The Euros appear to have their own thread. The EPL banter continues. Today marks the end of the domestic 23/24 season. There are of course 2 small European finals but less by design than accident it appears EFL fans are largely disinterested. By all<dan’s feel free to discuss them here but I suspect the little discussion will take place will elsewhere.
So, it’s time to put in place a new thread for the coming (eek) season. Farewell to fans of Ipswich, Leicester and Southampton. Your home is a thread elsewhere on here and good luck to you all. Your civility has of course been welcome here and so you’re welcome to come back and contribute appropriately.
Welcome to Chesterfield and Bromley fans and of course those of Burnley, Luon and Sheffield United.
The season is starting badly already for Wolves season ticket holders. Our Korean owners have decided to increase prices from 17% to an eye-watering 133% for under 14’s and wheelchair users. There are no promises to invest the extra money either on or off the pitch. They have stuck two fingers to the fans. Surely the pandemic showed just how important we are. My brother will not be renewing his tickets and there is already a campaign for others to do the same.
In the EPL, ticket pricing is a bit odd (and expensive).
When you look at the graphs showing income for each club, the matchday revenue is tiny compared to TV income. So a 100% increase in ticket revenue will not generate a proportionate increase in revenue (plus, if consider opportunity cost, higher prices might result in less spend on pies,beers and shirts).
It almost makes more sense in the EFL, where TV revenue does not have the same impact.
No idea what the answer is. And no idea how clubs calculate the cost/benefit of ticket prices.
Interesting to read Shia’s mantra for the past few seasons around pitching prices at what you’d broadly expect to pay elsewhere in the EPL for a similar size club with a similar size stadium and fan base i.e. for all the talk of commercial revenue it’s really “what can we get away with compared to others” rather than “what do we need to move forward”. So as long as you’re not well below other similar EPL clubs and not too much above everything is justifiable.
You’ll have the delight of playing Pompey next year of course. As I understand it the finances of the Championship are on a whole different level to League 1 and it will be interesting how Pompey get on in assembling a team to compete at the higher level. It was 2011/12 when they were relegated to League 1, and then League 2 followed the year later. And now, after 13 years, they are finally back. I do hope they make the adjustment and do well.
I read last week that the average loss in the Championship is around £480,000 per week. That gives a solid indication of the very basic difficulties involved in just staying afloat let alone mounting a bid for anything else.
Yup, so when @JohnF finds this new thread and finds out he’s only the 2nd person to mention Delia and wants to remind us how badly she’s running his club he should be able to do the maths and see that their losses per year there are actually below the average. Totally puts the claims of well or badly run clubs into perspective.
I believe the figure to get out of the Championship upwards is that you’ll now need £100m to offset those losses and build something to finish top 10 and, if you have all your ducks in a row, then perhaps higher.
For comparison it costs £10m to survive in L2 and/or L1. That then explains why my club have gone from breaking even to a £10m loss in L2. Along with, hopefully, many other Wrexham fans, I will be quite content to see this season out in 20th place and would see anything above 15th as a massive success. Obviously our manager won’t see it that way and it may well bewilder many of our new worldwide fan base but a few seasons in the middle of L1 before building for a sustainable promotion bid, whilst lots of key infrastructure such as 4 sided ground, training facilities and the return of international football, will be just fine.
I read somewhere that the standard practice is to really invest in one year, and if you don’t make it, sell a few players and hope you don’t get relegated in the next two seasons. That way, your losses over 3 seasons should be within spending rules. Though that still means you’re losing 10s of millions £.
But. For me. Championship is the most enjoyable league for watching football. Much of the football is excellent to watch. Anyone can beat anyone. And majority of games are on a Saturday at 3pm.
Oh yes. Not dissing top level football (I love it, and will be saddened if we drop back down). But there is something about the Championship that really works on the competitive level that hits a sweet spot
Put simply, it’’s the football we grew up with. Actual defending; still some legal physical contact rather than ballet etc. Few teams with an obscene advantage facilitated wholly by money or by funding from a nation state.
I’m not sure the EPL levels are that “remarkable”. Pace is a function of modern fitness techniques. I don’t see skill levels any higher than say 5 decades ago. More that 1 by 1 the means of legally preventing people freely expressing those skills have been removed. In many cases that is obviously for the better. In many, very much arguably not.
I’ve been fortunate to have watched the EPL over several yo-yo years and the athleticism has improved which has brought about greater pace and power. Established premiership teams have become physically a lot stronger making the art of staying up very difficult. On top of that you have another level of skill to deal with.
Watching current football v past (70s/80s) football, I am constantly surprised at the increase in the pace of the game.
Whilst I am sure the players of 40/50 years ago could have been brought up to current fitness/strength levels, I think the top teams of those times would be routinely slaughtered by most current Premiership sides.
The current average players skill levels have increased compared to the average player of the past purely because skills have had to improved due to the increased speed of the game. I believe a lot of current players that don’t look particularly good in todays sides would look much better if they were suddenly put in 1970s/80s sides.
It took real skill to dribble and pass the ball on pitches resembling quagmires. Put the old greats on today’s carpets, give them a modern fitness regime and they’d be the equal of anything on offer today. Watch Jimmy Greaves one on 1 with the goalie. Eddie Gray floating across the mud. That’s before looking at the likes of Pele. Also worth bearing in mind the ball the old guys played with.
and wants to remind us how badly she’s running his club he should be able to do the maths and see that their losses per year there are actually below the average. Totally puts the claims of well or badly run clubs into perspective.