Wider cost to business & the City of Coventry (1 Viewer)

even at a basic

10,000 x 23 matches, x £10pp in transport, a drink and food (and that would be very conservative I would suggest)

thats £2.3 million

and that doesnt include anyone who used to go out in coventry to the local pubs, resturants etc after the game

There are people claiming the difference is £20M, but they are not prepared to show how they arrive at those figures.

I mean it is like everyone who attended the matches spending £80 each every match.. I doubt I ever spent anymore that a few quid over the ticket price & I suspect most people are the same. I can't see the logic here.. please explain. Besides as I don't sped the money on CCFC I just spend similar amount on other social activities in & around Coventry, so no great change.

Jack Griffin said:

There are people claiming the difference is £20M, but they are not prepared to show how they arrive at those figures.

I mean it is like everyone who attended the matches spending £80 each every match.. I doubt I ever spent anymore that a few quid over the ticket price & I suspect most people are the same. I can't see the logic here.. please explain. Besides as I don't sped the money on CCFC I just spend similar amount on other social activities in & around Coventry, so no great change.

Click to expand...

Jack, there are many who would spend a fair bit. Take your pick from...

beers
food
car parking / public transport
Bettting
programmes
club shop
casino

etc.

It certainly wouldnt surprise me to hear that the "matchday experience" over and above the ticket price averaged at £20 +

Jack Griffin said:

There are people claiming the difference is £20M, but they are not prepared to show how they arrive at those figures.

I mean it is like everyone who attended the matches spending £80 each every match.. I doubt I ever spent anymore that a few quid over the ticket price & I suspect most people are the same. I can't see the logic here.. please explain. Besides as I don't sped the money on CCFC I just spend similar amount on other social activities in & around Coventry, so no great change.

Click to expand...

Northamptons economy certainly Is'nt benefitting to that extent.

wingy said:

Northamptons economy certainly Is'nt benefitting to that extent.

Click to expand...

their chairmans / NTFC is certainly benefiting

ccfcway said:

Jack, there are many who would spend a fair bit. Take your pick from...
It certainly wouldnt surprise me to hear that the "matchday experience" over and above the ticket price averaged at £20 +

Click to expand...

I'm asking someone to justify £80 per person per match over & above any alternative spend in the locality?

£20M/25 matches/10,000 crowd = £80 per match per person?

Jack Griffin said:

I'm asking someone to justify £80 per person per match over & above any alternative spend in the locality?

£20M/25 matches/10,000 crowd = £80 per match per person?

Click to expand...

not sure who is claiming £20 million, but I must say, imagine this season the amount of sponsorship / corporate / hospitality that is being lost.

I wouldn't say £20 million was right, but its not completely crazy. Many of our games had over 10,000 attending, and then cups games on top of that.

Throw in hotels for away fans, money for police, stewards, cleaners etc which has gone out of local ecomomy and you will amount to a fair sum of money no longer coming into Coventry.

ccfcway said:

Jack, there are many who would spend a fair bit. Take your pick from...

beers
food
car parking / public transport
Bettting
programmes
club shop
casino

etc.

It certainly wouldnt surprise me to hear that the "matchday experience" over and above the ticket price averaged at £20 +

Click to expand...

People that live in the city will on the whole still spend a large proportion of that disposable income in the city even though the club is no longer here. It's not as though many of those that follow the team are going to Northampton on a Saturday. Sorry, on a Sunday.

It's only the additional revenue from outside that the city is losing. How many clubs have a sizeable away following to boost income significantly? How many fans live outside of Coventry and so longer return every home game?

The handful travelling to Sixfields could actually be contributing to the local economy by the travel costs being spent. If they fill up in the city. However, most petrol stations are multinational or owned by supermarkets so the money flows out of the city regardless. Train companies aren't based in Coventry. Would you deduct that from the 'losses'?

A casino couldn't rely on few football fans generating a large percentage of its income. The hotel and conference delegates along with experienced gamblers present a much more viable proposition to provide larger stakes than an hours worth of city fans every other week.

People will still use the local betting shops. Pubs in Longford and in the city centre may suffer, as will restaurants or fast food shops, but where and how does that add up to £20 million?

Although around £3 million is being lost in ticket sales

ccfcway said:

not sure who is claiming £20 million, but I must say, imagine this season the amount of sponsorship / corporate / hospitality that is being lost.

I wouldn't say £20 million was right, but its not completely crazy. Many of our games had over 10,000 attending, and then cups games on top of that.

Throw in hotels for away fans, money for police, stewards, cleaners etc which has gone out of local ecomomy and you will amount to a fair sum of money no longer coming into Coventry.

Click to expand...

SISU made the choice to forgo substantial sponsorship & advertising revenue when they moved to Northampton.

The £20M is being claimed by this 25 strong protest group backed by Les Reid.

their petition stopped at 1062 signatories, not a patch on the July march to broadgate.

So essentially we are saying the measure of success is based on foot fall which is what brings in the sponsorship, the hotel rooms, the restaurants, the shopping.

