But this technique would stop waiting surely, and actually encourage people to buy and tell others to buy? You pay the full price to start with, then encourage more people, friends, family, newbies to buy as well in order to reach the discounted price. Which the difference, if the required number of tickets is sold, is simply reimbursed. I certainly wouldn't be waiting, I'd be there buying and telling everyone else I know to be buying to get to the target - as long as its a sensible target to reach in order to receive the discounted price of course.

Problem is when do we find out how many teams in our league next season.? Therefor until we do we couldn't do what Huddersfield have done

Yeah i get the concept, and its a good one....but what limit would fax be able to gamble on before they actually ended up with less income than what they would have done if they had just done normal prices?

my season ticket this year was £140 ish (free corp meal inc) good deal i thought!,

but this early bird offer didnt get that many more commiting.

the club need to think of new ways to get people commiting their money now.

the thing is fax have probably 1000 season ticket holders that would buy whatever price they are (within reason) its the other 8-900 that come to games everyweek we need to get buying them.

I heard of even other club supporters buying the Bradford one as for £60 it was worth it to them as they visited the ground once or twice anyway plus if your teams on the box Fri or Sat you can go along and watch Bradford on the Sunday (even if you can`t bear to watch the full match).

thought that had already been agreed 10 teams in our league next season. 2 down 1 up. and if crusaders not in our league then 2 up. This will change the following season to 12 teams being in our league?

Free child season ticket with every adult one/ Free shirt etc

So 9 in Championship 1 , they'll be happy

if huddersfield season ticket holders introduce a friend they get money off too.
Buy 1 season ticket for 140 get your friends for 100

We cannot compete with Huddersfield as Ken Davy chucks a cool £1 million at them EVERY YEAR how can you compete with that?
They are still having to 'buy' fans = how sad this is what RL has become this a top 3 club playing good rugby too!
I would go for an £80 season ticket if 200 sign up for it, worth a try.

we have 1000 season ticket holders or there abouts. Why off 200 of them one at £80?

You need to be very careful with this type of deal , you can de value your product to the point where people will not see it as worth anything , and will only pay the special deal price in the future

The championship will have a very unglamorous feel about it next season. Only Fax v Leigh to really look forward to. Fax v Fev games will have low crowds due to past problems, Batley wont be a plum tie as they wont be a force next year if Harrison leaves the club, I dont think uncle Des will be bankrolling Barrow next year, Sky are probably selling TV rights to premier sports, so less coverage to attract new fans, all we need now is Wood/Lewis to announce championship franchising so no relegation making the sport at this level utterly pointless. Hardly gonna attract a fairweather into buying a season ticket. We have a good loyal fanbase though, so I dont expect a huge decline in season ticket sales and attendance. I certainly dont expect an increase though

Yes , very ' vibrant and worth winning in it's own right '

How about trying to sort out a similar event to that Melbourne game, but maybe against this years Super League winners or the likes of Wigan, Leeds or Warrington? Play it on a Friday or Saturday night, lots of free tickets, lots of advertising.

A big crowd, a great game (hopefully) and a great atmosphere could attract a lot of new interest!

What about James' testimonial game against the Burleigh Bears? Not quite Melbourne, but it's a different team to the usual SL teams. Get it in the weekly rugby press and may draw in some punters.

Thought Hemel Hempstead were ready to join Champ 1



Thats a great game, not sure if the Bears are touring over here or what, but great to have a different opposition, than (no disrespect intended) someone like Keighley.

At the risk of being controversial and leaving myself wide open for making a poor business decision, couldn't we try to use the super league clubs to our advantage? Yep, I see the irony!

I do believe our hard core will always buy a ticket regardless of a big discount, we want money to go to our club, therefore target the loyal ticket holders of all super league clubs. Something daft like twenty or thirty quid on presentation of your super league season ticket might just appeal to true rl fans who don't get the chance to watch a game on a lot of Sundays due to loads playing Friday and sometimes Saturday.

I understand they won't come regularly but a few from various clubs is better than none at all. They may come down on a Thursday too.

Sweeten the deal by giving them a ticket to a block in the east stand kept for any travelling super league fans. It might give the powers that be a wake up if we sold a few hundred and had many various club colours watching our championship games.

Sorry if this sounds silly or unworkable, I'm probably overlooking some big drawbacks but just want my club to benefit

A friend from Hartlepool got their season ticket for this season for £100 instead of £320. Chairman announced pay £100 deposit, if 4000 sold by mid-July no further payment required. It was then on a sliding scale so if for example 3000 sold, price would be £150 so £50 extra to pay, 2000 sold was £200 with £100 extra to pay etc....

