn a profit. You are never going to be able to dictate. They did have a max cap but it was too high and it made the bad PR headlines.

Then on the flip side, Everton aren't going to have an official system that allows listing below face value.

It's why I keep saying there's no perfect ticket resale platform.

Everton were always going to change to a model like Man City or Liverpool because of the PR around StubHub but it's definitely going to be worse off for most fans.

Twickets would've stopped the 'over face value' issue which was the main gripe folk had with stubhub.
 
Twickets would've stopped the 'over face value' issue which was the main gripe folk had with stubhub.

A few clubs use (or used?) them - I know QPR and Crystal Palace did - not sure if they still do. I think their vulnerabilities/setup were shown/struggled more than most ticketing outlet with Covid. They effectively went to ground.

Would definitely be better than the model they've moved to though.
 
This is well and truly going to price out a lot of people. Triple figures basically to go and watch one game for two people. That's not good at all.
 
The club have issued press releases over the years saying 9 in every 10 seats in the stadium are sold out before a season starts. I assume that headline must include hospitality.
The 80% is from the entire attendance, which is obviously not the same as seats available to the public through sale either ST or general admission.

When you factor in the directors, staff and players etc. which are offered for each game, it probably is closer to the 9 out of 10 that the club have said.

At BMD, the 90-90% figure will be lower.
 

I know I'm veering slightly off topic, but I found this interesting. It's a 2016 article re football ticket prices from historyandpolicy.org


Football Ticket Prices: Some Lessons from History​

Martin Johnes , Matthew Taylor | 18 February 2016​



From its earliest days, supporters have been central to the attraction of football. Of the many sports codified in the nineteenth century, only football developed into the type of mass spectacle that helped to define British popular culture in the twentieth. Recent concerns over tickets prices have reignited long-standing fears that the very constituency that made the game what it was might be priced out of it. But the history of ticket pricing in football is more complex than is normally assumed. Gate prices alone have never determined the changing fortunes of the game. Shifting trends in leisure and entertainment and people’s disposable income are vital in understanding the rise and fall of attendances.

From its beginnings in the 1880s, the Football League insisted on a minimum admission charge so as to prevent price competition between its clubs. This was important because a culture of fierce loyalties to a single team had yet to emerge. Fans often switched support between neighbouring clubs according to who was performing best and who the opposition was.

Even during its early history, football was not a sport that all could afford to attend. The standard price of a shilling was often raised for glamorous cup ties, leading supporters to complain that the working fan was in danger of being priced out. This was a particular problem where unemployment was at its worst between the wars, and a number of small professional clubs in south Wales and northern England collapsed as a result. In the larger industrial cities, however, attendances could be remarkably resilient to wider economic conditions, suggesting the strength of an attractive team’s appeal.

The minimum admission price rose to 1s 3d in 1946 and then 1s 9d in 1950 but this was more affordable than ever before and football benefited from higher rises in wages and an economy of full employment. Attendances boomed, hitting 41.2 million in the Football League in 1948-9, compared with 27 million in the last pre-war season. This owed much to the lack of alternative entertainments in these years of austerity but it was also a marker of how attendances were also determined by the fashions of the day and the rival demands on people’s disposable income.

That was further evident in the 1950s and 60s, as attendances plummeted in the face of rising disposable incomes, the allure of television, more comfortable homes, day trips in the car and perhaps a greater commitment to family time at the weekend. There were now, as one report on the future of the game noted, ‘alternative outlets for the money that more and more people have available’, acting as ‘a pull away from the conventional Saturday afternoon soccer match’.

Falling attendances put pressure on the game’s finances and in 1960 there was a further rise in minimum prices from the 2s introduced in 1955 to 2s 6d. Affluence was not universal and this rise seems to have contributed to falling attendances by pricing out some poorer fans. In 1960-61 the Football League attracted 3.9 million fewer spectators than it had the season before. Football was falling out of fashion.