Whilst undoubtedly there is a loss because CCFC are not at the Ricoh call it £20m if you like (i tend to disagree with that figure but no matter) that is based on a foot fall of 300K, is that a balanced assessment of what is going on?

That equates to a weekly foot fall of 5770 lost. So the question is has the stadium been able to replace that foot fall over a year? Would seem they are working on it eg the Easter gaming event. Football brings in perhaps 11000 people for say 5 hours in the main and with it their spending potential. Yes some will stay the weekend, but most are from the area and wont need hotel rooms. If most are from the area then they still have the same spending potential whether football is here or not, they just choose to spend differently. So what is for example the equivalence of 10000 gamers from all over the country at the Ricoh over the 4 days of Easter weekend when they stay there all day and night?

The loss to economy argument works as a leverage to sell if there is no alternative or replacement of income. We have been told that the ACL turnover has increased since CCFC left the stadium, that they had reduced the dependence on CCFC. If that is true the £20m loss is only one side of the argument. People who attend exhibitions, conferences, trade fairs, concerts etc etc have a spending power to and largely are from outside the area. If largely from outside the area does that mean such income brings more to the local economy than CCFC? Is the spending power of people at such exhibitions etc greater than the average football fan? Is the income available to traders, hotels, restaurants in the area more evenly spread rather having peaks and troughs every two weeks and nothing in the summer? Will such visitors look at Coventry in a different way and think Coventry is a place to do business not a place just to watch football?

Another thought is the longer CCFC is away from the Ricoh the more events will be booked in (maybe not in the Stadium bowl at first but the football club impacted on the other areas too), that will make it harder for CCFC to come back but also will keep knocking holes in the perceived £20m loss and associated argument of loss to the economy of Coventry

Business people are much more likely to bring business to Coventry than the average fan. In a crowd of 11000 how many are from outside the area? From the same size foot fall for exhibitions, conferences etc how many are from outside the area and what spending power do they represent.

The Ricoh wasnt set up as just a football stadium like so many other stadiums. Most other grounds have conference and restaurants tagged on to them their prime space is the stadium. The Ricoh is not like that, the stadium bowl doesnt actually form 50% of the available floor space at the site. Most of the income would not be from football.

Certainly the ideal is to have both sources in Coventry and preferably at the Ricoh. As keeps being said it is important to stay balanced when considering these claims.

Not sure these one sided claims are a good basis for "sell the Ricoh". Surely if the stadium is profitable without CCFC there is no "burden" and there is no evidence to suggest the Ricoh doesnt and will not continue to attract business to Coventry that benefits local traders

Would I want to see CCFC benefit from all this ...... of course i would........... but it has to be CCFC and not some unsubstantiated notion that giving SISU the stadium at a knock down price (if that was legal in the first place) would somehow be a catalyst to a change of ownership

Jack Griffin said:

I'm asking someone to justify £80 per person per match over & above any alternative spend in the locality?

£20M/25 matches/10,000 crowd = £80 per match per person?

Click to expand...

I'm sure that's overcooked a bit but the damage will be considerable. From that 10,000, It's likely that as many as 30% of these would be coming into the City of Coventry for the main feature of the football match. From personal experience, we have easily spent £70 pre match on dinner and drinks for 5, £80 for a tank of petrol in a Coventry outlet and £100 on the weekly shop at one of the supermarkets on the way home before leaving the City boundaries. On top of that and direct to the club has been match tickets/programmes etc. I suppose your average Coventry based City fan could still spend £40/£50 inc match ticket etc. The loss to the economy of the City is tragic.

It's not just spending by those coming in, it's the knock on effect to other businesses, which then means their employees spend money... and so on.

Even if that can be substituted for something else, the raising of awareness a football club brings, having them on the results helps (don't laugh!) things like tourism, investment into business.

On top of the financial, there's the social...

http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/council-job-losses-cuts-horizon-6362108


Make what you can of this report as well !! Cov needs all the help it can get !

Ashdown1 said:

http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/council-job-losses-cuts-horizon-6362108


Make what you can of this report as well !! Cov needs all the help it can get !

Click to expand...

That report is exactly why making a claim that the everyday tax payer wouldn't want the Ricoh sold is a... dangerous claim.

From personal experience of how such things are drawn up, you present the choice of closing a ward at a hospital, shut a school, cut back on social service support for the elderly...

Or sell a football stadium, and keep some of those going.

And people tend to choose selling the family silver ahead of paying a spot more tax.

That last line was a bit pertinent to the tactics of the last utterly disastrous Labour government and look at the waste and shit that left us with !!

People seem to forget that the money not spent as a result of the club not playing at the Ricoh doesn't disappears down a black hole. Every 'home' game there is circa £200,000 of lost gate money that originally ended in SISU's back pocket that is now available to be spent, a lot of it locally.Fans who last year spent £20 on a match ticket, now have an extra £20 in disposable income a lot of which will be spent in Coventry.
It would be impossible to accurately work out the economic impact of the club's exile, there will be losers undoubtedly, but there will be winners as well.

