I wonder if the club would consider having a Pay What You Can game next Friday.

It would be great to fill the stadium and tempt in some new fans for next season in the top flight (fingers crossed). I have noticed a lot of new faces, especially young ones, attending the play off games and it would be great to keep building the momentum. 

In the current economic climate, it would be a nice gesture to those who are struggling financially, and these initiatives can have a funny way of actually being financially beneficial to the club.

Let's create an atmosphere.

 

4 hours ago, CaleyHedgehog said:

I wonder if the club would consider having a Pay What You Can game next Friday.

It would be great to fill the stadium and tempt in some new fans for next season in the top flight (fingers crossed). I have noticed a lot of new faces, especially young ones, attending the play off games and it would be great to keep building the momentum. 

In the current economic climate, it would be a nice gesture to those who are struggling financially, and these initiatives can have a funny way of actually being financially beneficial to the club.

Let's create an atmosphere.

 

Ticket prices are dictated by the SPFL unfortunately, so we can’t do that. 
 

If last night doesn’t bring ‘em in, nothing will. 

7 hours ago, CaleyHedgehog said:

I wonder if the club would consider having a Pay What You Can game next Friday.

It would be great to fill the stadium and tempt in some new fans for next season in the top flight (fingers crossed). I have noticed a lot of new faces, especially young ones, attending the play off games and it would be great to keep building the momentum. 

In the current economic climate, it would be a nice gesture to those who are struggling financially, and these initiatives can have a funny way of actually being financially beneficial to the club.

Let's create an atmosphere.

 

As half the proceeds go to the SPFL, I don't think we are at liberty to do so.

However, the club need to be advising this as widely as possible and we fans need to encourage non attenders or infrequent attenders to come along.

Surely from a population in excess of 100,000 in the greater Inverness area we can tempt 5,000 along to watch the heroes of Gayfield play our most important home match since we last beat the Perth Saints to gain promotion to the top filight almost 2 decades ago.

Couple of thoughts after the larger than usual crowds from the last couple of games:

1. Subject to any GDPR type issues the club should be pinging out emails to everyone who bought tickets for the game on Friday to encourage them to get a season ticket for the next campaign. Perhaps a survey of attitudes towards the club to find out why they might not have attended prior to Friday to see if cost, time or some other barrier exists to prevent people from attending more regularly; and
2. This will be the last season for match day streaming to UK residents I believe as COVID starts to fade away so what will happen to ICTTV and will we see more supporters down the stadium on a typical Saturday instead of watching it on a laptop / TV / phone on the toilet?

FOMO is why more people turn up to what we might describe as bigger or more important games.  If it all goes well, everyone wants to say "I was there".  It has always, and will always, be thus and is an entirely different issue as to why people don't come along every other week.

Football is a tough sport to follow.  Financially, it's tough and I can feed myself for a week on what it costs for an adult ticket, even in the championship.  Logistically, it's tough as there's little routine.  Games often get shifted to different days or different times and even if all matches were a 3pm on a Saturday, there's very little routine in terms of one home, one away.  We're spoiled with parking facilities, or should be, but the moment someone offers a few sheckles to rent the car parks we're ousted.  Even when we're not ousted, the running of the car parks is a shambles and adds to the hassles.  Public transport isn't a realistic option as it's expensive and unreliable.

Each of these things on their own might not be a big deal, but when you start adding them together, people just can't be bothered with it.  It's not just an ICT issue, it happens all over the country.

3 hours ago, RiG said:

Couple of thoughts after the larger than usual crowds from the last couple of games:

1. Subject to any GDPR type issues the club should be pinging out emails to everyone who bought tickets for the game on Friday to encourage them to get a season ticket for the next campaign. Perhaps a survey of attitudes towards the club to find out why they might not have attended prior to Friday to see if cost, time or some other barrier exists to prevent people from attending more regularly; and
2. This will be the last season for match day streaming to UK residents I believe as COVID starts to fade away so what will happen to ICTTV and will we see more supporters down the stadium on a typical Saturday instead of watching it on a laptop / TV / phone on the toilet?

I largely agree with you apart from PPV.

I don't think this has had a huge impact on either our home crowds or travelling support and does generate a net profit for the club.

More importantly, it allows those who live too far from Inverness to make regular attendance practical  those elderly fans and others with mobility issues and those who are ill to share the action live with their fellow fans.

I doubt if the football authorities will agree but I personally would love to see that facility continued and enhanced.

I think it's a shame the PPV going too. 

I think this is additional income for clubs especially away fans who won't travel but will buy a stream. Shame really...

Amazing how everyone thinks TV is the worst thing to happen to football until there's a few quid to be had and then it becomes vital and the authorities are bad for taking it away.

FWiW, I believe that football on TV is fine, so long as it's not domestic. i.e.  No Scottish games live in Scotland, no English games live in England etc.  I also think all Scottish Championship games should be moved to a Friday night as standard.  That way it could be more consistent, wouldn't need moved for TV and we'd play under floodlights all the time.  Magic.

