Message to John Ryan

[Branton Rover]

Thank God for our beloved Chairman because without him & his backing the sweat & tears for this past decade or so this current debate re season tickets would be rendered irrelevant because there would be no club to support anyway.  

We've gone through some emotions over the years haven't we?  I can't remember many bad ones under John's stewardship of our fantastic club.  He has stated many times that if anyone else feels they can do a better job he'd gladly pass it on, I don't see many takers for the role.  Least we can do is support him in his request to bolster our chances for next season.  Remember how panicked we all were when we thought we were going to lose Sean, this backing for the clubs board is essential I feel to show Sean we are a Championship side & with our backing for this & his astuteness of mind who knows where it might lead?  Without it I dare say Sean will get itchy feet & look for a challenge to match his ambition.  I know these are tough times but I'd wager it'll be cheaper this way than taking the wife shopping on a Saturday afternoon, I know where I'll be sat in my seat watching the mighty Red & White Hoops destroy some more massive names of English Football's past.  Bring it on.  

PS Surely it must be past time when John Ryan is given the freedom of the Borough or some such accolade he certainly deserves it

[rtid88]

Well said Branton Rover!!

Enough of the whinging now about Season Tickets, what ever you say it is not going to change the facts that have already now been given to us. If you currently have a CAT C season ticket (like myself) I do feel that we have got it the worse from the re-pricing and if it was not for my Football Barclaycard there is no way that I would be able to afford my next season's ticket before the end of March.

We will undoubtedly lose a few thousand season ticket holders because of this increase by the club, which apart from the CAT C tickets is not that drastic when you bear in mind how cheap our season tickets have been for the past few seasons. I know it comes at a bad time for most fans with the ongoing financial problems but quite obviously the club cannot keep going at the lower prices that they have been charging. It might get rid of some of these walk out fans that just disappear when the going gets tough during the game.

Come on Rovers fans lets pull together and get behind JR and SOD and lets hope if there is extra revenue earned next year that it goes on making the signings that can get us to the play offs or maybe better next year or re-structuring the wages of the team to enable us to sign Mr Sharp!!

RTID!!!

[Snods Shinpad 2]

Nice one Branton!

[DonnyBazR0ver]

We will undoubtedly lose a few thousand season ticket holders because of this increase by the club, which apart from the CAT C tickets is not that drastic when you bear in mind how cheap our season tickets have been for the past few seasons

So, we lost about 1000 ST holders for this season. A few suggest we will lose a similar number for next season.

Where is this going then. At this rate we might as well cut capacity to 10000 and charge £50 a seat.

If we were filling the bloody stadium, then I could understand you could jiggle the prices upwards. Call me simple or old fashioned but I though the idea was to expand the fan base !

[rtid88]

How do you suggest they do this? Risk lowering the prices and see if this brings in more fans? Do you not think JR has put enough of his money in already? At the end of the day JR is a man with a family himself and can only put so much into the club and why should he bother if the fans are not actually going to come down to the keepmoat when we already charge one of the least in the Championship for Season Tickets and match day tickets?

The fact is, is that there are not enough people that live in Doncaster that are bothered about Doncaster Rovers, they would much rather support bigger clubs then there home town club. This will take many years to change and one way of making this happen is to bring some bigger name players in to excel the club up the league and fighting for a play off place or automatic promotion. As I have said before I have not got much of a problem with the increases in the price of season tickets (this surely must have been expected by all Rovers fans with half a brain), but simply the short notice for CAT C season ticket holders to get £320 together.

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

DonnyBazR0ver wrote:

If we were filling the bloody stadium, then I could understand you could jiggle the prices upwards. Call me simple or old fashioned but I though the idea was to expand the fan base !

You could argue that the reason we need higher prices is that we aren't filling the stadium, prices have been good yet we average 10500, 4500 below capacity.  The prices haven't increased for a few years, we're seeing that rise now in one go, rather than spread out.

[MrFrost]

big fat yorkshire pudding wrote:

DonnyBazR0ver wrote:

If we were filling the bloody stadium, then I could understand you could jiggle the prices upwards. Call me simple or old fashioned but I though the idea was to expand the fan base !

You could argue that the reason we need higher prices is that we aren't filling the stadium, prices have been good yet we average 10500, 4500 below capacity.  The prices haven't increased for a few years, we're seeing that rise now in one go, rather than spread out.

Ok, look at this scenario. We lose 2500-3000 season ticket holders (which we will) and average between 7000-8000 next season (which we will)

What happens the season after? Another increase because again we lost fans so need to increase revenue?

I'm fed up of reading all the posts over the last few days. It was much more enjoyable watching Rovers in the Conference. And I mean that.

[woodsiderover]

We are always being told that football needs to be run as a business, taking that on board a business is about supply and demand and with the stadium not at capacity its the demand that needs increasing.

[MrFrost]

woodsiderover wrote:

We are always being told that football needs to be run as a business, taking that on board a business is about supply and demand and with the stadium not at capacity its the demand that needs increasing.

If the club eomployed a half decent marketing team, they could increase demand. They wont, so it wont.

[PDX_Rover]

If the club could market its way out of a paper bag and had tried everything it its power to drum up support, I'd be much more sympathetic.

But they haven't. So I'm not.

