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15/10/2007 : Yeovil Town Blog : Premium Pricing Attendance Analysis : October 2007
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  15 October 2007 : Premium Pricing Attendance Analysis : October 2007
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The following represents analysis of 'Premium Pricing' (or Categorised matches) that was introduced by Yeovil Town at the start of the 2006-07 season. The policy means that around five matches per season (six this season) are deemed to be all-ticket matches where no tickets are sold on the day and where match day admission is increased by four pounds for adults, OAPs and students. Under 16s and season ticket holders are not affected by this policy.
So far, the majority of matches under this policy have seen attendances drop. However, the club do gain additional revenue per person by virtue of the higher admission prices. What this page seeks to analyse is the effect of Premium Pricing upon Huish Park Crowds and also upon the revenue coming into the club. Does Premium Pricing really affect attendances? Does Premium Pricing bring the club additional revenue despite the apparent drop-off in attendances? Are some games justifiable whilst others are not?
Starting off, we look at the lists of games that were chosen for Premium Pricing and then analyse four of the clubs for which we have had games that have had Premium Pricing and compared them with previous seasons where that policy was not in effect.
Premium Pricing 2005-06 List
No Premium Pricing. However the following were all in our division and subsequently selected for Premium Pricing in later seasons:
Bristol City
Nottingham Forest
Swansea City
AFC Bournemouth
Swindon Town
Premium Pricing 2006-07 List
Bristol City
Nottingham Forest
Swansea City
AFC Bournemouth
Millwall (later downgraded to an ordinary match)
Premium Pricing 2007-08 List
Nottingham Forest
Swansea City
AFC Bournemouth
Swindon Town
Bristol Rovers
Leeds United
Crowd Comparisons For Bristol City
2005-06 : 9,178.
2006-07 : 9,009.
Conclusion - no significant drop-off and four pound surcharge will have clearly brought in more revenue. Hence for this fixture Premium Pricing is the right decision for the club. No real issue about this fixture at all.
Crowd Comparisons For Nottingham Forest
2005-06 : 9,072 (incl 1500 Forest Fans)
2006-07 : 6,925 (incl 1500 Forest Fans) (with Premium Pricing)
2007-08 : 6,818 (incl 1000 Forest Fans) (with Premium Pricing)
Conclusion - sharp drop-off of over 2,000 fans from the 2005-06 season for this fixture.
Taking this season's match with 3,100 season holders this gives 3,700 "day tickets" sold. If we assume that 10% of these are Under 16s who do not pay the surcharge, then this gives us approx 3,300 fans paying the surcharge. However of that 3,300 maybe a further 10% of these fans may generally pay on the day, so they will only pay two pounds more for Premium Pricing. This gives the club approx an extra 12,500 pounds of revenue.
However, that extra revenue would be wiped out if there are people not turning up at all, so what is the break-even figure where Premium Pricing would become a bad thing? If we assume that they average spectator pays 16 pounds a match for admission, programme catering and drink, this means that if just 780 spectators (12,500 / 16) stay away because of Premium Pricing, then it has failed as a policy for the Forest Game. So if Forest would have attracted a crowd of 7,600 with lower pricing, the policy is wrong for this game.
Crowd Comparisons For Swansea City
2005-06 : 7,578 (incl 1500 Swansea Fans)
2006-07 : 5,984 (incl 827 Swansea Fans)
Conclusion - sharp drop-off of 1,600 fans from the 2005-06 season for this fixture.
Working on the same basis as above, we have 2,900 "day tickets" sold. Around 10% of these will be U16s so this is 2,600 paying the surcharge. A further 10% of these will traditionally buy on the day, so that gives us 9,880 extra revenue.
Again assuming the average spend per spectator is 16 pounds, this means that the policy for Swansea will only make sense if less than 617 people stay away. Thus if the Swansea game would have attracted a crowd of 6,600 or more, then the policy is wrong for this game.
Crowd Comparison For AFC Bournemouth
2005-06 : 8,178 (incl 1500 Bournemouth fans)
2006-07 : 6,451 (incl 1500 Bournemouth fans)
Conclusion - sharp drop-off of 1,700 fans from the 2005-06 season for this fixture.
Working on the same basis as above, we have 3,300 "day tickets" sold. Around 10% of these will be U16s so this is 2,970 paying the surcharge. A further 10% of these will traditionally buy on the day, so that gives us 11,286 extra revenue.
