TBK: as one of the 5000 5% fan owners - we are most unfortunately contollled by an outdated Industrial & Provident Society whose interests are largely at odds with ours - the trur and only fan owners. At least private equity is motivated by self-interest and profit and progress on the pitch -which is most definitely preferred to one motivated by some syndicalist collective dream of giving every minority group a ticket bursary and perpetuating a culture of relative poverty - misguidedly giving away tins of soup in the "community".

What's the plan for the debt and losing so much a year martin other than hope we sell a player for a few quid? I mean you've all had 3 months to sort some ideas 💡 🤷

I wouldn't call jobs on the club board cushy given how demanding football fans are and how much scrutiny, criticism and abuse is received compared to the remuneration.

Up shit creek? That is exactly where Reading are - threatened with expulsion from the EFL if the club is not sold by its dodgy Chinese owner by April 5th. He is exactly the sort of character that some here would love to sell our club to.

Ha! Well summerised.

It’s also par for the course that the likes of Hoody and Mav that promised change have barely appeared on here since being elected

Of course Nick. In that case we would have no one to blame but ourselves.

Absolute nonsense TBK. We do what a small clique that has found themselves cushy little jobs on the club board want us to do. Or we do what self serving egotists like Rye and Angus want us to do (see use of proxy votes). The opinions of members don’t matter, and we’re only members when they want more money (see move to Discord, release of Buckley and his dog meeting recordings, delayed constitution, continued delay in Buckley replacements, transparency of DTB Chair votes and countless other examples). The membership are just used as a money generator and if you believe otherwise your more of a fool than I thought.

TBK- subject, of course, to the fact that if we run out of money and/or can’t cover our ongoing losses we are ultimately up shit creek, so we are still constrained by economic reality, fan-owned or not!!

For me one of the best things about being a fans-owned club is that we can do whatever the fuck we like for whatever reasons we choose regardless of what anyone does or doesn't do. The only people whose opinions matter or who need convincing are our members.

Blimey - i'm currently on my boat so haven't had any internet but i can barely believe how much consnsus there is around concessions. Excellent posts!

More carefully targeted concessions is what I think people are driving at - I’d support that idea, yes.

Totally agree that we probably don’t currently have the data to work out the optimal levels of concessions and the only way to get that is to start with some sort of small scale experiment. Either a blanket “let’s just not change anything” or a draconian “let’s stop all concessions” makes no sense- it’s all about making decisions based on data and economics and we need to start somewhere in gathering that.

Non-football ... is it me or is anyone else unable to read the messages on mobile phones that are rife on tv dramas these days?

With demand strong, there are less seats to fill unless we're playing Stanley on a Tuesday night in January

With increased crowds it's inevitable increased prices will come with it. Especially for a club playing the 4th tier and a largely northern league. That will bring pressures in concession pricing, basic supply and demand, year one ecomomics

Yes one can see the potential cost but not the actual cost as we don't know how behaviour would change.If you do want to experiment start small scale though.

To be clear, I am not saying we shouldn’t offer concessions- we just need to be able to justify them economically, not give them as some sort of act of charity.

Arguably, seems a bit odd to offer blanket discounts which we cannot afford (given that we are structurally losing more than £1m per annum) to people who don’t necessarily need it (many seniors are pretty well off) just for fear of “getting stick”, but if we think that that is the right thing to do for PR purposes then that’s a business decision- but if so we should be clear on the cost of giving those discounts and how we are going to fund them. I agree on the value of attracting generations by giving kids discounts but again that should be on the basis of how much it costs and how much we will earn. If we had some “owner” funding endless losses we could afford to leave money on the table just because we want to be nice guys, but we don’t, so we need to become a bit more rational (though obviously with our governance there is no way that is actually going to happen, I realise)

Do we have a waiting list for season tickets? If we don't then I don't see any validity in removing concessions. Would concession holders pay the full whack. If so, how many and what impact would that have on income? There is much research to be done? And the concept of a "Fans' Club" giving no concessions seems somewhat at odds to me.

There seem valid reasons for discounts. Discounts for the young get the next generation. Discounts for OAPs help those that aren't rich and the clubs that don't offer them (Manure, Spurs, others?) get stick for it. For me it is more are they the right level and in the right places?

To some extent if we don’t know (ie because we haven’t done the research) whether offering concessions increases overall revenue you might ask why we are offering them at all. We are a fairly substantial business but don’t really seem to operate like one.

OI - yep, I’d do the 4 blocks that are closest to the halfway line (2 each side).

I'm not sure how you can do that with season tickets. I'd start with no discounts in West Stand central blocks and see what effect that has but i doubt it will happen.

Spot on Nick