Having averaged crowds of 3500 last year (helped by decent away followings) with around 1500 season ticket holders, this season they have sold 5674 season tickets and the club and town are buzzing ready for the new season.

They sold more season tickets in first 10 days on sale than the whole of last year.

They put up matchday prices (not sure we can given they're already £15/£1icon_cool.gif so as to encourage season ticket purchases and thus upfront payments. For £100 this now gets you around 5-6 games of football instead of 23 plus reserve matches with a season ticket.

Also 5700 people buying programmes, raffle tickets, merchandise, cashfax etc much better than 1500 die-hards. Also extra food/drink on matchday too (appreciate council would get this but maybe could then reduce prices due to extra volume). Admittedly they all won't turn up every game but will help average attendance and additional matchday revenue.

Because of the extras associated with more supporters in attendance, they felt it would be more beneficial to have 4000 at £100 (400k) than 1500 at £320 (480k). As it turns out they've got 5700 at £100 (570k).

Just a thought....

Huddersfield Giants are offering season tickets right now for £50.00 for the first 2000 and then some more at £99.00. Seriously how can championship teams survive/compete for spectators when the club over each hill, Bradford/Huddersfield offer such cheap deals.

Seems a brilliant idea to me.

I'm not keen on offers encouraging SL Ticket Holders to come to The Shay on the cheap, I don't buy a season ticket as I don't know how many games I can make in a season, (though usually make more than I realise) so always pay cash on the turnstile. And will everyweek, but it then annoys me when there is an offer for someone who pays there money to another club to come down and get in cheap, we're not going to gain any more fans that way! and its unlikely many of them will come back when its full price, they just come along for a cheap afternoon out.

The idea of SL season ticket holders geting a FAX season ticket for £30 or something is the daftest idea i have heard yet to date. Yes in principle it would be good to get spectators through the gates and increasing the attendances would also increase the atmosphere, However the club would lose money hand over fist as anyone who wanted to save money and had any brain would get a bradford of huddersfield cheap season ticket for £50-£70 and then get a fax one using their cheap SL season ticket as a way of getting the cheap fax season ticket, No doubt these fans would then go and watch said other SL club as well and potentially lose a Halifax fan in the process.

I haven't posted on here for a while as there appeared to be quite enough going on and as I am no longer a member of the Board I don't have any "secrets" to pass on! But I wanted to say a few words about finances and plans for 2012 season from a personal perspective as I don't think these type of "Offers" help a club like Fax.

We all know that any club only has a limited number of income generation methods

Funding from an individual or group of individuals (there are pros and cons about having a sugar daddy) but we should not underestimate how important "donations" have been at many stages of the Clubs history and I suspect still are in keeping the club alive - the Supporters Trust have done a marvellous job in this area.
Disquised sponsorship - this is where an individual/Group "hide" their donations behind sponsorship
Pure sponsorship - when the club sell something to someone who believe the price they are paying is commercial
Shared sponsorship - where clubs work together to sell their combined value (league or cup naming rights etc.)
Controlling sponsorship - where the governing body sell "rights" and funds are shared.
Prize money - usually generated as a sub-set of controlling or shared sponsorship
Club direct ancillary sales - everything from shirts, lotteries to match day parking and hospitality
Club indirect ancillary sales - funds generated from use of clubs facilities (hire of ground by third parties etc.)
gate receipts


Given the continued economic environment, the lack of the ability of any championship club to substantively grow it's fan base in the last 10 years ( despite valiant and varied efforts), the increased professionalism of the marketing teams producing limited results we need to accept that whilst we can move forward, and the club can benefit from efforts and donations - and at Fax we have had some extraordinary efforts from people over recent years- the only way to guarantee the security of the club AND deliver year on year a competitive team is for the club to be run by an individual (or small like-minded group) who are prepared to consistently inject funds.

This opens up huge potential risks, but is the model in ALL professional sport. Fiddling around the edges with season ticket offers simply moves the funding gap to somewhere else, or means th club will have less funds to spend on it's biggest cost- players.

Sack em all and have the under 23's, Only costs £25k and we could all get a season ticket for £20.00

I am with you on all that you say Howard, and to that extent Starbug, You pay for what you get with Halifax, Ups and downs and you certainly get your monies worth. Subsidising Season tickets can only devalue the product and once the Money men leave and inevitably it will happen to each club one day, then no-one will pay the full price again and the numbers drop off.

Someone else who dos'nt listen. It costs about 40 K to run the 23's. The ST was giveing the Club a helping hand, not fully funding them.