Again assuming the average spend per spectator is 16 pounds, this means that the policy for Bournemouth will only make sense if less than 705 people stay away. Thus if the Swansea game would have attracted a crowd of 7,156 or more, then the policy is wrong for this game.
Adjusting For General Downturn in Crowds
The 2006-07 season saw Yeovil Town's crowds drop to 5,764 from a 2005-06 season high of 6,511. This represents a drop of 11.5% and so this should be factored into the above crowds to demonstrate the effect of Premium Pricing on attendance. We have to assume that 11.5% of these spectators were not going to turn up anyway because they haven't turned up for other League One fixtures. However for all games bar Bristol City the drop-off was far greater than 11.5% so there is a clear inference that supporters are not turning up because of Premium Pricing.
So taking off 11.5% of each of the Forest, Swansea and Bournemouth attendances for the 2005-06 season we should get the "expected" crowds we would have got in 2006-07 if Premium Pricing had not been in effect. This is actually being kind because if we only considered the 19 matches where Premium Pricing was not in force, the average drop-off for these matches would be far less than 11.5% as the three games shown below represent the worst three crowd drops of the season.
However, using the 11.5% drop as a rough guide, this gives us a feel for how many fans did not turn up for this match because of Premium Pricing. This gives us projected crowds as follows:
Forest : Projected Crowd : 8,029 (actual 6,925). Shortfall is therefore 1,104 but break-even was 780. So the policy fails.
Swansea : Projected Crowd : 6,707 (actual 5,984). Shortfall is therefore 723 but break-even was 617. So the policy fails.
Bournemouth : Projected Crowd : 7,238 (actual 6,481). Shortfall is therefore 757 but break-even was 705. So the policy fails.
Thus with the exception of the Bristol City match last season, Premium Pricing brings in the club less revenue than it would have based on the projected crowd figures given above.
Some Notes On The Above
The rationale the club have given is that Premium Pricing is in place to pay for additional policing costs. That only serves a purpose if the matches bring in additional revenue. The above maths suggests that it does not do so, with the exception of Bristol City.
Premium Pricing is also not good for the club's relationship with its supporters. They feel as though they are being penalised for wanting to go to particular games.
Premium Pricing also penalises those floating supporters who choose to come to Huish Park two or three times a season, inevitably for the bigger games. This leads to a perception that Huish Park prices are higher than they really are - that some supporters will believe that they have to pay 20 pounds per game for every fixture. This was particularly true of the 2005-06 Bournemouth fixture, which as the first game of the season set the "mood" of the season. The danger is that Premium Pricing could affect other crowds as a result.
Whilst the six categorised games represent a "Category A" and the remaining matches represent a "Category B", there is no suggestion that the club are willing to consider a "Category C" - e.g. for Saturday's Carlisle United match which has experienced sub-5,000 crowds before and was always going to be a low crowd because of the England internationals. The feeling is therefore that the club are always taking for Category A, but never offering anything back via a Category C.
Premium Pricing is no good if we are trying to fill stadiums and potentially hoping to fill a 14,000 capacity stadium. We need to get people hooked, not cost them out of the matches before they've even got to the ground.
In Conclusion
We would recommend that the club drop Premium Pricing for all fixtures where it is obvious that the gate income is either less than or roughly same as the projected revenue without Premium Pricing. Anything that is roughly the same isn't worth the hassle given the damage it creates to supporter relations.
This would mean all of this current seasons fixtures being taken off Premium Pricing except for the visit of Leeds United, which will probably be a promotion decider for one or both clubs and is the last home game of the season. Thus a sell-out is likely. For Bristol Rovers, this may capture the imagination depending upon the fixture and the position of both clubs - so this could be a winner or a loser.
For the December Bournemouth and Swindon fixtures, it would seem likely that these would provide heavy losses for both crowd and revenue, particularly given there is doubt over when the Swindon fixture will be played. Matches in December will clash with some Christmas engagements and with financial budgets and an all-ticket, premium priced status will not compete well with families looking to go out as a group.
The visit of Swansea City in just under two weeks time is probably too late to change a date for, but will probably represent further evidence of the decline in interest in such matches.
In short, any match that isn't either a sell-out or a "must see" match should be reconsidered. Four pounds is seen as far too steep a rise by many supporters and at the moment, we need to get all the fans in Huish Park that we possibly can.
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