The BBC price of football 2013

So Argyle's "membership" package is the same price as the cheapest season ticket at Manchester City!

Let's see, Aguero, Dzeko, Toure, Silva, Kompany, Nasri, Hart etc or Chadwick, Cole, Reid, Boco, Blanchard and Vassell  

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We're already using their poncy blue for our away kit.....I would still prefer to watch McCormick than Hart that's for sure.

We are expensive for the basement league, probably a legacy of the previous ownership and the fact that we were operating a Championship sized club in the lower leagues but this is our third season now in this league so really by now there should've been a substantial reduction.

I heard that on the BBC today. Mugged in more ways than one!

Football is just too expensive in this country, no matter if it's Premier or League 2.

Austerity? Not for football.

As usual, the Germans have it about right, around 15 euro to watch Bayern Munich AND standing areas.

This country is so far behind in football terms on and off the pitch.

Comparing apples to oranges, innit.

I do agree that football is too expensive but that is true across the board. The fact that you can watch Manchester City more cheaply than Grimsby and a couple of others in the Conference is absurd. But soccernomics is absurd.

Ticket money, although obviously welcome, is very low on the priority list at Manchester City. For them all that matters is being the best club in the world and, given the enormous wealth of their owners, the cost of achieving this is almost irrelevant. They could pump more money into MCFC than everybody else does into all of football and still consider it to be loose change and they quite possibly will simply because it is all about the prestige, face; it is a vanity project. Next on the list for them is TV money after that somewhere comes gate receipts and merchandise sales. So a small percentage of their income comes directly from the fans and that would still be true if they increased ticket prices tenfold. So they don't. They keep tickets cheapish, considering what's on offer, and bask in the glory of seeing the CoMstad full every week.

None of that applies to, for example, Grimsby. For them ticket money is the vast majority of their income. Not for them a wealthy owner prepared to "invest" (not that it is "investment" in any meaningful sense at Manchester City) nor is there much in the terms of TV money. They probably don't even get the pathetic sop of a "solidarity payment" from the PL and definitely do not get a parachute payment to cushion the blow of collapsing income following their recentish relegation from the FL.

And much the same applies to us. Some, not much, TV money comes our way; some reluctant propping up of finances by Brent in the form of loans (not "investment" in any meaningful, but this time different, sense); we have a massive reliance on gate receipts. This forces us to keep prices high no matter how much we would like to them be lower.

A lot of nonsense is regularly spouted about entrance cost usually along the lines of "make it cheaper and more people will go". As with the most dangerous and misleading nonsense there is some truth, but not the whole truth, in this. Would attendances double if admission costs were halved? No. Would they (indeed could they?) go up tenfold if admission costs were, literally, decimated? No. So cutting the cost of admission would cost the club money. And cost it a lot of money. And destroy it's principal revenue stream. And it is already £5m in debt. And it is still probably losing money.

And exactly how are we going to settle 50% of that lingering football creditor debt when the time, looming closer with every passing day, eventually comes?

Have an auction ?

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

And exactly how are we going to settle 50% of that lingering football creditor debt when the time, looming closer with every passing day, eventually comes?

How about when the new stand is finished the ground will be worth a lot more than it is now. JB * ( or someone else)* buys back the ground off the council at 12 times the current rent ( I think without looking it up, please correct if wrong) he can then borrow against the stadium to pay off that debt.

Edited to add *( or someone else)*

Doesn't he ever actually pay for anything himself? With actual cash?

I mean... I try to avoid it as much as possible but I'm working class, 9 parts skint and likely to stay that way until I shuffle off this mortal coil and even then I pay my way as much as I am able. Brent is shaping up like some sort of scrounging, carpet-bagging, asset-stripping cheapskate with short arms and deep pockets who is always in the bogs or out making a phone call when the time to buy his round comes around.

It makes me wonder if he's as minted as it is commonly believed. There could be similarity between Brent and Heaney way beyond "the only reason he's interested in Argyle is because wants to build a cinema in the park!"

Are there hints or unsubstantiated rumours surfacing of court case or unpaid, or late payment of, bills yet? CCJs?

SFD,

it's just a thought. I'm no financial expert but isn't one way of paying off a debt to mortgage your house? In this case, a football stadium. He ( or someone else) will have to buy the ground back off the council first though. Raise the required sum as a mortgage / loan against the stadium, then pay off the football creditors debt.

With the increase of rent the 12x buy back clause would be ~£2M.

With the PAFC lease area stripped back to the pitch, horseshoe and ministand (less income generating ground floor) would they get a mortgage for that value given the value of land put on HHP land during PCC summer madness sale?

It makes you wonder just how many pennies Brent has when you think that not a single one of his local projects has been started yet, maybe his ability to attract Council Tax payers money and pension funds is drying up a little.

Even with our ticket prices the club is still be subsidised ,by way of loans of course, by Brent. Most of the money going to 4th rate footballers. Football fans are as much to blame (me included) as anyone else (google a football fans are idiots article in the guardian from a while back which sums it up).

