REGIONALISED FOOTBALL

[culmstockgull]

This is picking up on a comment Portugall mentioned under the altrincham game thread.
Regional football has to come,for us,possibly sooner than we wanted ,football in the lower eschelons has to be made cost effective, more affordable and certainly more sustainable and not reliant on luck that the club has its own millionaire or hollywood superstar.
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.
In our league clubs attracting 8 to 10 thousand supporters every home game are losing money, goodness knows how much it costs us in coach, food and hotel costs to put on an away game.
if relegation does occur for us,all our travels will be completed within the day next season, no luxury coaches but the big old mini bus will make a comeback, and that is as it should be, but I do not remember our crowds being hugely down in the south which may have more to do with winning everything that season.the cost savings of regionalisation in the national will be just as big.
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.

[SuperNickyWroe]

Won't happen precisely for the reason you state in the change in promotion from the NL to L2.
It will make the NL even more competitive than it is now and the prize - even for one season for some clubs has added benefits.
This would be one way for grassroots football to expand - unlikely in the event of regional football and part-time teams.

[UnitedinDevon]

be easier to combine L2 and the NL into 2 divisions of the football league north and south

Then have the NLN and NLS as the drop down out of the league

[Cheddargull]

Can't see regionalisation happening. The historical trend is toward national leagues first Division 3 North and South merging to create Divisions 3 and 4 in the Football League in 1958 and then the creation of the Alliance League (now the National League) which amalgamated the Northern Premier and Southern Leagues in 1979.
Even at the top end of the game there is a desire for clubs to be able to play in pan-national leagues.

[Cheddargull]

but I do not remember our crowds being hugely down in the south which may have more to do with winning everything that season.
If we do go down....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.

Our attendances did hold pretty firm last time we were in the NLS but that definitely was due to winning everything. Before Gary Johnson arrived we played five home games. The attendance for the first one against Bath was 2151, but the average attendance for the next four was 1523.
The number of away fans for those teams you mention when we were last in the NLS was as follows:
Bath City 125
Truro City 83
WSM. 68
So I don't think we will see much in the way of extra revenue from our local rivals with the exception of Yeovil.

[North Curry House]

Our average home attendance in the NL South was 2551 - higher than this season. Fans want to see a winning team, that is the bottom line !

Away support will be poor, some teams with 12 fans. Personally, I want us to play at the HIGHEST level possible.

I have only bought a season ticket to meet friends (a social event), but the football has been crap until our recent winning run and the Hospitality and restaurant been the same.

[Yellow6]

Would they keep season ticket prices the same then to sustain revenue? Might be contentious if we drop down but prices remain the same.

[desperado]

At least we wont have the embarrassment
of replying when our football ( but non Torquay fans) friends ask us 'who are Torquay playing tomorrow ?' of having to say 'Concord Rangers ' Fortunately they are going down. I remember when I used to reply with names like Aston Villa, Fulham, Brighton, Bournemouth, Watford
Those were the days ...never to happen again.

[happytorq]

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.