This meeting with Gibson

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Low_Key said:
is it me or has fook all been secured here. great for under 18's don't get me wrong but nothing else has changed or is going to change.
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Potentially thousands of families have just saved £30 from what they'll be paying for their child's season tickets.

Anyone wanting to take their kids to a one off match has just had 20% knocked off the ticket price for their children's match ticket.

It's not usually the under 18s themselves paying for their tickets, it's the parents, and if you take multiple kids then it does add up.

The pricing is still ridiculous, but it's not nothing.
 
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Emmersons_BrazillianDong said:
You're showing your age here.

Out of my 8 year old lads class (not in Teesside) out of the roughly 15 kids who like football. There's roughly 4 Liverpool, 4 Man City and 4 Spurs fans. There's only my lad and another kid who supports Wigan and both because they go to 8-10 games per season.

I know some of those dads and they are Burnley, Norwich, Leicester, Plymouth, QPR fans and their kids are following SPURS or City ffs. If kids aren't going to see a team play then they'll choose the so called glory teams (no idea why they chose spurs) That's how the game is marketed now.

My poor lad came to the Boro with me and loves it. He saw us beat UTD at Old Trafford and then saw us get battered at Chelsea with many inbetween. The bond built by actually attending games is a different level. We have to ensure we're getting those fans in for the future. Can't be complacent
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Exactly. My lad's class in Oxfordshire - the only ones who didn't support the big clubs were the ones whose dad's actually took them to games. So my son was inflicted with the Boro, one of his mates Everton and another Wolves.....everyone else Chelsea, Man Utd, Arsenal, Citeh or Liverpool depending on the weather!
 
So from this thread my reading is

The confirmation that the club from a marketability perspective remain convincingly underwhelming (the noise about all other category pricing will not go away) and they have frankly only kicked the can down the road till the next home game after Plymouth for the noise to continue.

That a lot of the fans, if this board is in any way representative, haven’t got a clue how a regional second tier club in the Football industry actually survives to trade next year beyond having a Gibson shaped sugar daddy writing a half a million pound cheque every week

I suppose it’s what happens when football creeps in rather than the usual Politics,Music, Food etc subjects we all prefer.
 
Hammies_Tash said:
Think the club have thrown the dog a bone, re a concession on U18 prices, an attempt to quash a revolt, they won’t want to see fans protesting at games and for it to pick up any momentum. I’m sure there were lots more points discussed, better tiered concession pricing, 0% finance options, longer EB renewal dates etc. I’m sure MFC gave the reassurance that they would go away and see if they could find any solutions.
I hope fan groups keep the pressure up, it will be too easy for MFC to come back and say given the timescales there’s not much we can do about it now but we promise to engage and have a look at it next season, just kick the can down the road and hope it blows over.
Gibson will silence the local press that’s for sure, be good to see a national pick it up, but with protests nipped in the bud, it’s less likely that will happen, outside pressure will create more pressure for change.
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Agreed. Fair play to the Red Faction for getting something but one of the reasons I wasn’t going to be protesting was there wasn’t any clear objective of the protest, it was just making noise about ticket prices. Low and behold they’ve had a random bone thrown at them, that does very little to address many of the issues people had.

A much more effective win would have been the introduction of an Under 12 category. With this concession from the club you still have kids paying the highest ticket prices in the division, it’s just now the joint highest instead of outright. You still have a ridiculous scenario of paying £15 plus booking fee for a 6 year old to see one game.

Fans who weren’t in the meeting are still as in the dark as they were before. No minutes have been released, no summary of each side’s points, no figures to explain the club’s reasoning, just a summary of what concession was made.
 
Nano said:
For me, in the mackem stronghold of Stockton in the 90s, it was split 50:50 between Boro fans and "others". Of the other 50% I'd guess it was 30% Utd, 10% Liverpool, 5% Newcastle and then a few others like Arsenal, Leeds and Sunderland.

Of the 50% that were Boro it was still only a small amount of them that went to games regularly but a large majority went to some games even if it was only one a year. Even now if I speak to my friends from back home who are Boro fans they are all still either season ticket holders, occasional attenders or people like me that live away and go when they can. Not many don't go ever but a lot go less than they'd like because it's expensive. None of my other mates that supported other teams ever go to see their team.