9 hours ago, RiG said:

This will be the last season for match day streaming to UK residents I believe as COVID starts to fade away so what will happen to ICTTV and will we see more supporters down the stadium on a typical Saturday instead of watching it on a laptop / TV / phone on the toilet?

I think this is the wrong decision for UK viewers and beyond. If COVID has taught us anything it is that the virtual space can be a revenue generator when used correctly. Whether that's a centralised service from the SPFL or clubs on their own, the monies obviously spent in upgrading infrastructure for live streaming should not go to waste. I am sure there are many people who might consider a virtual season ticket, one-off games, or even a season pass for all games (if it were centralised with revenue splits for all clubs).  Also think that season ticket holders should still get this perk (either natively or as an optional add-in for £1 or £2 per game surcharge) as they already have a ticket whether they use it or not … in fact, it may be a selling point or a decision maker on whether to buy that season book or not for out of town fans who think they may only get to games every so often but know they could view online.

The one caveat would be the cost to the club - if it can be self-financing or sponsored so its not a drain on resources then that's fine, but if the bandwidth and other costs are higher than the revenue then it is understandable to wind it down a bit or only do it where it might make sense.

At the start of this season, when it wasn't clear if livestreaming would be available to anyone other than season ticket holders, I was perfectly prepared to buy a season ticket for a back corner of the North Stand, which I would never use.

I shall be gutted if it goes.  The last two seasons have had their ups and downs - and ultimately ended in failure, if promotion is the aim - but it's been a great journey.

I do like the PPV for away games that I would no be going to and as others have said if they are to far away but I would much rather be at the game.

Streaming a game and tv coverage aren't really the same though. 

I don't think that streaming a game for say £14-£16 really has that many negatives in any (as opposed to tv which results in fixture changes to stupid times etc) and I'd be interested to see what the financial income is for it. I agree that having it as an 'add on' for season ticket holders and as a stand alone per game charge for away fans is a great idea.

I used to make loads of away games but past years it has declined due to family reasons and other (inc financial) commitments not allowing me to give up a full weekend day every second week. This season it was just Partick and Arbroath play off games.

Being able to pay to watch the streams for away games has been brilliant and put a few quid in the coffers of teams. I've no doubt the reverse is true for ICT. 

46 minutes ago, IBM said:

I do like the PPV for away games that I would no be going to and as others have said if they are to far away but I would much rather be at the game.

I agree entirely.

I watched two of our home games on livestream when not fit to attend the stadium and bought virtually every away game, whereas I would only have travelled to a few. Therefore I gained by seeing home games I’d have missed, and our rivals gained as I spent money on PPV for games I had no intention of travelling to.

I suspect we have seen the end of livestreams but it would be good if clubs and the SPFL could find a way of keeping them. Even a small premium to the ticket price would be fine by me. 

21 hours ago, STFU said:

FOMO is why more people turn up to what we might describe as bigger or more important games.  If it all goes well, everyone wants to say "I was there".  

I may be a contrarian or have FOPA ( Fear of part- timer accusations) I actually didn't try to get a ticket for Hampden as although I had been a ST holder 94-08 I hadn't been attending regularly during that season due to work. Watching the match on TV & from Social media I did spot a fair few folk who couldn't actually have directed you to the stadium from the town centre so I cut off my nose slightly on that one. It actually took the pandemic for me to buy my first ST in more than a decade & support the club as I feared we might buckle financially  .. perhaps after a decade I also had FOAM ( Fear of attending a match ) .. Might change my user name to Creamola ! 

20 minutes ago, Leaky Blinder said:

I may be a contrarian or have FOPA ( Fear of part- timer accusations) I actually didn't try to get a ticket for Hampden as although I had been a ST holder 94-08 I hadn't been attending regularly during that season due to work. Watching the match on TV & from Social media I did spot a fair few folk who couldn't actually have directed you to the stadium from the town centre so I cut off my nose slightly on that one. It actually took the pandemic for me to buy my first ST in more than a decade & support the club as I feared we might buckle financially  .. perhaps after a decade I also had FOAM ( Fear of attending a match ) .. Might change my user name to Creamola ! 

If you want to start a petition to bring back Creamola Foam count me in.

Nothing quite like a butterscotch Angel Delightful washed down with a raspberry Creamola Foam.

11 minutes ago, Kingsmills said:

If you want to start a petition to bring back Creamola Foam count me in.

Nothing quite like a butterscotch Angel Delightful washed down with a raspberry Creamola Foam.

After that lot there might well be the fear of an explosion ! 

 

16 hours ago, Fraz said:

Streaming a game and tv coverage aren't really the same though. I don't think that streaming a game for say £14-£16 really has that many negatives in any (as opposed to tv which results in fixture changes to stupid times etc) and I'd be interested to see what the financial income is for it. I agree that having it as an 'add on' for season ticket holders and as a stand alone per game charge for away fans is a great idea.

There are two issues in streaming a game and I don't know all the current facts so comments below are based on my knowledge of how it used to be (pre-pandemic). 

