If you're going to squeeze, squeeze here!

I'd like to expand on my opinion that there's an untapped source of income for football clubs, a far richer (literally) source than the fans and one that quite frankly caused the need for cash in the first place. That source is of course the media.


If football clubs want and/or need more money they should be squeezing it out of sources that actually have money. That's the media and the sponsors. Not the fans. QPR fans spend just about as much money as they can afford on the club whatever the prices, whether or not they buy tickets, as whatever fans can afford usually ends up in the club shop or at special Rangers events. Squeezing via ticket hikes is therefore quite redundant. 

The press and sponsors on the other hand don't spend money out of love for the club- they're after something and as a premier league club they will be prepared to pay us anything for it. 

It's time QPR turned to the media and sponsors and added ludicrious extra charges for every little thing, just as they do with fans. We know our board have fleecing skills, so I'm sure they could come up with some great ideas. 

If we do it you can bet all the rest of the clubs will do it as well. It'd end up making televised games expensive and tickets relatively cheap. 

With the internet streams available we could not only make the bastards that ruined the economics of football pay to make life easier for real supporters, but quite possibly bring them down altogether. 

If the league try to stop us, we'll just let them have a cut of the revenue. I have no qualms about giving them bribes that come from sources other than the fans, especially the media. 

This is my vision. Who's with me?

So QPR announce the new ticket prices and WHOOPS! They're in BIG trouble.

QPR's 2011/12 prices have been announced today http://www.qpr.co.uk/staticFiles/e9/72/0,,10373~160489,00.pdf

And oh dear, they really haven't thought it through.

To their credit they've made the season tickets look pretty attractive with very reasonable prices for youngsters, junior, disabled and senior fans. The adult ones take a bit more stomaching but I suppose they're more or less in line with what we were expecting.

However when you look at their match ticket prices (rather carefully hidden at this stage behind some arithmetic trickery) you can see they've really shot themselves in the foot in a number of ways.

Next to the season ticket prices (I'm just using the adult prices as an example here) there are mentions of how much money you save compared to buying every match ticket individually:

Bronze £549 saving £346
Silver £649  saving £341
Gold £759 saving £326
Platinum £999 saving £371

So add the savings to the price and divide by the number of games (19) and you get the match prices. They're not pretty. It works out as

Bronze £47
Silver £52
Gold £57
Platinum £72

That's more than double in all cases except Gold which is still a 90% increase. THAT is the real farce. Not the 40% increase in season ticket prices over fewer games which is still quite something. But the fact that the poorest seat in the ground costs £47 is indefensible whether it's for QPR or Barcelona.

Now cast your minds back a few seasons when QPR decided to introduce category A prices and put Gold tickets up to £40 for such games. Remember the upper school end is classed as gold and is where most away fans sit (even when they get the lower tier as well it's got a smaller capacity). Back then, Derby fans quite rightly objected, and got the backing from their club and of course plenty of QPR fans joined them and the club backed down on the prices.

If Derby can manage it so can pretty much any premiership club when the prices you're talking about are not merely £40 (I can't believe I just wrote "merely £40")  but £57 or £52 for a privileged few among the away supporters. The club WILL have to back down.

If they do their loss will not stop at embarrassment because look at what they've written to promote their season ticket sales. They've proudly boasted that buying a season ticket saves you an absolute value. Not a number of games, not a percentage, but an absolute value. This value will HAVE to be honoured should match prices be adjusted to something closer to the real world. Let's say they take them down to £47 for the most expensive seats, £26 for the cheapest, and £33 and £40 for silver and gold which would be pretty consistent with most premier league clubs, and then look at what would happen to season ticket prices.

Bronze: 26 x 19 = 494. Subtract 346 for the promised saving and you're left with a Bronze season ticket costing £148

Silver: 33x19 = 641. Subtract 341 for the promised saving and you're left with a Silver season ticket costing £300

Gold: 40x19 = 760. Subtract 326 for the promised saving and you're left with a Gold season ticket costing £434

Platinum 47 x 19 = 893. Subtract 371 for the promised saving and you're left with a Platinum season ticket costing £522.

Whoops, QPR you might have made the biggest financial mess ever. And this wouldn't be the first time would it. The boasting of Alejandro Faurlin's transfer value as being £3.5m lead to an investigation and ended up costing a fine of £875 000.

Seriously why couldn't they just employ me to deal with things like this? I could make quick calculations in about half an hour and the only payment I'd require would be a free season ticket and travel and tickets to away games.

I'll prove it.

Here is how I would have calculated the prices.

Let's take last season's prices, and since the number of games played has changed it's not worth working from the season ticket prices but from the match prices instead.

We're in the premier league now so let's bump up the prices by 30% each.

So from £20, £25, £30 and £35 per ticket it'll go to £26, £33, £39 and £46.

There are only 19 games per season so giving as many free games may be overdoing it a bit. Let's just say one free game each for platinum and gold and half a free game for silver and bronze.