Bloody rubbish Cusack.

[DonnyBazR0ver]

We are always being told that football needs to be run as a business

And every business needs to be in tune with it's customers and market trends.

[BLIR]

It's been a while, but I did a degree in Business. Marketing forms a massive part of the success of any product, and the main four constituents of the marketing mix are called the 4 P's:

Product
Place
Price
Promotion

with all four needing to be considered.

The product is not doing badly at all, successive promotions, play off win, cup win etc and us playing attractive football and holding our own with the big guns.

You can't do anything about the place, the demographics suggest that there are ample customers for the club to succeed.

Price is clearly an emotive subject at the moment. The recession is allegedly behind us but most people are still experiencing financial difficulties yet the club have increased prices. It has been mentioned many times in the past that it's not just the admission price that needs to be considered - the merchandising, programme sales, food & drinks, half time draw tickets etc etc etc will all be reduced by a lower footfall.

Promotion is largely non existent. When the stadium was built people constantly asked about the scope for expanding it because they felt that 15k was too small, but we have rarely filled it and regularly fall 5k short. In what way have the club actively promoted themselves outside of the stadium? Where are the tv ads, the newspaper interviews, the magazine supplements, radio ads? It's all very well advertising inside the stadium, but the vast majority of fans inside the stadium already know when the next games are and are likely to attend anyway.

John Ryan is constantly putting his hand into his pockets, and we should all be extremely grateful for this, but the management team he employs are, in my opinion, letting him down by not actively doing the job they are paid to do. Ultimately a successful business will survive and flourish, we as a club are not doing so - if it wasn't for JR we would likely still be playing conference football at BV. It was my belief that JR always said he would originally get the club to this division and then withdraw his financial support, leaving us functioning successfully.

Clearly this hasn't happened. We cannot survive without his money, and certainly would have no aspirations of chasing the play off places. He is a wealthy man for sure, but his pockets are not bottomless and he will eventually have to call it a day.

Without someone at the club taking charge of the business side and actively focussing on revenue control we will flounder. I'm sure JR would not want to see this happen but sooner or later he may  have no choice. Yes, there are the other financial backers but they appear (depending on which rumour you believe) to contribute to a lesser degree.

Time will tell what will happen, and I'm not generally a pessimist by nature, but the long term future doesn't look overly orange to me.

[I-was-there1976]

Chairmen have their own ideas on how to run football clubs as a business. Just look at the state of 90% of football clubs finances. They aint got a clue.

Rochdale got an amazing 3500 last night for a top of the table clash against Rotherham. Rotherham took about 1000. Football is too expensive at all levels.

HELLO ANYBODY OUT THERE IN THE REAL WORLD ?

[The Red Baron]

BLIR wrote:

It's been a while, but I did a degree in Business. Marketing forms a massive part of the success of any product, and the main four constituents of the marketing mix are called the 4 P's:

Product
Place
Price
Promotion

with all four needing to be considered.

The product is not doing badly at all, successive promotions, play off win, cup win etc and us playing attractive football and holding our own with the big guns.

You can't do anything about the place, the demographics suggest that there are ample customers for the club to succeed.

Price is clearly an emotive subject at the moment. The recession is allegedly behind us but most people are still experiencing financial difficulties yet the club have increased prices. It has been mentioned many times in the past that it's not just the admission price that needs to be considered - the merchandising, programme sales, food & drinks, half time draw tickets etc etc etc will all be reduced by a lower footfall.

Promotion is largely non existent. When the stadium was built people constantly asked about the scope for expanding it because they felt that 15k was too small, but we have rarely filled it and regularly fall 5k short. In what way have the club actively promoted themselves outside of the stadium? Where are the tv ads, the newspaper interviews, the magazine supplements, radio ads? It's all very well advertising inside the stadium, but the vast majority of fans inside the stadium already know when the next games are and are likely to attend anyway.

John Ryan is constantly putting his hand into his pockets, and we should all be extremely grateful for this, but the management team he employs are, in my opinion, letting him down by not actively doing the job they are paid to do. Ultimately a successful business will survive and flourish, we as a club are not doing so - if it wasn't for JR we would likely still be playing conference football at BV. It was my belief that JR always said he would originally get the club to this division and then withdraw his financial support, leaving us functioning successfully.

Clearly this hasn't happened. We cannot survive without his money, and certainly would have no aspirations of chasing the play off places. He is a wealthy man for sure, but his pockets are not bottomless and he will eventually have to call it a day.

Without someone at the club taking charge of the business side and actively focussing on revenue control we will flounder. I'm sure JR would not want to see this happen but sooner or later he may  have no choice. Yes, there are the other financial backers but they appear (depending on which rumour you believe) to contribute to a lesser degree.

Time will tell what will happen, and I'm not generally a pessimist by nature, but the long term future doesn't look overly orange to me.

Have you ever fancied being CEO of Donny Rovers? Sounds like you could do a better job of it than the current incumbent, because this is the sort of thinking he should be coming up with.

Strikes me that JR needs to look for the \"Sean O'Driscoll\" of football administration if we are going to move the club forward. Someone who has the right vision but needs to develop it on a bigger stage. Maybe we should be scouring Leagues One and Two for the next CEO, rather than players!