NSC's breakfast chat with Paul Barber

yes, we do. For the first time last season, we included an "exit interview" as part of the ST cancellation process.

- the most common reasons are personal financial, work/family moves, personal circumstances (eg divorce), illness/death.

- rarely (even including last season), do we get someone saying they weren't enjoying the football or the match day experience.

- even less common is that the ST is simply too expensive (it's the change of financial circumstances that puts it beyond reach).

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- we haven't yet decided what our ST cap will be but PL rules require a minimum number of match day tickets to be available in all price categories.

- once you take in to account, away fan allocation goes to 3,000 and increased demand for hospitality, we don't expect to sell many more STs beyond current numbers.

- hence our messaging around expectations of possible ST sell out this year; again, these messages do have logic behind them.

- now we must complete the job of actually getting up as soon as possible!

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I think (and it's a theory backed by our research), another general socio-economic reason related to our general ST no shows - and that is the relative wealth of our fan base.

A large section of our fans are, generally speaking, more affluent than the Championship average and as such tend to miss more games across the entire season as they take weekends away, more holidays, and are able to afford a range of different interests.

This combination means that whilst there aren't many that miss more than 3 or 4 games, there are a much larger number than the norm for clubs that miss up to this number. It's an interesting stat that speaks to the way the club's fan base has evolved.

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And one other point you can add:

- we DO take in to account supporters' travel when considering the impact of live TV games. This relates to both HOME and AWAY games. So, for example, when the Wolves game was switched to New Year's Day, we made sure our regular travel plan could be operational before agreeing to the switch. For away games (and only 2 away games have moved dates for TV purposes), we know that even when train timetables may not work perfectly (or at all), various supporters' coach services will still be running and that people can also drive their own vehicles or share cars and mini buses - and many do. The reality is that for all away games, the train is simply one mode of transport for our fans. There are many others. As I have repeatedly said, there's only so much we can do to marry up the various, often competing or conflicting, interests around a live TV match and we have very few options to refuse a live match. Unfortunately, as much as we might try to influence, we cannot control train timetables.

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we cannot control train time tables

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MattBackHome said:

A couple of thoughts on the above:

It is entirely expected (and therefore only moderately interesting) that non-renewal reasons would rarely be either the experience or the value. The Amex experience is phenomenal, and the ST price increases have always been well communicated and explained. When combined with the DD option and the general affluence of the fan base it makes perfect sense that people would have to be rightly macked off to actually have a gripe worth cancelling for. What would be more interesting is to track how these figures have changed over the years since 11/12 - specifically the proportion of 'gripe' non-renewals against 'life reasons' non-renewals and the absolute number of 'gripe' non-renewals. Given the exit interview only started last year I don't suppose the club has these figures, but it will be a useful relatively early indicator of any issues in pricing or fan sentiment.

Regarding no-shows: Some extremely quick and not just dirty, but outright filthy sums here and I'm guessing that based on PBs assertions of "not many miss more than 3 or 4 games" that we're looking at somewhere between 80-90% ST 'occupancy' (arses on seats) over the season. I completely agree about how the supposed affluency can impact this. But what other clubs in the Championship would have a similar demographic across it's ST base? Reading? Fulham? Forest? Leeds? (I genuinely don't know this - complete guess). Regardless, it would seem that in this context we are performing relatively well relative to our peers.

Oh, and tell PB that these Q&As works a ****load better when the questions are real.

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