1. Cost : There are obviously costs for ICT-TV but much of the capital expenditure and infrastructure is already in place so I am assuming the main costs are for bandwidth, internet speed/capacity, care/maintenance of equipment and whatever payments we are giving to the commentary team. If that all exceeds what we are bringing in from direct revenue and any sponsorship then maybe it does need to have budget reduced and go into a care and maintenance basis so we can ramp up again when needed and not have to start from scratch.   It would be a shame but understandable. At worst it should be self-financing, at best it should bring in revenue. 
   
   My experience: Personally we might have Terabytes of storage or a Microsoft 365 account where you get a ton of OneDrive space for a cheap yearly fee, but when you scale that to a business and need a lot of reliable bandwidth and storage the costs can quickly become astronomical. I know what I pay for this site for the year. Its a cloud based VPS server not a dedicated server so a few steps up from cheap hosting but still with modest processing power and storage but even that is more than 10X more expensive than the average cost of shared hosting. We manage to pay for that via Google ads based on our page view level and click throughs, but the club will need far more bandwidth than I pay for on here so unless there are a few hundred subscribers it would be a big ask I think. 
    
2. Media Rights : This is and always has been a minefield. Clubs own the non-exclusive rights to their own footage. It is this kind of thing that allows the old firm to stream all their games outside the UK regardless of day or time. However, where the minefield comes in is with UEFA blackouts and other arrangements. The SPFL/SFA do (or did, pre-pandemic) request a UEFA blackout for the traditional 3PM Saturday timeslot and I believe the English premiership do/did as well hence the reason so many matches get moved to weirder times for TV. Not sure about the rest of Europe, but the info is available on the UEFA website if you go hunting. This is largely what prevents clubs from streaming their games within the UK on a regular 3pm timeslot even though they have their own media rights. A statement that streaming is ending tin the UK sounds like the SFA and FA may be requesting the blackout periods again, which i am assuming were dropped during COVID to allow streaming. In that instance, the club can do very little unless they want to face off with not just the SPFL or SFA but also UEFA !  The SPFL/SFA also segment their rights by country and media type so its different arrangements in different countries for the premiership, championship, Scottish Cup and of course no radio coverage outside the UK as the BBC have UK rights but nobody has them outside the UK.
   
   My Experience : The SFA/SPL/SPFL (or whatever acronym you want to quote) have always seemed short-sighted about media rights. On any given Saturday (and many other days) I can watch football from Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Mexico, Argentina and many other countries - including live coverage of all MLS and Toronto FC games whether at home or away - on some combination of basic or standard subscription cable channels. At one point the SPL was available but it was on a premium subscription channel that required a subscription to that one channel on top of the main sports subscription package with a monthly charge of about the same as Netflix! It showed sports from around the world including up to 2 SPL games a week, usually at least one, if not both of which featured the OF matches from the Saturday or Sunday.
   
   Nowadays it has nothing and the only SPFL games in North America seem to be on Paramount+ who picked up the rights when ESPN dropped them and they have not exercised those rights in Canada. I would have been able to view the playoff games last week in the USA on a free trial of P+ but when I loaded it up in Canada it wasn't available. Yes I could use a VPN, but it also would not take a Canadian Credit Card for billing info for after the free trial. Neither the SPFL or Paramount+ responded to a (polite) tweet asking where I could legally watch the match in Canada!  (oh well, at least my wee guy will be able to watch Sonic2 before the free trial of P+ expires tomorrow!). As for being able to listen to Radio Scotland on a Saturday afternoon for Open All Mics, I really dont see why this has to be blocked. They are not selling the rights elsewhere and the rights sold to the BBC are non-exclusive so they could enforce this if they wanted to or someone actually wanted to stream this outside the UK ... come on SPFL, throw us ex-pats a bone! I will even listen to Jim Traynor if I have to. 
   
   Personally, if I am going to go to a Toronto FC match or any match then I am going to go, the fact that it is on TV has no bearing on my decision, and even if it did, as a season ticket holder at TFC, the club already got my cash ... However, MLS are definitely trying to grow their brand by not enforcing any blackout periods. Will be keeping an eye on newcomers Fubo TV and OneSoccer, both are streaming channels that seem to be scooping up some of those leagues that up to now were free to me on cable including EPL, Liga MX and I believe now Champions League for next year so even our landscape might change ... but it all starts with the leagues themselves and negotiating deals to promote rather than restrict their brands! 

 

10 minutes ago, Scotty said:

A statement that streaming is ending tin the UK sounds like the SFA and FA may be requesting the blackout periods again, which i am assuming were dropped during COVID to allow streaming. In that instance, the club can do very little unless they want to face off with not just the SPFL or SFA but also UEFA ! 

It's not UEFA.  Their rules allow national football associations to "request" (ie "enforce") blackout periods, but UEFA themselves don't mandate them.

Last time we discussed this, there was only one European country outside of the UK which had a blackout period.  Without checking, I think it may have been Montenegro.  Somewhere like that, anyway.

I had a quick look just now, and came across a recent article which said that the UK is the only place where a blackout is enforced.  Not sure if that is accurate, or if the other country has dropped it.

Some of the streaming sites have displayed the number of people logged in. Even in small games - not top of the table clashes - I think that numbers were comfortably above 200.   If ICT had that, then that would be £3,000 coming in per game, which I would have thought would be enough to keep things going.