Concession price alternative suggestions

The ending of concession pricing has become the biggest issue among West Ham fans of recent years. There is an outcry that the so-called “home of affordable family-friendly football” should unilaterally take such action against the young and old. It has been made worse by existing families with discounted tickets being told they cannot even pass on their discounted tickets to younger siblings.

WHUST would be happy to discuss with the club how it could roll back from its unpopular position without losing face.

There are a number of options. These could be adopted individually or as part of a package. An important element of any solution is the communication of the message to the fans ­– and the club is notoriously poor at that. WHUST stands ready to help.

Options include:

1.    Immediately permit those with existing concessions to pass on discounted tickets to the next generation within the family – the next child or grandchild.

2.    Reintroduce concession pricing across all bands but restrict the proportion of seats that can be sold at a reduced price.

3.    Reintroduce unrestricted concession pricing to two additional bands, so that concessions are available in 50% (down from 75%) of current ticket bands.

4.    Increasing the price of concession seats in the higher bands.

5.    A combination of the above.

Option 1

Families that have traditionally passed on concession seats to the next generation have been told they cannot do that any longer. This is a PR gaff for the club. It would be easy to suggest this was an error, a misinterpretation of the rules and to make clear families with existing concession seats will be able to introduce the next generation of their family into those seats. Maybe there need to be some rules on identifying genuine family relations.

Option 2

The club can explain that it cannot afford to offer unrestricted concessions. Fans would understand that 100% of tickets sold at a discount is not economically viable. The challenge is to explain why a particular percentage of concession pricing works. But done well, this would permit the club to reduce the number of concession seats over time until the limit was reached and then enable a small and affordable number to be sold each year.

This could be done in two ways:

1.    All bands have the same percentage limit.

2.    The percentage decreases the higher up the banding, say 50%, 40%, 30%, 20%, 10%.

With the main concession pricing being for children and for seniors – and the discount offered for each being different – the club may also choose to have separate percentages for each type of ticket. For example, rather than have 20% of tickets available for concessions, there might be 10% for child seats and 10% for seniors. This would expose the club to more manageable risks.

Again these could be the same across all bands or decreasing the higher up the banding.

Option 3

There are currently six numbered bands where concessions have traditionally been available. There are two higher cost, limited, exclusive bands where concession pricing has not been available. That means concessions are available in 75% of current bands.

Offering concession pricing on half of the available bands is a more palatable message than reducing it to the two cheapest bands only. It might enable the club to continue to say it offered affordable family-friendly football.

Option 4

There appears to be no rhyme or reason to the discounts currently. They are not uniform, with a child seat costing X percent. The size of the discounts disproportionately affects the more expensive seats. The club could have a uniform percentage, or it could have a sliding scale. The following table shows current pricing and discounts compared with a uniform 32% and a sliding scale with band 1 child seats costing 50% of the adult price.

Band	Adult	Child	%	All at 32%	Change %	New Child
Band 1	£1,175	£270	23%	£376	50%	£587
Band 2	£1,040	£250	24%	£332	45%	£468
Band 3	£790	£190	24%	£252	40%	£316
Band 4	£670	£125	19%	£214	35%	£234
Band 5	£385	£109	28%	£123	30%	£115
Band 6	£345	£109	32%	£109	25%	£103

Option 5

Any combination of these ideas could help the club reduce the overall number of concession seats and achieve a greater level of income but continue to claim to offer affordable family-friendly football.

Summary

The club has a range of options available to it. All of the suggestions above are easier to communicate to fans, can be explained and justified. The same cannot be said for the club’s current position. WHUST urges the club to consider at least some of the alternatives above.