I vowed this year to pay cash for away ticket where I could and its not until you visit a cash machine and take out whats needed for a couple of hours of 'entertainment' that you start to wonder what its all about. Thats not to say it isn't always not worth it but most of the time in non promotion/cup run years it's the same old/same old.

I don't particularly rail against Sky watching big team loving plastics. On one hand they will never truly truly understand supporting a football club. On the other sitting in the comfort of your own front room for the same price without the hassle of travelling, parking, stewards, mild and explcit racism, bad food, bad beer, bad behaviour, crap songs, crap attitudes, crappy drummers, no mark terrace experts, half time dancing girls, damp weather, cold weather, rainy weather, bad views, inadequate legroom etc etc has its merits.

I watched the North London derby recently from the comfort of a box. Two to the left of Usmanov's box, three to right of Theo's. Everything about the day was perfect. And everything about the day didn't feel like I was going to watch football. Footballs moved on from what I remember it being.
Usmanov sat in his box with 20 heated leather reclineable seats empty bar 4 visitors. His box was full of crystal and had a butler. What the fcuk has that got to do with watching football? Who cares?

Point taken GG but I'll bet a completed stadium will be worth a lot more than £2M. Considering JB claims the hospitality areas in the new stand will raise an extra £1M- £2M in revenue ( was it revenue?) a year, surely a bank / financial institution would see how their money would be returned? The clubs new office space and shop would see a return as well. Does the school / dentist / medical suite / what ever it is, belong to Argyle or is that outside the lease as well?

Gardiner / Todd etc. raised more than one mortgage against the stadium as it stands.

Richard Blight wrote:

Point taken GG but I'll bet a completed stadium will be worth a lot more than £2M. Considering JB claims the hospitality areas in the new stand will raise an extra £1M- £2M in revenue ( was it revenue?) a year, surely a bank / financial institution would see how their money would be returned? The clubs new office space and shop would see a return as well. Does the school / dentist / medical suite / what ever it is, belong to Argyle or is that outside the lease as well?

Gardiner / Todd etc. raised more than one mortgage against the stadium as it stands.

Apples and oranges again.

The land is different now. Smaller for a start. We used to "own" all of it. Now it has added planning permission. Pretty soon it'll be developed and leased to various occupiers and be different again.

None of which means we couldn't borrow against it we just, probably, couldn't borrow as much as we did before when it had significant positive equity whereas now or in the near future it won't.

Meanwhile "just keep on kicking that can down the road" seems to be the plan.

Richard Blight wrote:

How about when the new stand is finished the ground will be worth a lot more than it is now. JB * ( or someone else)* buys back the ground off the council at 12 times the current rent ( I think without looking it up, please correct if wrong) he can then borrow against the stadium to pay off that debt.

I had a question asked at the Cherry Tree meet with Brent about exactly how the outstanding debt was going to be paid. His response was couched in financial-services gobble-de-gook, however it appeared to roughly translate as 'either we get lucky generating some unexpected income (youth player sale/ cup run) or we'll borrow it'. Make of that what you will!!!

Richard Blight wrote:

Point taken GG but I'll bet a completed stadium will be worth a lot more than £2M. Considering JB claims the hospitality areas in the new stand will raise an extra £1M- £2M in revenue ( was it revenue?) a year, surely a bank / financial institution would see how their money would be returned? The clubs new office space and shop would see a return as well. Does the school / dentist / medical suite / what ever it is, belong to Argyle or is that outside the lease as well?

Gardiner / Todd etc. raised more than one mortgage against the stadium as it stands.

The dentists chairs are in the hotel building so nowt to with PAFC.

The plans show "community areas" occupying the pillar box incursion into the BPE corner of ground. Presumably they are called this until JB gets the £3-4M grant for setting up the school. This building has the highlighter through it on the map demarking the areas of land transfer, so it's future ownership is unclear.

If there was any danger of it profiting the club I would have expected it to have been broadcast as an example of how much JB is doing for the club

PAFC get your act together - we have one of the dearest cups of tea in the League £1.90 according to the FA survey, get it sorted!

I met up with six friends after the Rovers game who'd all paid £21 to go. Not one of them thought it was worth £21. Their ages ranged from 28-63. One of them earns close to £90k a year and he felt a bit ripped off.

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Doesn't he ever actually pay for anything himself? With actual cash?

I mean... I try to avoid it as much as possible but I'm working class, 9 parts skint and likely to stay that way until I shuffle off this mortal coil and even then I pay my way as much as I am able. Brent is shaping up like some sort of scrounging, carpet-bagging, asset-stripping cheapskate with short arms and deep pockets who is always in the bogs or out making a phone call when the time to buy his round comes around.

It makes me wonder if he's as minted as it is commonly believed. There could be similarity between Brent and Heaney way beyond "the only reason he's interested in Argyle is because wants to build a cinema in the park!"

Are there hints or unsubstantiated rumours surfacing of court case or unpaid, or late payment of, bills yet? CCJs?

I'm sure someone looked at their accounts and found that their cash at bank was £14,000. This despite being paid £2 million by the council allegedly.