Fellows Park had a special atmosphere and I have great memories of going there; games and people and players gave me wonderful times. But it would’ve cost a fortune to develop into a stadium that meets todays health and safety requirements. Impossible for WFC without selling the land and relocating. Many clubs have had to do this. Some people have commented that Bescot is clinical, lacking atmosphere but I think that is because we have now been in the doldrums for many years. A stab at promotion or a good cup run would change that.
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Jeff Bonser.
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Even when the stadium was terracing bescot always been terrible for atmosphere. That being said most home crowds are terrible/quiet . Seems only away fans seem to chant during games minus a few clubs/home fans.
A kids ticket normally is like £15 isn’t it? Or thereabouts
So they only have to attend 4/23 games to get their value out of a season ticket.
Even if they picked and choosed their games and only went to say 10 games, got their £3 back for each, it works out to be like £3.90 a game.
I’m not sure anyone can moan at that.
Same goes for an adult, £250 in the lower gets you 23 games, so just over a tenner a game. And it’s slightly more in the upper.
It’s not that bad.
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I don’t think the prices need to be lowered.
Firstly because I don’t think the club would be able to sustain itself on the lower income.
Secondly we moan about the budget as it is. With less money coming in through the gate, it’ll be lower.
What needs to be improved is the facilities offered off the pitch and the team on it. Make it so that fans actually feel they’re getting value for money.
And a lot of that shouldn’t cost the club a lot to do, it just requires the effort to put structures in place.
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Biggest issue isn’t the price, it’s the quality of the product and experience; plus the ludicrously complex pricing strategy and laborious nature of obtaining tickets. Has needed sorting for a decade.
Then the club needs to find a way to get fans to ground earlier & staying later, spending more at the ground.
I would also propose that under 10’s are free & under 20’s are £10 regardless of where they sit.
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We just need to win some bloody games, that’s half the problem solved right there.
We’ve been terrible since 2015!!!
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Exactly.
I can’t complain about the pricing particularly, my lad who is 10 gets a free season ticket. The issue is I have to convince him to come to every game and my line to convince him is that he can spend time with his Dad and Grandad and it is a tradition. I can’t use the football line as he just retorts it’s rubbish and we never win, difficult to argue with him.
Actually reading that back I may get him to apply for the DOF role, he is a bloody know it all at the moment 
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Absolutely, a winning team will put 2/3k on the gate straight away.
This is why I’ll never understand Walsall’s transfer dealings.
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Again, I never said the season ticket value wasn’t good cause it is. You won’t get people who aren’t die hard fans buying them. My problem is with the price on actual matchday. Many a times I’ve been in the pub with a few mates before the game and I’ve tried to drag them along ( they don’t support anyone) when I say it’s £21.50 they’re like “I ain’t paying that” and i don’t blame them cause I wouldn’t pay it to watch a team I don’t support either. Going from this season I’d probably end up staying in the pub myself.
Maybe my previous mail didn’t come across particularly well.
I’m not complaining about the cost of my kids season tickets. They are fantastic value.
I’m talking about taking my kids friends to a game on match day. As I said they usually only ask me on a Saturday morning if such and such can come with us usually after a Saturday morning game of fifa.
This happens quite a lot and in these cases our current system is extremely prohibitive.Queues and overpriced tickets.
Some may say plan it in advance. Sorry but kids just don’t work like that.
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Yes it’s definitely the matchday pricing that’s off the season ticket prices are good value it’s finding the balance, Season ticket sales next season will be lower than ever so they definitely need to do something because nevermind finding new fans to come through the turnstiles we are in danger of losing the old one’s . I will look back on this thread in September though when the club do nothing about it now even though they obviously read this forum and ignore everything on it , Those people who think a winning team will be disappointed as well because I’ll bet anyone now if by September/October next season we are top 3 and playing Forest green or Colchester at home there Will be less than 4,000 in the ground.
Next season with all that’s gone on the last year league 1 & 2 clubs need to be thinking outside the box drastically to get people parting with money to watch football people will be more inclined to go and spend £50 at that new shopping center in cannock and have something to eat than come and watch Walsall in league 2
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That’s not what I meant about a winning team though.
By winning I mean sustained success over a number of seasons , not just winning three games… it’s a slow burner but a far better idea than recruiting 2 extra bar maids 
How the hell are Walsall fc going to have sustained success over a number of seasons what’s success ? We was up until 2 seasons ago the most established league 1 tier 3 football club in England did anybody in Walsall see that as successful? No the exact opposite actually,So success and sustained success would mean getting promoted next season a top 6 finish the following season and even then if we lost in the Play offs there would be fans saying that’s it we’ve failed again typical Walsall they ain’t having anymore of my money .
What we need is something like that Russian who took over at Bournemouth but knowing some of our fans they’d moan about him not building us a New stadium
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Its not always the price, we do have some great offers, but I am not convinced they work well enough. The season ticket offer for kids is great if you’re a mom or dad with a young child that you can try to lure down and hope they get the bug - but it’s a very small market! For me, our offers have always excluded that key growth demographic in football; young adults.
Example: Birmingham City. 6 under 23s could sign-up with an email and pay a tenner each to attend (2019). If they attend once, each email (not just the person buying) is in the system, its a condition of purchase! Weekly marketing campaigns go out. Again, it’s not rocket science it’s what businesses have been doing to grow customer numbers for years. Identify a key market that attends football and hit that market - do we even do any of this? Do we do any market research? It doesn’t look like we do?
We continually roll out the Early Bird ticket scheme (20 years old), kids for a quid (schools offer twice a season - 30 years old). Do we monitor how effective these offers are, then compare them to our rivals? Do we take the signups emails? Do we monitor how many return after the initial offer? No! None of this takes place in a professional business in 2021. A business that is meant to attract people.
Companies pay thousands to be included on emails that reach thousands of potential customers, so even that can make you money. Do we do this? No. Its tired, its dated, and more importantly none of it is working. I have a feeling we are going to miss another opportunity when we return to games, because unlike other clubs we won’t use the initial market surge to our advantage and ride the wave. I hope I am proved wrong of course - surely it’s got to happen sooner rather than later!
This is all basic stuff in business, and this is why people that run businesses like Phil and a few others are so hard on this club. Its not money, its just a bit of nouse and care. The bare minimum we should expect from CEOs of our club.
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Winning some games, i am not talking promotion. We are crap and have been for years.
Relegation from League 1 followed by two rubbish seasons in League 2. It’s doesn’t get any worse 
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It does - going bankrupt and dropping out of existence.
Exactly that’s why we need to win some games.
That would probably be better than paying bonsor pension fund for the next 30 years. Rebuild from the ground up in a totally different stadium even if it meant ground sharing with rushall olympic and starting at the bottom of the national league. You really would find out who’s the true supporters then.
So Southend have, indeed, brought in Phil Brown. Add that to Grimsby bringing in Hurst, Colchester bringing in Tisdale…things could get a little tense over the next few weeks.
And who is right? These other clubs for bringing in established names, or us persevering with a rookie manager without a win to his name after 13 games? Time will tell…