Get people going regularly when they are young and it's something that you never really stop doing.
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I was born in Middlesbrough and most of my related family lived there, I grew up in Stockton and have lived all my life there. I played football up until I was 50 and ran a couple of successful Sunday teams. I`m a long time Boro fan seldom missed at all since 1968 only one season as a non season ticket holder. I know Stockton like the back of my hand, where I couldnt put a figure on it, Id say theres as many other club fans in the boro (Teesside Whites) is a perfect example.
This 50 50 stuff you are talking about with all due respect to you is sheer b0ll0x conjecture. The early 80s saw Middlesbrough people as a town abandoned their football team until we went bust.
There were always a few Sunderland supporters in Billingham, especially after the 73 cup win. Stockton has mostly been Boro, since the 60`s and a long time before that.
Its the same as most towns near to a town with a good football club and history. I can remember when they took the pizz out of me for going to the match when I was contracting in Middlesbrough steelworks.

Take a look at the gates we had in div 3, it took a good while before they crawled back from under their rocks back to support the Boro. Then you now always hear "I always went" like fvck they did.

Rant Over..... sorry
 
Decent_Left said:
So from this thread my reading is

The confirmation that the club from a marketability perspective remain convincingly underwhelming (the noise about all other category pricing will not go away) and they have frankly only kicked the can down the road till the next home game after Plymouth for the noise to continue.

That a lot of the fans, if this board is in any way representative, haven’t got a clue how a regional second tier club in the Football industry actually survives to trade next year beyond having a Gibson shaped sugar daddy writing a half a million pound cheque every week

I suppose it’s what happens when football creeps in rather than the usual Politics,Music, Food etc subjects we all prefer.
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Half a million pound a week? Are you just making that up?
 
Credit to Red Faction. They were the ones willing to take action, the image of which is the only thing that brought Gibson out of his bunker.

He has conceded on the disgraceful U18 matchday pricing. If he had dropped it by £5 in every stand versus last season then the premium over U18 SC's per match would have been sensible.
But it is a start.

A number of other things remain unaddressed, but Gibson is immovable until confronted - and then aggressive and difficult.

Walk up prices for Adults and the premium over EB SC's are unchanged and still exploitative.
New SC prices are at too high a premium over EB's.
There is obvious scope for looking at walk up prices for U12's/younger kids.

The priority has to be to get a re-structuring of the pricing "strategy" to encourage people.

There is no mention of anything else.
No acknowledgement of the pathetic communication and attitude towards SC renewals.

I understand why so many things supporters have shown discontent about have not been addressed.

I hope this is a start.
I'd congratulate again the RF. Without their call to action then the comfy Supporters Forum would have achieved nothing IMHO.
 
InglebyUTB said:
Agreed. Fair play to the Red Faction for getting something but one of the reasons I wasn’t going to be protesting was there wasn’t any clear objective of the protest, it was just making noise about ticket prices. Low and behold they’ve had a random bone thrown at them, that does very little to address many of the issues people had.

A much more effective win would have been the introduction of an Under 12 category. With this concession from the club you still have kids paying the highest ticket prices in the division, it’s just now the joint highest instead of outright. You still have a ridiculous scenario of paying £15 plus booking fee for a 6 year old to see one game.

Fans who weren’t in the meeting are still as in the dark as they were before. No minutes have been released, no summary of each side’s points, no figures to explain the club’s reasoning, just a summary of what concession was made.
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Yeah but it was a 3 hour meeting with lots of passion and some of the lads didn't get home until 11pm
 
InglebyUTB said:
Fans who weren’t in the meeting are still as in the dark as they were before. No minutes have been released, no summary of each side’s points, no figures to explain the club’s reasoning, just a summary of what concession was made.
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This a key point and well made. (y)

I would urge RF to keep on pressurising Gibson into addressing the other blindingly obvious pricing issues. Keep on confronting him.

I would then urge the comfy brigade of the self appointed Supporters Forum to accept that without RF prodding him, then Gibson would not have engaged.

I would then urge all of these groups lucky enough to be invited to these audiences with Gibson to communicate to the rest of us mere mortals.
 
I'm happy to see some adult discussions took place, and the Club listening and acting on one of the concerns.
There's plenty of chairman that wouldn't have, that's for certain.
I'm also pleased that the most rediculous of the pricing was the one in part addressed, that bodes well for the listening side from the club.

I'm happy to give the club some slack in terms of ' some issues take longer to resolve than others '
( I.e. Introducing different age categories for pricing or 10 months credit for an ST can't be done in a couple of weeks )

Hopefully more adult discussions will lead to more changes for the better.
 
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