Yes
No
Unsure
Well one thing is that payment wont be due by the time the final comes around. 50% will but not all. So we should all take the hit, go to the final, ruin it for everyone (throw paint on field, full frontal nudity camera side, as many streakers as possible), and then just default on the payment for the rest of the tickets.......could be fun
Keep in mind that those prices are relative to their ecconomy, so it's not like £680 there = $1100 here. In relative terms, its something closer to $850 here...which I don't think we'd be complaining about if we were in the (real) Champions League and Dafoe, Dawson, Van Der Vaart, Modric etc. were playing for us.Originally Posted by nfitz
True enough, but I think that its the culture and history of football and its (traditional) fanbase that has helped keep tickets affordable and not because of competition. Leeds is the largest city in Europe that only has one team and the prices there are still reasonable. Even in London where there's at least a dozen teams to chose from there's very little competition for fans as people usually gravitate towards to their local team...if you lived in Hammersmith you might have to chose between QPR and Fulham, but the odds of you becoming a Millwall fan are very, very low.
spot on, Jack. I totally get the fact we are getting more matches for 2011 but don't friggin make me buy tickets to 2 clubs I either dislike or don't give a shit about.
Uh ... no, I think you've got it backwards ...
Salaries are lower there than here. Housing is more expensive (though they've been a lot harder in house prices in the last 2 years than we have - but that's short-term).
I'm talking about each cost relative to its own ecconomy. The exchange rate is 40%, but the cost of living isn't 40% higher. So based on straight exchange those £680 are worth $1100 Canadian, but the relative cost for someone in London to buy those tickets is closer (in our terms) to $850 Canadian.
£680 is "x" percent of the average salary in England
and in Canada "x" is $850.
Rather than drop tickets, there is another solution. Look for partners to share your tickets with. I'm talking to two people right now to share my tickets. I'll see fewer games, but I'll save a lot of money. That's my solution.
Salary in England is lower than here, AFTER you account for the exchange rate. Even minimum wage is lower there, where it's only about £5.80 an hour for someone over 22 - which would be only $9.40 here. For someone 18-21 it's only £4.83 which is only $7.80 ... and also why you see so many young people working in stores, etc.
And it get's worse as you get older ... I've always been surprised at how low professional salaries were in the UK when I've looked at jobs, even when the pound was higher.
MLSE is such a lazy organisation. Rather than properly marketing its tickets - something it should have done from Day 1 - it relies on putting all tickets into one convenient package for ticket sales. This approach has been evident in the walk-up crowds this year. When only 5,000-or-so tickets are available for single-game purchases, the vast majority of matches should sell out. Instead, we've seen matches in which less than half of single-game tickets sold out, which is pretty pathetic if there is any validity to TFC's 20,000-person SSH waiting list.
I find it fascinating that MLSE plans to raise the number of season tickets to 18,000 for two reasons. First, this is the only way that the club will sell more tickets, what with the lacklustre walk-up crowds. Second, I love the fact that the club assumes it will actually sell all 18,000 season tickets. Season ticket prices are on the rise, the resale market is dead, existing subscribers are going to drop tickets, and virtually no one on the waiting list will buy the expensive seats. This is going to blow up in MLSE's face.
Btw, I truly sympathize with all of the SSHs who have to shell out for the MLS Cup. MLSE took the model for the All Season Sports Pack and applied it to full season ticket holders.
My point with London was that if there were fewer teams, your 'local' team would have a much larger fanbase available to fill its seats.
Question: Where do Championship & League 1 teams get their money? EPL has the huge TV deals, how much do they see in lower levels? From the some of the numbers we've been told, I can't imagine TFC gets much, so they rely on bums in seats, merch, and concessions more than EPL and probably more than Championship as well.
I just did.
Two friends that WERE season tickets holders last year have dropped tickets and have now picked up half of my seasons each. So that is 2 less STH for TFC.
Well done TFC. Guys that were certain to renew are now out for sure. That's some great "business" you are doing over there.
In 2009, the median wage in London was £33,604, or $54,258.12 CND. In 2010, the median wage in Toronto was $51,235. There's probably not much difference between 2009 and 2010 stats, so a person in London is roughly $3000 (CND) a year ahead of someone in Toronto after exchange.
They've done this thing with complete disregard for one of their major stakeholder groups. They are using this group to advertise as they alienate them completely. Anyone who thinks what they are doing is sound business doesn't know anything about long term business. Sure they'll be fine this year, next too, but if the atmosphere leaves BMO, TFC becomes a financial wasteland. And it'd take more than winning to bring it back. I'm still so amazed at the short sightedness of all this. I remain an embarrassed TFC fan
The median wage in London isn't £33,604
Look ... I'm English. I'm well aware of what money is worth there, compared to here. And what salaries there are compared to here; they are lower, even accounting for the exchange rate.
Maybe in the City it's thst much ... but that's like looking a few blocks of condos downtown.
