Season Over?

[Guernica]

Just coming back to this, about 90% ended up converting their refunds into shares in the Club or donated them to the Trust, which was a good effort and saved a the Club a decent sum (£300k+).

Thought we handled it really well regarding refunds etc. Transparent and offered refunds in a straight manner unlike some. If Clive et al wanted to gauge their support that's certainly a great reaction.

 

[Loyal Dale]

How are everyone's ST refunds/donations going, btw? 85% of our lot have responded to far and 80% of those have converted to shares so that will have helped the Club a lot.

Notice that Posh, despite all the money they spend, aren't offering refunds at all and can either get it knocked off their next two ST's or donated to the youth academy (which presumably saves the club money, which can be used elsewhere).

Ours (Rochdale) seem to have been messed up badly. Season ticket holders unused tickets (7 games not played) will automatically be given out to local Key Workers over the next 2 years. These will be locals who don't support Rochdale.

You have the option to opt out of this if you e-mail the club requesting an opt out.

There is no mention of any refund whatsoever, but the statement is very badly written, and unclear.

Annoyingly, they have also inserted a cut off date on the opt out, which just happens to be one day before next seasons prices are announced.

If they put prices up, expect about 25-30% less season ticket sales. Our CEO is a clown

 

[Luke Imp]

Thought we handled it really well regarding refunds etc. Transparent and offered refunds in a straight manner unlike some. If Clive et al wanted to gauge their support that's certainly a great reaction.

Yep, agreed, I think it's been exceptionally well handled by Clive and Liam. They always hit the right note in their statements and there's been clarity around everything.

Ours (Rochdale) seem to have been messed up badly. Season ticket holders unused tickets (7 games not played) will automatically be given out to local Key Workers over the next 2 years. These will be locals who don't support Rochdale.

You have the option to opt out of this if you e-mail the club requesting an opt out.

There is no mention of any refund whatsoever, but the statement is very badly written, and unclear.

Annoyingly, they have also inserted a cut off date on the opt out, which just happens to be one day before next seasons prices are announced.

If they put prices up, expect about 25-30% less season ticket sales. Our CEO is a clown

Seem to be quite a few Clubs who haven't covered themselves in glory during this or the ST's heading into next so I don't think you're on your own there.

 

[Luke Imp]

Our season tickets are going back on sale in the next week or two. Will be interesting to see how many of the remaining 2.5k renew post-Covid.

 

[PuB]

Our season tickets are going back on sale in the next week or two. Will be interesting to see how many of the remaining 2.5k renew post-Covid.

Im confused, do we know how many supporters are going to be allowed in the stadiums yet, and when it’ll happen?

 

[DearneValleyRover]

Im confused, do we know how many supporters are going to be allowed in the stadiums yet, and when it’ll happen?

The amount of fans allowed will vary from stadium to stadium, concourse sizes, amount of access and egress etc, the soulless new builds will actually allow more supporters than traditional stadia

 

[PuB]

The amount of fans allowed will vary from stadium to stadium, concourse sizes, amount of access and egress etc, the soulless new builds will actually allow more supporters than traditional stadia

Yeah of course, but do we have an actual percentage of what will be allowed?

 

[Luke Imp]

Im confused, do we know how many supporters are going to be allowed in the stadiums yet, and when it’ll happen?

Not yet. We already have more season ticket holders than we're likely to be allowed into the stadium anyway so the Club, rightly IMO, are giving everyone who had one last season an opportunity to be able to buy one this season and be able to attend games because I suspect we'll have a draw and people getting in on a rota basis.

Some just want to retain their ST and buy one to support the Club.

 

[PuB]

I fully support people wanting to help the club and think it’s admirable, but how can you sell a season ticket with unknown terms and conditions?

 

[Luke Imp]

We'll find out in a week or so! They'll have to be tweaked but I genuinely don't think anyone's going to kick up a stink about having to be placed into a draw and be on a rota to get into a game. I'm guessing if you don't get a ticket you'll get a free iFollow pass or something.

 

[PuB]

We'll find out in a week or so! They'll have to be tweaked but I genuinely don't think anyone's going to kick up a stink about having to be placed into a draw and be on a rota to get into a game. I'm guessing if you don't get a ticket you'll get a free iFollow pass or something.

I admire your optimism but from a business perspective that doesn’t seem sensible at all. Say someone buys a season ticket and then doesn’t win a raffle for the place in the stands, or the government ban mass gatherings for the entirety of next season regardless?

