onlyonefinfolan, on May 17 2008, 07:48 PM, said:
They've had 3500 pledges - which are not sales - updated on their official website on 15th May - they'll then have to collect the brass which will no doubt put a few off - nevertheless, a good scheme
Just so you're clear on how our pledge scheme worked. Nobody's pledge would count without some form of payment, i.e. cash, cheque, credit/debit card details etc, on the guarantee that if the scheme failed (which I'll get onto in a sec) then Vale would refund the money and prices would be frozen at last seasons price.
matthew_john, on May 17 2008, 08:03 PM, said:
I was going to say - this has been kicking around my way for a while but Burslem just isn't big enough to support 5,000 season tickets outright. My understanding was that if they reached around the 4500 mark they would still allow the scheme to go ahead. Plus, they're counting concession season tickets in the total for the pledges as well. Think they'll struggle to make the deadline, but a good idea as you said...
In response to that, Vale used to attract crowds of 8 to 9 thousand regularly in league one (then division 3) in the early 90's. Our attendances then stayed around that number throughout our championship days. Following relegation attendances have fallen dramatically for a number of reasons, mainly due to the spiraling costs of watching rubbish football. So Burslem is more than big enough to attract numbers well in excess of 5000, as has been the case in the past.
As things stand Vale passed the 5000 target on Thursday (with 500 u9s free included in that number due to confusion over whether they counted or not). A few weeks back no more free tickets were to be included in the total, and since we passed our 5000 target on thursday, there were fans queuing all day friday and saturday. Vale are still counting the pledges received over those two days, so at this moment we have no idea what the final total is, other than the fact that we have exceeded 6000 PAYING customers. The final figure is expected this evening sometime, so with all pledges, paying adults, concessions, disabled stand etc, we are looking at a figure closer to 7000 than 6000. An amazing achievement considering that Vale had one of their worst seasons ever last season. Prices have now risen to 229 for adult season tickets and juniors still pay the same concessionary rate as during the pledging, still an amazing deal at under a tenner a match. That price stands now until the beginning of the season.
This sort of scheme is just what football needs at the moment. If Vale had have done nothing, then attendances would have struggled to break 3500 next season. This way, we're looking at between 7-8000 including away fans every game, which for league 2 is brilliant.