Deleted member 5849 said:

That report is exactly why making a claim that the everyday tax payer wouldn't want the Ricoh sold is a... dangerous claim.

From personal experience of how such things are drawn up, you present the choice of closing a ward at a hospital, shut a school, cut back on social service support for the elderly...

Or sell a football stadium, and keep some of those going.

And people tend to choose selling the family silver ahead of paying a spot more tax.

Click to expand...

Selling assets to fund ongoing costs is a terrible business plan.

Though it is the one our national government is attempting I suppose.

1600 at Cov Rugby on Saturday and all the relevant spend they brought with them. Average gate is around 1200 this season and growing so at least a little of this disposable is benefitting another Coventry team and I say that as there was CCFC regalia all over the stand in the form of hats, coats and scarves.

The difference between football at the Ricoh and other events is probably that football fans are generally more likely to be drawn from the local area. They are more likely to use the pubs around the ground. More likely to use Coventry bus companies or taxis to get to the ground.

shmmeee said:

Selling assets to fund ongoing costs is a terrible business plan.

Click to expand...

Not disagreeing with you!

Come the end of March I strongly suspect such a strategy will see me out of work, too!

But it's the danger of politics isn't it, that people tend to look for passing the problem onto the people after them.

Deleted member 5849 said:

That report is exactly why making a claim that the everyday tax payer wouldn't want the Ricoh sold is a... dangerous claim.

From personal experience of how such things are drawn up, you present the choice of closing a ward at a hospital, shut a school, cut back on social service support for the elderly...

Or sell a football stadium, and keep some of those going.

And people tend to choose selling the family silver ahead of paying a spot more tax.

Click to expand...

Never mind, I have heard the council now plan to turn every road in the city into a bus lane to make up the shortfall.

fernandopartridge said:

Never mind, I have heard the council now plan to turn every road in the city into a bus lane to make up the shortfall.

Click to expand...

In the greater scheme of things the Ricoh income (even loss) is nothing. 400K from a speed camera ?

The council will probably fall out of "love" with CCFC then and switch their affections to motorists. Kerching, etc.

italiahorse said:

In the greater scheme of things the Ricoh income (even loss) is nothing. 400K from a speed camera ?

Click to expand...

There's a sneaky bus lane camera at the bottom of Sky Blue Way going on to that roundabout that's catching a few people unawares recently.

ajsccfc said:

There's a sneaky bus lane camera at the bottom of Sky Blue Way going on to that roundabout that's catching a few people unawares recently.

Click to expand...

All traffic management of course and not a revenue creation scheme.

fernandopartridge said:

All traffic management of course and not a revenue creation scheme.

Click to expand...

If it was traffic management you would think that they would put big signs up and the camera in plain view to stop people from doing it in the first place, rather than letting them doing it and then fining them.

The council wouldn't do anything like that, angels!

Didn't they obscure that camera near the station that was raking in record profit too? I avoided going that way out of sheer paranoia after seeing that.

ajsccfc said:

Didn't they obscure that camera near the station that was raking in record profit too? I avoided going that way out of sheer paranoia after seeing that.

Click to expand...

Yep, thats the one that made silly money.

I wonder how much they are losing from tickets from parking in the zones on match days?

ajsccfc said:

There's a sneaky bus lane camera at the bottom of Sky Blue Way going on to that roundabout that's catching a few people unawares recently.

Click to expand...

Tell me about it right at the bottom .. Just as the bus lane ends ..so they know people that want to turn into far Gosford street cut in..I got a PCn through on Friday and have tried to pay it 5 times so far .. But it says no balance is due .. Going to screen print it and tell them I've paid

We've just had a fine come through from Coventry City Council too for driving in a bus lane in front of the baths. It seems they are very busy with this little money spinner then ?! Things is at the time it was pitch black, we didn't see the signs and there were traffic cones all over the shop not to mention a change in layout to the junction before we took the wrong turn into the trap?!

Jack Griffin said:

There are people claiming the difference is £20M, but they are not prepared to show how they arrive at those figures.

I mean it is like everyone who attended the matches spending £80 each every match.. I doubt I ever spent anymore that a few quid over the ticket price & I suspect most people are the same. I can't see the logic here.. please explain. Besides as I don't sped the money on CCFC I just spend similar amount on other social activities in & around Coventry, so no great change.

Click to expand...

You sound like a right hoot, mate.

ajsccfc said:

Didn't they obscure that camera near the station that was raking in record profit too? I avoided going that way out of sheer paranoia after seeing that.

Click to expand...

On the basis of 1500 residents campaigned that their road was being used as a Rat run,rather strange as the entire City Is criss crossed by such Rat runs . Like yourself hav'nt dared to Drive along there to see how Its configured ,yet how can a two lane carraigeway sustain a Bus lane with How many Buses ?? Seems It should just be made one-way,heaven knows what the locals will say when the Friargate changes occur and Kenilworth rdno longer access's the Ring road.