Double Winning St Johnstone FC Thread

[RandomGuy.]

2 minutes ago, Merkland Red said:

This is to create a better atmosphere so fans are not dotted about all over the ground. Something the club implemented previously with success.

Exactly the same reasons our club is giving for moving home fans. Or is it possible your chairman is simply lying because he wants to save cash by closing a section that isn't needed?

Every club would do it if they could. We made an unpopular decision in the 00s to not spend money we didnt have, and spent years struggling and losing fans. It paid off, and continues to pay off, now. 

If the chairman decides that this unpopular decision is the best way for St Johnstone to thrive then so be it. He won't change his mind again. The fans promised him they'd come out in numbers after Sevco got voted down and they didnt, why would he believe any promises from the support now?

[jamamafegan]

3 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

If the chairman decides that this unpopular decision is the best way for St Johnstone to thrive then so be it. He won't change his mind again. The fans promised him they'd come out in numbers after Sevco got voted down and they didnt, why would he believe any promises from the support now?

Which fans promised to come out in numbers?

[DukDukGoose]

2 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Exactly the same reasons our club is giving for moving home fans. Or is it possible your chairman is simply lying because he wants to save cash by closing a section that isn't needed?

Every club would do it if they could. We made an unpopular decision in the 00s to not spend money we didnt have, and spent years struggling and losing fans. It paid off, and continues to pay off, now. 

If the chairman decides that this unpopular decision is the best way for St Johnstone to thrive then so be it. He won't change his mind again. The fans promised him they'd come out in numbers after Sevco got voted down and they didnt, why would he believe any promises from the support now?

I think they're pretty upfront that it saves the club money closing a section of the ground. The main difference is we're not offering the seats to opposition fans. What you're doing is enhancing the atmosphere for two teams fans and neither are called St Johnstone. It's not even remotely similar.

[Bose]

I'm fairly sure most surveys of Scottish football fans claim pricing is the main reason they don't go. Theres plenty of folk who now boycott games and will do until its £20.
Once prices drop to £20, they'll moan about a lack of matchday experience.
When the clubs on reduced income then spend money improving the matchday experience they'll moan about a lack of quality on the pitch.
The club can't win with this.

So you’re saying let’s not bother doing anything? Just accept things? Basically the club has started to head down the shitter, maybe an exaggeration but certainly heading downward on and off the pitch but you’re saying nothing seems to work so we will give up trying?

[jamamafegan]

Contradicting what he says, making up fictional figures about Scottish attendances and money we'd make from the OF, presumes Scottish people wouldn't enjoy eating burgers all day.

Boys all over the place.

[RandomGuy.]

3 minutes ago, jamamafegan said:

Which fans promised to come out in numbers?

There was a petition on WAP for starters, with folk sending him letters to demand he refuse to let Rangers into the second tier as the home support would rise due to their absence.

It didn't.

Just now, ali_91 said:

You made good points regarding missing opportunities after the cup final and during our European campaign, and not targeting those who buy online tickets with half season ticket offers etc, and then today post the below:

You’re not consistent with what you are saying, you’ve acknowledged less than a month ago that there are ways to increase the home support, and yet today you’ve called, or insinuated, everyone who suggests that there are other means to increase crowds rather than whoring ourselves out and getting an extra 8,000 punters through the gates a season whilst we are still in the big league, thick. 

The opportunity for the club to do anything has passed. The fans have had every reason to come to games without being baby fed reasons, yet haven't.

We can't continue making losses every single season, its just not sustainable if we want to be anything more than a Dunfermline standard club.

Like it or not, but OF fans are a guaranteed income and an instant one too.

[RandomGuy.]

7 minutes ago, Bose said:

 

So you’re saying let’s not bother doing anything? Just accept things? Basically the club has started to head down the shitter, maybe an exaggeration but certainly heading downward on and off the pitch but you’re saying nothing seems to work so we will give up trying?

 

Folk I know who don't go always have an excuse. I lied to one who moaned it was too expensive and told him a game against Hamilton was "pay what you want". Got told it wasn't worth paying anything to watch.

From someone born and raised in Perth and who loves football. 

How do you get past that mentality? It genuinely infuriates me.

Edited January 3, 2020 by RandomGuy.

[jamamafegan]

3 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

There was a petition on WAP for starters, with folk sending him letters to demand he refuse to let Rangers into the second tier as the home support would rise due to their absence.

It didn't.

Not the same as a "promise" though is it? I too emailed the club and said allowing Rangers to enter the second tier was an insult, would ruin the integrity of the game and I would not attend St. Johnstone games if we allowed it to happen. At no point did I personally make a promise to attend games in some sort of attempt to make up the lost numbers. 

4 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

We can't continue making losses every single season, its just not sustainable if we want to be anything more than a Dunfermline standard club.

Like it or not, but OF fans are a guaranteed income and an instant one too.

Ahh yes, a "Dunfermline standard club." Struggling away in the Championship but still managing to attract a higher average attendance than we can this season.