The Championship recently signed a three year £264m tv contract (a joint contract with Sky and the BBC), so about $100m (US) a year. The MLS deal with ESPN is worth $23 million (US) a year, but the individual teams can also negotiate their own broadcast deals (ie TFC with CBC and Goltv). I'm not sure what the sum total of all of those deals are worth, but I think its safe to say that its less than $100m.
At the same time, the cost of running a Championship team is a lot higher than running a MLS team...Championship teams have to pay transfer fees for talent and the average salary is £275,000 (which would make the average player in the Championship a DP in the MLS!).
In terms of a business model, expenses, revenue etc. the MLS is closer to League 1. Salaries in League 1 are about £70,000, there isn't a national tv deal, but you can watch games for a fee after they've been played (like a Rogers-on-Demand type of thing). League 1 teams usually only pay small transfer fees (if any) etc. Basically, it relies on ticket sales, merch etc. for its income.
I think Ensco is right, they've increased the number of tickets available so when they call people on the waiting list they can say, "Good news! We made more tickets available," instead of having to saying, "A whole bunch of people decided not to renew their tickets so we have some available for you now."
That figure comes from the Office of National Statistics, the Toronto wage comes from an article in the Toronto Star.
Edit for clarity: in both cases thats the median wage for full time employees.
Last edited by CretanBull; 09-22-2010 at 02:44 PM.
that median wage is inflated by a small percentage of people who earn more money than any individual should be allowed to.
The median wage throws out the the people who make the most and the people who make the least...it isn't an average, its the rate that most people in the middle make. It isn't perfect, but (odds are) whatever effects its accuracy in London also effects it in Toronto.
The median wage in London is £33,604? Perhaps some specific part of downtown where there are good jobs perhaps, but that's not the median for the entire city. Do you have the URL? I think you are mis-intepreting somehow.
Last edited by nfitz; 09-22-2010 at 03:36 PM. Reason: median not average ...
No, the median is not the average.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=285
Median is typically used for variables like income or housing prices, where some outlying data points (i.e. Tom Anselmi's mega-salary, Preki's Penthouse Condo, lol) will give a less accurate read of the prevailing coinditions.
Sorry ... of course ... 50th percentile, not mean ...
That's £32,604 by my math, not £33,604 ... but still higher than what I'd think.
Hmm ... interesting ... if you compare wages for most jobs it's lower there. Yet median incomes are higher ... and I was looking at family incomes and they are higher as well.
I'm not sure if your Toronto number is comparable. The London number is only for people who are employed with full time jobs. But some other data I've found still suggests it is lower.
Do more people work? Is the quality of jobs better there on average (perhaps more union jobs, and less non-union jobs)? Does London simply have more people with better jobs?
I've always been mystified over there why with lower wages, and higher prices, that the stores always seem full of people spending so much money on things they don't really need. I'd love to understand the difference ...
Last edited by nfitz; 09-22-2010 at 03:38 PM.
I'm trying to find the link that I was looking at before, but it actually said "£33,604" not "£627 per week". Either the "£33,604" is typo or there's something that could account for an exact £1000 difference (something like a tax credit, or stimulous check or something that was issued that year?).
^UK today is really the tale of two different worlds. There's about 5 million people in London doing well, or very well, from the fact that London is the center of the expat financial world.
Then there's the other 5 million Londoners, and at least 50% of the rest of the UK, who suffer 20%+ unemployment and are utterly dependent on the state.
In between these two groups, is a small, ever-dwindling middle class, probably no more than 10-15% of the total population. These are Mrs Thatcher's shopkeepers. The middle class. An endangered species.
So stats for London, especially central London, are meaningless in terms of "the UK". It's a different world. The only comparable for them is Manhattan. Maybe Hong Kong and Singapore also.
btw that social arrangement, it's probably what the future looks like in North America, in 10-20 years.
Last edited by ensco; 09-22-2010 at 04:08 PM.
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
Or 2-3 years...
They're relevant to the original point because we were talking about the relative cost of a Londoner going to a Spurs game vs a Torontonian going to TFC game. We're not making any broad-based assumptions about the UK, or other living costs in the city...I just made the point that ticket costs shouldn't be measured by exchange rate but rather by the relative cost to the ticket buyer within his own economy.
If compare prices by exchange rate, it makes it seem as if a Spurs ticket is about double the price of a TFC ticket but if you make the calculation based on the relative cost of the ticket buyer it's only about 50% more for a substancially better product.
I think the reported stats understate it. I go to London every year, I'd say the cost of living there is at least double what it is in Toronto.
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
Maybe true, but not relevant.
A Spurs ticket is £680 is "x" percentage of a Londoner's wage.
"x" percentage of a Torontonian's wage isn't $1100 (£680 converted), it's less than that which is my sole point.
so, after i turned out the lights last night, i started thinking about why i'm so upset about all this, when it came to me...
i'm an England/Liverpool/Toronto FC supporter. i've just not had anything to smile about.
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