by happytorq » 28 Apr 2023, 17:36
culmstockgull wrote: 21 Apr 2023, 13:23
This is picking up on a comment Portugall mentioned under the altrincham game thread.
I do not think Torquay is a greedy club but as an OAP and purely wished to see football every saturday I can watch league one at Exeter (I pass it everytime I come to torquay) at the same price as it costs me to get into Plainmoor.
There are already discussions on the table at the FA over two up and two down from the football league, logically it follows in time that
four up and down as happens already in the football leagues will occur.
Returning to sustainability which is critical to our survivial in the long term, if we do go down besides the wage bill and travelling being so much less we also have visits from weston super mare, Bath, yeovil,Taunton , and the possibility of truro or Poole if they win the play offs all bringing close to twenty times more fans than many of our visitors this season and that is what we need ,revenue on matchdays because that is the only revenue stream we have.
4 up/down only happens between League 1 and League 2.
For the others (Pre/Championship & Championship/League 1) it's 3 up, 3 down.
If the National League does end up being aligned with the rest of the professional English leagues, I think they'd make it uniform across all 5 divisions - 3 up, 3 down. I'd probably prefer 4 up/down for all them, but I can't see the Premier League clubs voting to increase the number of relegated clubs each year. Turkeys, Christmas, etc - even though it would undoubtedly make the end of the season more exciting for the global audience they're trying to court. As an ancillary benefit, it could also mean that parachute payments become less per club that is currently the case, something that Championship clubs would appreciate given the gargantuan budget difference those payments allow for.
Relegation should mean lower costs for the reasons you've stated - reduced travel, probably no overnight stays, that sort of thing. The club could do a lot worse than reduce the ticket cost, though. Torbay is generally an older population that most, and OAPs are more likely to have a fixed income with little in the way of discretionary money. But I don't think saving two quid a game is going to convince people to come to Plainmoor rather than Home Park - which will host Championship games next season - or Exeter. We've said it for decades, but a team doing well in a crap division will always get more people through the gates that a team doing poorly in a higher division. If we start next season well, I could see us getting 2500+ home fans once more, which would be great despite the lower away attendances. (although who even knows there - there are several NL clubs this season who've bought fewer than 100. I imagine Taunton could bring at least that many!)
The National League is already a viable national, almost fully-professional league (I'd anticipate that within 2 or 3 seasons, every side there will be full-time). Most clubs lose money, sadly, because most of the expenditure is on players' salaries, even at clubs like ours that aren't really paying more than a living wage. We've heard of some players that actually prefer to be part-time because they're able to earn more money in a 'real' job, and play football on the side. Sustainability is absolutely important but there's a bigger conversation that the football authorities need to be having with the Premier League; those 20 clubs trade on the value of the pyramid system to generate their ludicrous tv revenue, yet they've resisted every urging to share more of it with the rest of the country's club. That's fine, and predictable (the wealthy tend not to want to share anything) but hopefully they can be made to see that without the other 90-odd professional english clubs, their business model might be at risk. I don't know off hand what the so-called solidarity payments to lower league sides are, but they're generating enough money that they could quite comfortably give every single league club half a million quid a year that could then be used as part of a salary cap figure - that would make things more sustainable.
[quote=culmstockgull post_id=270406 time=1682083405 user_id=24376]
This is picking up on a comment Portugall mentioned under the altrincham game thread.
I do not think Torquay is a greedy club but as an OAP and purely wished to see football every saturday I can watch league one at Exeter (I pass it everytime I come to torquay) at the same price as it costs me to get into Plainmoor.
There are already discussions on the table at the FA over two up and two down from the football league, logically it follows in time that [b]four up and down as happens already in the football leagues[/b] will occur.
Returning to sustainability which is critical to our survivial in the long term, if we do go down besides the wage bill and travelling being so much less we also have visits from weston super mare, Bath, yeovil,Taunton , and the possibility of truro or Poole if they win the play offs all bringing close to twenty times more fans than many of our visitors this season and that is what we need ,revenue on matchdays because that is the only revenue stream we have.
[/quote]
4 up/down only happens between League 1 and League 2.
For the others (Pre/Championship & Championship/League 1) it's 3 up, 3 down.
If the National League does end up being aligned with the rest of the professional English leagues, I think they'd make it uniform across all 5 divisions - 3 up, 3 down. I'd probably prefer 4 up/down for all them, but I can't see the Premier League clubs voting to increase the number of relegated clubs each year. Turkeys, Christmas, etc - even though it would undoubtedly make the end of the season more exciting for the global audience they're trying to court. As an ancillary benefit, it could also mean that parachute payments become less per club that is currently the case, something that Championship clubs would appreciate given the gargantuan budget difference those payments allow for.
Relegation should mean lower costs for the reasons you've stated - reduced travel, probably no overnight stays, that sort of thing. The club could do a lot worse than reduce the ticket cost, though. Torbay is generally an older population that most, and OAPs are more likely to have a fixed income with little in the way of discretionary money. But I don't think saving two quid a game is going to convince people to come to Plainmoor rather than Home Park - which will host Championship games next season - or Exeter. We've said it for decades, but a team doing well in a crap division will always get more people through the gates that a team doing poorly in a higher division. If we start next season well, I could see us getting 2500+ home fans once more, which would be great despite the lower away attendances. (although who even knows there - there are several NL clubs this season who've bought fewer than 100. I imagine Taunton could bring at least that many!)
The National League is already a viable national, almost fully-professional league (I'd anticipate that within 2 or 3 seasons, every side there will be full-time). Most clubs lose money, sadly, because most of the expenditure is on players' salaries, even at clubs like ours that aren't really paying more than a living wage. We've heard of some players that actually prefer to be part-time because they're able to earn more money in a 'real' job, and play football on the side. Sustainability is absolutely important but there's a bigger conversation that the football authorities need to be having with the Premier League; those 20 clubs trade on the value of the pyramid system to generate their ludicrous tv revenue, yet they've resisted every urging to share more of it with the rest of the country's club. That's fine, and predictable (the wealthy tend not to want to share anything) but hopefully they can be made to see that without the other 90-odd professional english clubs, their business model might be at risk. I don't know off hand what the so-called solidarity payments to lower league sides are, but they're generating enough money that they could quite comfortably give every single league club half a million quid a year that could then be used as part of a salary cap figure - that would make things more sustainable.