[Bose]

Folk I know who don't go always have an excuse. I lied to one who moaned it was too expensive and told him a game against Hamilton was "pay what you want". Got told it wasn't worth paying anything to watch.
From someone born and raised in Perth and who loves football. 
How do you get past that mentality? It genuinely infuriates me.

I don’t disagree. I think tv is a huge issue for Scottish football. Take the tv money and lose fans seems to be the way. Not just showing the games but moving them from Saturdays. Last year after the winter break I think we had one or two Saturday home games from the winter break to 23 April. That doesn’t make my season ticket viable because of work etc, I renewed it but it’s only slightly better this year.

[Dee Bliss]

[Dee Bliss]

Nice new badge lads

[RandomGuy.]

Also, heres St Johnstones profits/losses lately...

18/19 - £149k loss

17/18 - £258k loss

16/17 - £49k profit

15/16 - £99k profit

So aye, in the past four years we've lost £260k. This season we have an even larger wage bill, went out a cup early, look like finishing low in the league and crowds aren't increasing. What sort of loss do folk think we're looking at?

The club haven't just rushed this decision, its a financial decision to combat what will be more than likely be massive loss thats incoming. 

[Derry Alli]

Jama is absolutely ragdolling Random here. 

[RandomGuy.]

4 minutes ago, jamamafegan said:

Not the same as a "promise" though is it? I too emailed the club and said allowing Rangers to enter the second tier was an insult, would ruin the integrity of the game and I would not attend St. Johnstone games if we allowed it to happen. At no point did I personally make a promise to attend games in some sort of attempt to make up the lost numbers. 

Ahh yes, a "Dunfermline standard club." Struggling away in the Championship but still managing to attract a higher average attendance than we can this season.

So you'd rather support a shite, successless, club middling about the second tier than a top flight side, simply because there would be more people sitting in the same stand as you?

I'll never ever understand that mindset.

[RandomGuy.]

7 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Also, heres St Johnstones profits/losses lately...

18/19 - £149k loss

17/18 - £258k loss

16/17 - £49k profit

15/16 - £99k profit

So aye, in the past four years we've lost £260k. This season we have an even larger wage bill, went out a cup early, look like finishing low in the league and crowds aren't increasing. What sort of loss do folk think we're looking at?

The club haven't just rushed this decision, its a financial decision to combat what will be more than likely be massive loss thats incoming. 

I wish I'd posted this about 8 hours ago, tbh.

Its really that simple.

[Bose]

Also, heres St Johnstones profits/losses lately...

18/19 - £149k loss

17/18 - £258k loss

16/17 - £49k profit

15/16 - £99k profit

So aye, in the past four years we've lost £260k. This season we have an even larger wage bill, went out a cup early, look like finishing low in the league and crowds aren't increasing. What sort of loss do folk think we're looking at?

The club haven't just rushed this decision, its a financial decision to combat what will be more than likely be massive loss thats incoming. 

 

Why are they budgeting like they are? Just to keep the club in the division? The wage bill looks like mismanagement to me. An imbalanced squad with what’s rumoured to be a large outlay on a striker who so far has failed to live up to it. Kind of contradicts the best run club in the country that our fans like to trot out.

[capt_oats]

10 hours ago, Bose said:

I’m not a marketing expert however it seems to me that Saints have concentrated all their efforts on pricing. I’m not saying football isn’t expensive but it’s not the be all and end all. I also think that their targeted demographic has been well intended but misguided. Families? Basically based on they are the fans of the future. I would argue that targeting teenagers and making things easier financially for adults is more likely to have a positive impact. Positive fan experience doesn’t have to be American style tailgating. For example safe standing seems to be enhancing people’s enjoyment.

Crowds growing? Fans of other teams seem to be saying that their attendances are growing or at least stable. What are Motherwell, Kilmarnock or St Mirren doing? It’s seemed to me for a long time now that football has rested on it’s laurels for too long now. Ach they’ll always support us, they’ll always come to games.

Having said all this, at Muirton Saints regularly pulled in about 12-1500, second tier granted, so perhaps we are returning to that.

I'm hesitant to push this too hard here because pitching up on another team's thread and saying "but we do this..." is a bit of a dick move...but here I am.

Speaking anecdotally a few seasons ago our ST sales were around 3k the past couple of seasons they've been 4k+ in fact I'm fairly sure Burrows confirmed that last season was our record number ever. There are obvious caveats there: it was coming off the back of a season in which we reached 2 cup finals and also we do free kids Season Tickets for certain stands and also cheap season books for Juveniles so depending on the distribution of those it doesn't necessarily follow that a record ST figure means we're getting rich. This season is approx the same sort of figure so even off the back of a bit of a shiter of a season last year it seems to be sustained numbers-wise.

Again, plucking numbers from Wiki our average in the 08/09 season (when we were relocating home fans from the Cooper) was 5,351, when we were at our nadir and plunging into the play-offs it was 4,176, last season according to this site it was 5,239. So far this season it's apparently 5,781. So while we're not looking at off the charts increases there have been increases all the same.

What have we done?