The dynamics of the football market also changed in the 1960s. First division prices increased more than in the lower divisions and yet attendances at the top held up better. Thanks to television and motorways, a few clubs such as Manchester United began to attract fans from outside their natural catchment areas. In response, most fans became more tribal about supporting their local team.

Clubs were thus protected to some extent from the vagaries of the free market and the danger of losing fans to a neighbouring club that was doing better or charging less. But hooliganism and an expanding consumer culture was rendering football an increasingly marginal leisure pursuit. 1985-86, the season following the Heysel and Bradford disasters, saw aggregate attendances in the Football League reach a record low of 16.4 million.

Football’s subsequent recovery owed much to the new fashionability it gained with England’s success at the 1990 World Cup, declining hooliganism and the better stadiums ushered in after the Hillsborough disaster. Paying for stadium improvements was a considerable financial burden on clubs, despite the generous support available from the public purse via the Football Foundation. The money that television deals with Sky generated from 1992 onwards could have limited the costs passed on to fans but instead it was used to fuel a hyperinflation in player wages. This enabled the Premier League to attract many of the world’s best players, sheltering it from the impact of market prices by delivering a much better product to be watched in now more comfortable surroundings.

With top-level stadiums sold out, clubs became less and less concerned with controlling prices. Between 1989 and 1999, Premier League ticket prices rose by 312%, in a period when the retail price index increased by 54.8%. By 2008, the Premier League’s own research suggested that 75% of its match-attending fans were middle class (AB and C1). At Chelsea and Arsenal, two of the most expensive teams to watch, half of the fans were from social groups AB. By 2011, there were reports that at some clubs ticket prices had risen by 1000% in two decades.

Attendances remained strong but sociological studies highlighted warning signs for the game. A new culture of fandom was emerging, based around watching games on television in pubs. This was not only cheaper but some felt the atmosphere was better than actually being in the stadium, especially in grounds so large that the players were little more than matchstick men in the distance.

Football’s own history shows that it should not be assumed that the last twenty years of high attendances will last. People’s willingness to pay high ticket prices is dependent on whether football is fashionable and what other forms of entertainment are on offer. Although 12% of Premier League season ticket holders last season were children, a new generation is growing up that is as used to football as a television programme or video game as a live spectacle and they might not be as willing as their parents and grandparents to pay the prices demanded by parts of the Premier League. Crowds are younger than the wider population but the average age of adult fans who attend Premier League matches is 41.

The culture of fandom, where most people are committed to a single club and want to witness both its highs and lows as a badge of loyalty, has sheltered the game from normal market forces and last season Premier League grounds sold 96% of available tickets. Yet oral histories also show that some fans are willing to change clubs. They rarely ‘trade up’ but they do sometimes adopt a smaller team in search of not just cheaper entertainment but a less sanitised product than the glitzy spectacle that some feel the Premier League has become. This trickle could easily swell into a tide, especially if smaller clubs are better at realising and exploiting the opportunity that exists.

But a far bigger threat to the Premier League than empty seats is damage to its reputation. Since the late Victorian period, football clubs have claimed to represent their communities and to be more than just another commercial purveyor of entertainment. That has been largely true and the deep emotional commitment fans feel to their clubs, often based on family histories decades long, lies at the heart of the anger some feel at ticket prices. There are still large numbers willing to pay these prices but the more they feel exploited in doing so, the more they will vocalise their anger and that can only damage a brand that claims to value its supporters and what they contribute to its spectacle.
 
A few clubs use (or used?) them - I know QPR and Crystal Palace did - not sure if they still do. I think their vulnerabilities/setup were shown/struggled more than most ticketing outlet with Covid. They effectively went to ground.

Would definitely be better than the model they've moved to though.
I just want the ability for people on my friends & family to be able to use them, which with id checks you cant do.

There was a fella & his lad near us that sold them more than used them, he works on rigs apparently but sold derby ones for daft amounts.
 

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