2019-2020 season tickets

Got mine.

Wonder how much use I will get out of it.

It is a bargain seeing as it will guarantee you a seat if crowds are s severely reduced.
Seeing as limits seem likely to be imposed I would of thought clubs would be significantly raising their prices unless that dubious pleasure will be reserved for pay as you go.

plainmoorpete  


If we’re top of the league, playing great football with a hatful of goals each match, it could be a case of the club looking back and wishing they’d priced access to the limited availability considerably higher, when confronted with an unsatisfiable demand exacerbated by capacity restrictions.

Occasionally in the past the Forums have mused on whether Plainmoor attendances would rise noticeably on a consistent basis if match day entry was completely free ? The consensus generally is that the hordes don’t stay away due predominantly to price concerns, but that’s mainly guess work rather than large scale canvassing of Torbay public opinion.

Do the opposite, and ratchet up the cost of attendance noticeably, particularly in an acknowledged low wage area, and with our elderly fan base now faced with the decision of whether to spend a chunk of their annual pension on a TV licence or a Season Ticket for the Gulls, then sensitivity to price might soon become evident.

If these are one-off conditions, that hopefully may not even have to be implemented for the whole of the season, I think the club will bite the bullet and not be seen to jack up the prices for any section of those attending, as a way of compensating for not being allowed to admit as many paying customers as might be in attendance under ‘normal’ conditions.

It depends how severe the attendance restrictions prove to be. If we’re having a successful season then the club could quietly be spitting feathers if a load of under 18’s or under 12’s have renewed, paying £90 or £46 for their prime Bristow’s Bench seats, while later in August you have to turn away customer after customer trying to pay you £340 for each of those same seats for the coming season. ‘Sorry Guv, love to take your money, but so few seats available now under Covid regulations, that they’re all spoken for’. An unlikely scenario we hope, but in the short term, with the restrictions, the club might well be accepting that they’re selling the seats more cheaply by retaining the concessions during 2020/21, but weigh that against the bad feeling and bad publicity that would follow abandonment of the cheap seat options for a single season.

Now how about the excitement of a proper daredevil capitalist solution to scarce resource allocation ? Let’s say there are 500 Bristow’s seats available for the Saturday match. Only way to acquire a seat is by the online bidding process that closes at midnight on the preceding Thursday. If the club is confident of a successful season, then by March they’d be realising income from those seats, each match, dwarfing what it’ll actually average out at having flogged off a couple of batches at £46 and £90 back in August.

Uncle Clarke and George, will have given due consideration to the additional problems these Government restrictions impose on us. I’m confident they’ll do their best, as always, to come up with a reasonable solution in the circumstances that won’t involve piling a big cost increase upon the fan who wants to make a one-off payment for an individual match.

The EFL already have it and if this model wasn’t viable before at our level then it must be now in these covid times. Look at the Dover restrictions, surely they would welcome a tv top up from home and away fans alike?

It is more difficult to segregate in standing areas, will there be bubble areas marked out and you just stand near to as opposed to next to your mates or just a reduced capacity on the pop / away end and allow people to use their “common sense!”

Although the early bird season ticket offer runs to the end of August, just a reminder that it is in two parts with existing season ticket holders able to renew their previous seats until 5:30pm on Tuesday 18 August. Phone lines are manned 10:00am until 2:00pm on Monday and Wednesday so only next Monday is available to renew seats over the phone and just a few days left online.

I suppose it doesn’t really matter when to purchase standing tickets unless in the unlikely event that capacity is reached in these sales and no hint of that as of yet. Will be interesting to see if those regulars that don’t normally or didn’t get a season ticket last year for whatever reason will get one this year so as to guarantee their attendance in a reduced capacity stadium that may be around the 1500 mark?

Does this mean the early bird prices have finished?