05-12-2005, 19:03
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#18
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Join Date: Mar 2004
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Re: Discounted Ramsbottom Tickets
Are we being unreasonable?
Consider Sunderland, bottom of the Premier League. They announced that prices for their Carling Cup game on Tuesday October 25th against Arsenal (reserves) would be £5 adults and £1 under-16s and senior citizens.
Despite a capacity of 49,000 at the Stadium of Light, their previous highest attendance this season had been two Saturday beforehand against Man Utd at 39,085. For the Carling Cup game, which they lost convincingly, 47,366 people turned up.
According to Lesley Callaghan, the club’s marketing and communications director, “Setting such low prices for this game is our way of thanking the fans for their continued support. We also hope it may encourage those supporters who haven’t been to games this season to return to the Stadium of Light. It’s important to encourage the next generation of Sunderland fans and it would be great to see a large number of youngsters and their families attending this game.”
Since that game, average attendance at the Stadium of Light have increased by 1,000 and it is not that they have been playing glamorous teams - Birmingham, Aston Villa and Portsmouth - unlike the period before the Carling Cup when Man Utd brought a lot of fans, and when Liverpool were the fourth post-Carling Cup to visit last week, it was on a Wednesday night so far fewer would have travelled than had the match been on a Saturday as with Man Utd.
The Sunderland 'experiment' certainly worked. I can't see anything wrong in trying a similar exercise in future Cup matches, "overheads" or not.
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