So Platinum is 46 x 18 = £828
Gold is 39 x 18 = £702
Silver is 33 x 18.5 = £611
Bronze is 26 x 18.5 = £481

Perfectly reasonable prices for season tickets and the corresponding match prices are quite stomachable as well. Extra money needs to come from corporate deals. It's the premier league so if the club aren't milking corporate sponsorship packages and commercial deals for every penny they can get then people aren't doing their jobs properly.

Why not make press pay £10000 for every minute a player spends talking to an interviewer or £100000 for every minute Neil Warnock spends talking to an interviewer? Make that £10m or £100m if said press member is from the Sun newspaper perhaps.

I'm being slightly tongue-in-cheek here but the reality is those who provide TV coverage are costing the club a lot of money here and the club should be making them pay through the nose. Here's why:

The biggest mistake the club have made here is not realising that they don't have a captive audience in the premier league. EVERY game is televised or recorded for match highlights and broadcast somewhere in the world. It then gets leaked on the internet. So there is a live internet stream available for virtually every game played in the Barclays Premier League. If you want to see QPR next season just go to one of the various streaming websites and you will be able to watch the game on your computer without making any effort or paying a penny. It's not right, and it doesn't provide you with the satisfaction you get from going to the game, but it's free and it's easy and therefore it's a very attractive option to most fans, especially ones who travel to get to games.

When tickets are affordable fans will pay that bit of money to go to the game because it's so much better to go to the game than watch on TV or on the computer. But when it's ludicrously expensive fans will get to the point where they say "F*** you train network and F*** you petrol prices and F*** you QPR because I can't afford this and I can watch the game at home for nothing, or in the pub for the price of a few drinks, or maybe just to spite you I'll pay some money to Rupert Murdoch. Yeah, see how you like that!"

This isn't the football league. Our games get covered and Loftus Road isn't the only place to watch them. It's the best place, but not the only place and there's only so far you can take the prices as a result.

So Rangers you've let me down, you've let my fellow fans down and you've let yourselves down. What do you have to say for yourselves?

QPR season ticket price increase story

There's a story from the Fulham Chronicle that's gone viral among the QPR internet community. It's suggesting the 20011/12 season ticket prices will go up by 35%. Note that's the SEASON TICKET prices,  for a season that will comprise 4 fewer games than the one just gone. This would mean match prices shooting through the roof. I've done some maths to demonstrate how, but first, here's a link to the story in question:


http://www.fulhamchronicle.co.uk/london-sport/london-qpr/2011/05/19/qpr-season-ticket-prices-set-to-rise-by-35-per-cent-64767-28727829/


Here come the maths:
This year's adult prices were: 

Platinum £699 per season ticket or £35 per match 

Gold £599 per season ticket or £30 per match 

Silver £525 per season ticket or £25 per match 

Bronze £450 per season ticket or £20 per match 


Ok let's interpret this story as a 35% increase in each season ticket (which is what it says after all). 

So that's new season ticket prices of (to nearest pound) 

Platinum £944 

Gold £809 

Silver £709 

Bronze £608 

Let's assume they've cut the number of free games to just one for all season tickets (which they might do given that there are only 19 games). 

So divide those numbers by 18 for the approximate match prices. 

Platinum £52 

Gold £45 

Silver £39 

Bronze £34 

And just to see how badly this would stitch up pay on the day fans let's look at the ratio between the old match prices and these estimates. 

Note that this would be a minimum for match prices unless they'd be evil enough to make season ticket prices more expensive than paying for all the games individually. 


Platinum - 52:35 = 49% increase 

Gold - 45:30 = 50% increase 

Silver - 39:25 = 56% increase 

Bronze - 34:20 = 70% increase 


Ok so this indicates the following possibilities. 

1) The club haven't thought this through and will surely rethink following feedback from the fans. 

2) The club have thought this through but 

a)either don't care or 
b) can't see any other way to give Neil Warnock the transfer funds he needs - (unlikely given the TV money) 

3) The report is wrong. 

My opinion is that the order of likelihood of these possibilities starting with the most likely is 

3, 2a, 1, 2b. 

And I really think it's 3.

Job Vacancy

Job Vacancy: 

Newspaper seeks Sports and Politics Journalist: 

Successful candidate will be: 

• A complete errant hedge-born skainsmate with an aversion to facts and an eye for getting our idiotic readers excited enough to turn beyond the previous page that has a big pair of tits on it. 

• Highly experienced at disregarding any potential consequences of his/her work, especially with regard to the impact on other people's lives or livelihoods. 

• Familiar with using twitter, except in times following any publication of his or her articles, during which he/she will be expected to go completely quiet. 

• Highly skilled at dirtying names and reputations with unfounded rumours that will stick beyond the grave. 

• Familiar with the PCC Code and how to use it to one's advantage in order to add insult to injury.
  

• Excellent at fellatio and ready to provide it on demand as and where required. 

The ability to use correct spelling, punctuation and grammar is desirable but not essential. 

Candidates with a history of leaving the office, talking to people, checking their facts and using common sense need not apply.