Aron,
I am slightly concerned by the fact that a 4.5% annual rise in fees on one property we have is portrayed as someting worthy of an ACA (NBN - Proud sponsor Program) expose. Dont let anyone know about the 15% increase in Eastern Corporate Suites!
The fact is unlike a telecommunications company (like Telstra - proud sponsor) we cannot create new stock by buying more phones or lines. We have a grandstand with X number of seats and once we have sold x there is no more. This has led to the Western stand being regarded highly as a venue to watch the game from. I can tell you the fans on the eastern side often view the sun or the lights on the top of the eastern stand unfavourably. Those factors and the pure availability of stock are the reasons there is a discrepancy in the pricing.
We are no privatised or corporate entity that chases profits at all costs. Any dollar we have in excess will go back into the club to improve facilities or perfomance. Our perfect financial result is a pure break even every year for it means we put everything we could into the operation of our club. As I said in my first email it is a fine balance between pricing to allow us to operate and maintaining the goodwill of our supporters, sometimes we get that wrong. Only the results will tell us that.
We get no joy by raising prices, it would be wonderful if we could get to a point that financially we had no need to. But the point is we do need to generate more revenue across all aspects of our operations to continue to grow and restructure as required. I am sorry that this has impacted you.
I do not want to get into a long winded debate about the methodology of the price rise and various percentages. We had to make a call and have done so. In terms of sporting dollar value for money, a western stand season ticket for $34 dollars per game rates fairly well across Australia's sporting properties (having just paid around $100 for a day at Bathurst). Should you believe the Eastern stand offers you better value I am happy to change your seating allocation. The discretionary spend on sporting entertainment is a challenging market we are more than aware of trying to exceed peoples expectation of value.
We are committed as a whole to our fans. From the players, our ceo and our groundstaff - without our supporters we will not have a team. But without the cash to operate we would also not have a team (as nearly happened this year).
As I originally stated in my first response we are reviewing the whole membership/season ticket philosophy this year in a structure way and believe that we will come up with a membership value proposition second to none at the conclusion of that process.
