David

I think you're bang on the money there. There is no real incentive for anyone to buy a season ticket, and Boyle using the old "it's more than buying a ticket, it's a commitment to the club" line won't wash with as many people this summer as he thinks. It's time that people who are willing to put their money down in advance are given some real incentives to do so.

The real problem is that no one except hardcore fans even know about the price-cut deals! No one i've spoken to has heard anything about the prices for the Hibs game. Where are the club advertising this? As for these deals themselves, it's all well & good doing the odd game here and there, but what we really need to do is take the prices down for an extended period of time. It's no good doing it for the odd game, as that won't make any difference, and will only upset the loyal season book holders. What we need is a decent reward for those who put their money into the club by way of season tickets and merchandise purchases, and some incentives to draw people into doing just that. This would involve having to operate in the real world though, so i'm not holding my breath.

Maybe it's about time that the club made a commitment to the fans, and showed something of real substance when it comes to working in the current economic climate? It's all well & good making statements asking for fans to show commitment to the club, but we need to see some commitment from the club as well. The deal allowing under 16's to claim a free book is certainly a move in the right direction, and will go some way to filling up some of the empty seats we have, but we need to see more.

What kind of numbers would we deem acceptable when it comes to a season ticket in the current economical climate?

How much are mid-table clubs in leagues similar to ours charging for season books? Norway? Sweden? Denmark?

Nice one. Cheers.

Does anyone know the script regarding this game being on the telly? It's marked as being a BT Vision game. Will any pubs around Motherwell be showing it?

With the club challenging for Europe at this stage in the season, especially considering the position we were in when Gannon got bumped, and Boyle seeing fit to slash prices for the immensely important game with Hibs, i'm pleased to see the Motherwell support showing enthusiasm and a positive attitude to both the game this weekend and the pricing.

Right, does anyone see us taking anything from this game? Celtic are pretty much done for the season. They have 2nd place sewn up, so they have sod all to play for really except pride and all that tosh. If we can get a result in this game, and the Hibs manage to stumble against Hearts earlier in the day, we could certainly make things a bit easier on ourselves going into Wednesdays game. Also, does anyone know if Ruddy is going to be back for this game? Or is he done for the season? As far as the result goes, i'm going with a solid 1-1 draw.

This game is on BT Vision apparently. Anyone know if it'll be on in the pub?

Has there actually been any official word on us moving ground in the near future?

Anyone know?

Oh aye, I remember that now!

Using one of those online loan calculators, I came up with the following; According to the Zebra website, they offer the loan for season books over 10 months, and i've used the 19.9% interest rate that was mentioned earlier in the thread. For one regular adult season ticket for the Cooper stand, you're looking at a monthly repayment of £31.71. This would total £317, with you paying an extra £27 in interest.

Yeah, i'm kind of hoping for that myself to be honest. If they freeze prices, or even offer an early sign up offer, i'd definately be interested if the installments were interest free.

I wonder how much this kind of rate would bring the complete payable total to? More than it would cost to PATG for every home game?

The problem with this is the interest rate without a doubt. What if the interest rate pushes the total cost of the ticket above what you would pay coming through the gate? The difference in both isn't that much to be honest, and that's just if you buy your book in a one-off payment. Unless something incredibly enticing is introduced, i'll be keeping to my pattern of picking & choosing my games. Which is a shame really, as i'd like to be there every second week.

What was the interest rate on it?

The whole 'tenner a match' thing was discussed in another thread, but it would certainly seem to be a more realistic price. I doubt it would happen though, so a price freeze and an installent deal is the best we can hope for.

I don't see us getting any more than 6,000 to 8,000 if the game in this country does experience a resurgence though. We simply aren't big enough to draw 10,000+ to our games on regular enough basis to make it worthwhile. You have to remember that any resurgence will also see an increase in fans from the Lanarkshire area making the trip to follow the Bigot Brothers.

There would really have to be a installment deal for me to consider buying a season book.

I don't think the odd game every few years where we score a 10,000 attendance is worth having all of those empty seats the rest of the time. At present, during a time when we are actually doing quite well, we have more than half of our stadium sitting empty most home games. Thats more areas that require maintenance, and it would add to the initial cost of building a new stadium. Our average home attendance barely scrapes 6,000 most seasons, so even allowing for an extra 2,000 fans for a game of high interest (bearing in mind that this would account for an extra 50% of our attendances at the moment), we could easily get by on a stadium holding 8,000 or so. It may do something for the atmosphere as well.

Ah, I see.

Just out of curiosity, can anyone remember when we actually drew average crowd of 10,000 fans? I'm sure we must have during the time around the Scottish cup win?

Some would say that i'm just being realistic. There are so many contributing factors nowadays to why the game is on the slide, some of which we can do bugger all about. When Sky Sports are showing shitloads of games every week, including the likes of the EPL, La Liga & the SPL, and ESPN are showing the best of the other European leagues, it's going to be hard to compete with that, especially at the prices we charge. The numbers you mention there are terribly optimistic in my view, and simply won't happen. This is one occasion that i'd dearly love to be wrong though.