We recruited a new commercial team which in turn has helped with sponsorships (the current Paddy Power deal is apparently our record deal), hospitality and so on. Hospitality isn't really my thing but we seem to have increased our numbers there and sell out pretty regularly.

We brought in a fan engagement guy who didn't really work out. As RG is saying about the US stuff there were ideas that Ryan Murrant brought with him that simply didn't sit right with the club and the fanbase (there's still regular ironic mention of the 'Twist & Pout' campaign on our thread) but much like @Merkland Redand @Dons_1988 are talking about Cormack, Burrows has done similar with us. We've also brought in people like Grant Russell from STV in a Head of Comms, Digital and brand role and Laura Brannan who had been at Copa90 as a Senior Producer for our #content - both absolutely *get* what the club are trying to do.

We've seen improvements in branding, online presence, online ticketing, communications but the key part is that there's a joined up approach - the key thing is all that is coming from board-room level. The bulk of the ideas behind the direction the club is taking is down to Alan Burrows - put someone else less effective in charge and it could easily be an absolute fucking shitshow.

We've realised that we're not going to be viable as a John Boyle style 'third way', we've learned from the mistakes Leeann Dempster made and in terms of our support we have a ceiling so the objective is to make the most of that and budget accordingly...we had close to 6k of a home support at the weekend (who watched us bottle it against Accies but still...6k of a home support is wild for us). Again though, no one's getting rich off that.

It may be a standing joke in terms of "I'm not a Motherwell fan but..." our social media content has reach and the club push an identity. The branding and marketing pushes the 'Well Bois' front and centre rather than keeping them at arms length. We push the academy stuff...our ST brochure and campaign leaned heavily on all the "identity" stuff from the Academy, through the regular fans, to the Bois but again it was a joined up, marketed plan.

It wasn't just a video stuck up saying "get yer season tickets".

As I say, I'm not coming on here saying look at us with our record ST sales and hundreds of thousands of Twitter video views. There are huge caveats to absolutely all of that stuff and you'd have to be incredibly naive not to think there's a ton of spin at play. Similarly it's entirely possible that what has been working reasonably well with us wouldn't work at McDairmid or Steve Brown simply might not want to risk the investment and that's fine. Maybe where Saints are just now is their ceiling and the route the club are taking is the most sensible way to maximise cash, IDK.

But aye, you asked what Motherwell do and that's pretty much it.

Edited January 4, 2020 by capt_oats

[RandomGuy.]

Just now, Bose said:

Why are they budgeting like they are? Just to keep the club in the division? The wage bill looks like mismanagement to me. An imbalanced squad with what’s rumoured to be a large outlay on a striker who so far has failed to live up to it. Kind of contracts the best run club in the country that our fans like to trot out.

 

Its whats needed to remain competitive in the top flight. Last season we only had a higher budget than Livingston, St Mirren and Hamilton. This season I think Motherwell have dropped below us.

Slash a quarter of our wage bill and where we be?

We're a top flight side, with a top flight wage bill, on second tier crowds.

1 minute ago, ali_91 said:

If you want to add absolutely no nuance to the debate it’s that simple.

Not one person is arguing that financially in the short term it’s a positive move. So would be selling Ali McCann for 200k. 

We made over 1 million profit cumulatively in the two years prior to that btw, but obviously doesn’t suit the agenda. 

It explains why the board are doing it now.

Have to wonder if that £1m has anything to do with, you know, winning the Scottish Cup.

FWIW the 15/16 profits include the May sale, and the 16/17 profit includes the MOH sale.

Take out player sales/cup wins, which you can't rely on, and I don't think we've made a profit for around 8 seasons.

[jamamafegan]

4 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

So you'd rather support a shite, successless, club middling about the second tier than a top flight side, simply because there would be more people sitting in the same stand as you?

I'll never ever understand that mindset.

No, my point is that even though they are shite and successless they are still receiving a greater support than us. I haven't checked but I'm also guessing Falkirk are doing better than us as well despite their lowly position. Okay, both are slightly bigger clubs than Saints but it's still a total embarrassment.

You expect Saints to make a loss again this season and the that the club anticipate this. I do not agree with trying to correct/mitigate a loss by selling out to the Old Firm. It is a miserable, pathetic short term solution to a problem that isn't going away. Where do you draw the line? Shall we wait until we have 1000 season ticket holders? 500? Shall we give away a corner of the West stand to the OF in future as well?

We desperately need to attract more Saints fans to McDiarmid. Surely a long term solution should be prepared to help make this happen? What will the club do if we suffer relegation and there's no more visits from the Old Firm - where's that money going to come from?

Perth people have lost and are losing the faith in St. Johnstone home games and who can blame them? Home games are fucking shite in every way possible. Something needs to change, it will not change by letting the bigots take over McDiarmid.

[RandomGuy.]

Just checked, the £857k profit in 2014/15 is, according to Brown, entirely down to the £800k fee for May being in the accounts, and for the money received running the Park and Ride for the Ryder Cup. Without lose that would've been a loss.

So thats at least the last five seasons where we've relied on either transfer fees or events unlikely to be repeated regularly to make any money.