Im not sure an iFollow pass (which would be much cheaper in the first place going by the prices abroad), will placate the season ticket holders. It’s a risky business as a lot will feel shortchanged and many will want a refund.

 

[The Terminator]

I admire your optimism but from a business perspective that doesn’t seem sensible at all. Say someone buys a season ticket and then doesn’t win a raffle for the place in the stands, or the government ban mass gatherings for the entirety of next season regardless?

Im not sure an iFollow pass (which would be much cheaper in the first place going by the prices abroad), will placate the season ticket holders. It’s a risky business as a lot will feel shortchanged and many will want a refund.

We've sold 3,000 Season tickets - basically we've been told that if we buy a ST, we also get to stream all the home games as part of the deal as well as having a few other benefits like a discount in the shop etc.

Ours were priced at £315 which was the early bird price and our board just kept extending the deadline all summer until the end of July.

We've taken them off sale for now, not too sure if we will put them back on sale. I think the club know we've reached a certain limit.

Most people are happy to help the club out it seems and have accepted there is a chance you may end up missing one or two games, myself included, but all clubs are different.

 

[PuB]

That’s great, but I don’t think it’s a case of missing one or two games (that’s pretty normal if you have a season ticket anyway), but there’s a chance still, especially with a second wave expected, that stadiums might not be open for a while yet.

So my question remains, how can season tickets be sold on that basis without the expectation of refunds?

 

[DippyDon]

That’s great, but I don’t think it’s a case of missing one or two games (that’s pretty normal if you have a season ticket anyway), but there’s a chance still, especially with a second wave expected, that stadiums might not be open for a while yet.

So my question remains, how can season tickets be sold on that basis without the expectation of refunds?

To me it just looks like people want to help their clubs out even if they know they may not get to go in person for a long time so are willing to buy a season ticket even if it means iFollow for a few weeks/months. Our season tickets as far as I know haven't come off the early bird sale since they were put on back in March and if I'm remembering right we had sold around 4,000 by our Executive Director's first radio interview after lockdown started. I guess we're lucky in the sense that our stadium is three times as big as we need it so we will be able to get our full home attendance in so long as the capacity cap isn't lower than about 25% so we may not have thought about some of the things other clubs may need to.

 

[Luke Imp]

I admire your optimism but from a business perspective that doesn’t seem sensible at all. Say someone buys a season ticket and then doesn’t win a raffle for the place in the stands, or the government ban mass gatherings for the entirety of next season regardless?

Im not sure an iFollow pass (which would be much cheaper in the first place going by the prices abroad), will placate the season ticket holders. It’s a risky business as a lot will feel shortchanged and many will want a refund.

This is how ours are working (copy and pasted from the L2 forum).

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Back in February we had the first of two ST renewal windows (4k+ sold). The second window is open from Monday for two weeks to allow the remaining c2.5k to renew. If you bought an ST in the first window, you can get a refund if you want.

All other priority memberships have been suspended for this season.

Until things change, only ST's can get league match tickets. To get a ticket, you need to enter yourself into a ballot on a match-by-match basis. If you 'win', you get into the game, if you 'lose', you'll get a free pass for iFollow and the difference between the price of iFollow and the pro-rata season ticket price is given back as a credit against a season ticket in 2020/21. If you miss out on a game, you then get priority on the next one (remains to be seen whether it's priority on the next game or the next ballot you enter). The educated guess is that you should be able to get to around half of the games you apply for.

If you don't enter a ballot because you couldn't attend anyway, you will have to pay the normal iFollow price.

For Cup games, a TBC percentage will be left for general sale.

We won't be sat in our season ticket seats to maximise capacity, but you'll be placed within the area of your ticket i.e. if your season ticket is in the family area, you will remain in the family area.

On the plus side, we can link season tickets together on our ticketing site, Ticketmaster Sport, so household groups/bubbles will, in the main, be sat together.

 

[Luke Imp]

If you don't enter a ballot because you couldn't attend anyway, you will have to pay the normal iFollow price.

I've misunderstood/misread that bit. What actually happens is that for every game a season ticket holder doesn't attend, regardless of whether they entered the ballot or not, they get a free iFollow pass and the credit for next season.

 

[Davidimp]

Lets hope the ifollow server can keep with all these extra people watching games! I will renew, a vaccine is getting closer. Granted we'll all need to a vaccine once a year like the flu as this thing will mutate and change like flu does.