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How much should we really be paying?


ICTPaisley

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From when I first started watching ICT I was paying £3 to get in as an under 16 and then afterwards I was a student so was getting a fairly decent deal in terms of the average ticket price.  I grudge paying anymore than £15 for a league ticket these days which is obviously below the average price now.  If it comes to a cup game I would expect to be paying around £12 unless it was the later rounds where i'm quite happy to pay £20/£25/£30.  I don't mind paying extra for a "big" game as its a one off and a great occasion but every second week is just too much.

 

For the past couple seasons I have been "ground hopping" around the Juniors and lower leagues on my days off and even though I pay £4/£7 I would quite happily pay more and I feel I get value for money when going to these games.

 

What does everyone else think we should be paying?

 

 

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Should you not be ICTABERDONIAN? :lol: Joking aside I would agree with you in the current climate.  I don't have a problem buying my season ticket for the North Stand but there are many supporters  who I am sure work hard only on the minimum wage paying rent and bills who cant afford to go to all the league games.  I hope they take up the offers that the club are doing for some games.

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Regular games should be about £15 I would say.  People can talk about the style of football and all that stuff, but the fact of the matter is, for the standard of football that we actually see, anything more than £15 to sit anywhere in the stadium is a rip-off.  There's maybe a case for raising it to £18 for cup finals/derbies/important matches, but I think that's as far as it goes.

 

Pricing is simply out of control and it's even worse down south and the current prices here still aren't exactly enticing to casual fans.  We need to get these people into a loop and a routine of being regular attenders or in the long run, we could well lose them and their offspring forever.

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Off topic, but I wish the TV companies would decide which matches they want at the start of the season. A lot of our fans travel to home matches. There's nothing more frustrating than booking public transport only to find out a fixture has been shifted to a Sunday or Friday night.

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At least with a season ticket its all paid up at the start of the season,  If you think its too dear you could always take some youngsters and sit in the family section.

 

You could pay to watch something at Eden Ct, as a rule of thumb the more you spend the better the performance, so really theres not much point complaining in a season when we are joint top of the league with Celtic.

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We would all like to pay a bit less to watch the football. The trouble is that the club is a business with a number of full and part time employees to pay and sustantial other overheads.

 

Even with prudent housekeeping it takes a very good year for the club to turn a profit and there is often a six figure loss and that is with current ticket prices. With a very modest TV deal, ongoing lack of league sponsorship and limited commercial opportunities, Scottish clubs such as ours rely heavily on gate income to survive. Experiments at other clubs, notably Motherwell have demonstrated that lower prices does not seem to result in substantially increased attendance.

 

The club do not set the prices to exploit fans but to ensure sufficient income to remain viable and competitive in the top tier. I am certain they would love to charge no more than say fifteen quid for routine league games but simply can't. They do what they can with one off initiatives for which they should be applauded but, in general, if we want to sustain 'Premiership' football in Inverness we are going to have to pay the going rate.

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Lets be a bit controversial eh :smile:

 

I really do not understand why anybody who lives in the near vicinity of Inverness has anything to moan about. The main cost of the day would be your admission and if you planned to go on a regular basis it would make sense to purchase a season ticket. To me the crippling cost of football these days are the costs of travelling. Train and bus fares are continuously rising - hotel costs are high - and then there is food and refreshments (especially in rounds at the Fairways!!). Even petrol can be expensive and the poor **** who sits behind the wheel.

 

Make a comparison with another night out in the week - even the cost of a trip to the piccies, sweeties and a take away. :amazed:

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Agree wholeheartedly with Kingsmills and Johndo. The prices that are set for ICTFC are probably the minimum that could be put in place and still ensure that we have a viable business to give us a premiership team. The margins are unbelievably tight and the consequences of getting it wrong are high - if we don't charge enough, we can't pay for decent contracts and we lose players and if we lose enough, the day will come where we can't replace them. The last time we were relegated jobs were lost and the club survived by using a reserve of funds that enabled us to keep going. It's not there anymore. £15 quid for a standard ticket will not keep this team in the premiership, full stop. So what's to do? Get another 500 people through the gate at every home game and give the club some leeway (and improve the atmosphere) Accept that the prices that we are paying are simply the minimum needed to ensure that we still have a game to watch, because that's what they are. Pricing isn't "out of control" and is probably the thing that most creative thinking is applied to behind the scenes at TCS to keep it to a minimum. It just needs your support.  Oh aye, and it's no help to Johndo but if you want cheap transport to games and a driver you don't have to nominate,  you can't do better than £15 return to any ground in Scotland with CJT's buses.

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Aren't Ross County's Supporter's Buses only £10 return?

Think they are free this season courtesy of Mr McGregor. Not helping them much so far though. Unfortunately we don't have a benefactor to subsidise our buses, other than what CJT can do, so the cost has to be met somehow.

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Do the SPFL have any say in what prices are charged by the clubs? I'd assume we'd have had to advise them of our plan to go with a 'pay-what-you-want' fixture?

Maybe they 'recommend' say, a minimum price depending on the level - ie Elgin would be instructed/encouraged to charge £10 in the fourth-tier, whereas we'd be expected to set prices at a around £20 in the top-flight?

 

I agree with Davie, that the gate receipts are the life-blood of teams in Scottish football.

 

It's different, down south - the SKY and BT Sport deals are paying absolute fortunes to the clubs.

I can't remember which Chairman it was - but one recently, candidly revealed that with the annual sponsorships from (particularly) TV money, shirt logo, pitch-side etc that gate receipts were 'no longer terribly important'! It's unfortunate that we share a border with the country with a league that's become little more than a grotesque business with Arab billionaires and Russian oligarchs treating it like a play-thing.

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Aren't Ross County's Supporter's Buses only £10 return?

Think they are free this season courtesy of Mr McGregor. Not helping them much so far though. Unfortunately we don't have a benefactor to subsidise our buses, other than what CJT can do, so the cost has to be met somehow.

 

No its Weldex Alex. Adults pay £10 and accompanied U16s travel free. As you say we dont have a the luxury of subsidy so try to keep prices as low as humanly possible.

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So you can do better than £15 return then.

technically yes, but then you have to be a county fan and it will cost you more than £5 a game to get that smell out of your clothes !

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So you can do better than £15 return then.

??????

 

 

A post earlier on said that you can't do better than £15 return but it turns out you can.

 

The crux of the matter is though, people can talk about breaking even etc. all they like, but for the price we pay, do we really see a standard of football that justifies it?  I wonder how many people would like to come to more ICT games, but have simply been priced out by their own club.  If prices keep going up, there'll probably be many more as time goes on.

Edited by Renegade
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I can't believe i'm saying this but I actually agree with 'Renegade' that £15 is about right for the standard of football in the SPFL.  I understand all about the minimum prices etc but lets be honest with no disrespect to a great team we have for this level this season, that £31 to see any game at TCS is way too much.

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So you can do better than £15 return then.

??????

 

 

A post earlier on said that you can't do better than £15 return but it turns out you can

 

No we can't. County can because their buses are subsidised by one of our former chairman who now backs the Dingwall mob.

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I can't believe i'm saying this but I actually agree with 'Renegade' that £15 is about right for the standard of football in the SPFL.  I understand all about the minimum prices etc but lets be honest with no disrespect to a great team we have for this level this season, that £31 to see any game at TCS is way too much.

Then how do you suggest we make good the shortfall ?

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