Dear Supporter
I am writing to update you on a number of matters relating to your club and how you can help us to move forward.
The club has been involved in a series of experimental ticket pricing initiatives to try to drive forward revenues and expand our supporter base. Scottish football at the moment is in a bit of a crisis as attendances continue to drift downwards. This is caused by the easy availability of matches on television as well as the high cost of attending live football, particularly in the current economic climate.
What concerns me is that fans, particularly young fans, get out of the habit of regularly attending matches. As far as our own supporters are concerned, we have been trying to encourage young people to come to matches and, to that end, have been distributing attractively priced tickets to the schools whereby if an adult attends, the child can come free. We believe this is vital for the long term health of the club to get youngsters behind their local team. This is no small task, particularly given the Old Firm's grip on the footballing fraternity.
To this end, I would ask you to play your part. We are offering every adult season ticket holder a free adult and a juvenile ticket for one match from a choice of matches in the coming months. We would ask you to give these tickets to friends or family to give them a taste of
The choice of matches are:
o MFC v Inverness CT on 27 December 2008 — tickets must be collected on or before 22nd December
o MFC v Falkirk on 24 January 2009 - tickets must be collected on or before 19th January
o MFC v Hamilton Academical on 14 February - tickets must be collected on or before 9 February
For security purposes, in order that we can give final numbers to the police, bookings these free tickets will stop 5 days before the match in question. This will give us time to process the numbers. Strictly no ticket exchange will be allowed on the day of match.
We will try to locate your friends for your first choice match and wherever possible in the stand where you are a season ticket holder however please be aware that we require the flexibility to utilise available seats. Should that stand fill up, your friends will be accommodated comfortably in another part of the ground. This will be done on a first come first served basis so the earlier you book, the better chance your friends will have of sitting in the same stand as you.
As we approach Christmas, do remember that we have half season tickets available, perhaps as a gift, individual gift vouchers and a range of hospitality packages from children through to adults which might also make suitable Christmas presents.
There was some discussion and criticism of our decision to reduce the prices for the Rangers game. I would like to give you an insight into our thinking. This experiment came about by the fact that it was a Wednesday night game in November which was to be shown live on television. We have noticed an alarming drop in Old Firm attendances over the last coupleof years. We used to have pretty full crowds but now, on some occasions, we are lucky to get 8,000 at an Old Firm match. In addition, at Old Firm matches, there are very few concession tickets made available.
We decided to reduce prices for this match to see if we can boost attendances and if there was any latent demand that we could tap into. Old Firm matches are an important source of revenue to the club and we must continually monitor the situation and not assume that we have a captive market.
I hope that you have noticed the significant improvement in our website in the last few months. We have invested a considerable amount of money in improving this offering and, over the next month or two, I will be unveiling a new communication system to season ticket holders and we hope by doing this we will be able to keep you more up to date with what's happening at the club.
Thank you for your continuing support.
Kind regards.
John Boyle