Fans Advisory Board meeting 22nd May - Official club responses

[OutByEaster?]

4 minutes ago, cheltenham_villa said:

The other draw for the club of digital tickets is it brings more control to the resale market. At the moment an ST card is swapped about, especially on coaches. The digital card means the clubs knows how many are reselling. 

Absolutely - it gives the club information and security - marketing, tracing and ownership are all more secure.

I do like a card though.

[OutByEaster?]

7 minutes ago, mikeyp102 said:

@OutByEaster? thanks for posting.

On the involvement of the stadium in the Euros 28, was any further clarity given? As the notes questioned I thought it was needed a stadium expansion for acceptance 

I thought it was in the notes, sorry - the club were clear at the meeting that we will be a Euro 2028 venue.

[sidcow]

I still think there is going to be a ceiling for the number of people willing to pay for GA+ tickets. 

I'm a man with a reasonable amount of disposable income. I'm a Villa fanatic, but if I didn't have a season ticket and GA+ price level was the only way I'd get tickets I'd be thinking very carefully about if it was worth it. 

I just don't think Birmingham is awash with enough people to spend £120 per game to fill endless lounges. 

[thabucks]

13 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Absolutely - it gives the club information and security - marketing, tracing and ownership are all more secure.

I do like a card though.

We can do a Barca and get an official cyber security partner 

Quote

Fortinet’s deal will run for three seasons, until June 30, 2028. As part of the agreement, Barcelona will provide a secure digital environment to the future Camp Nou by leveraging the company’s Security Fabric platform.

https://www.thestadiumbusiness.com/2024/05/28/barcelona-signs-fortinet-once-deals-for-future-camp-nou/

They’ve also just signed up an official accessibility and equality partnership … games going mad 

[S-Platt]

39 minutes ago, sidcow said:

I still think there is going to be a ceiling for the number of people willing to pay for GA+ tickets. 

I'm a man with a reasonable amount of disposable income. I'm a Villa fanatic, but if I didn't have a season ticket and GA+ price level was the only way I'd get tickets I'd be thinking very carefully about if it was worth it. 

I just don't think Birmingham is awash with enough people to spend £120 per game to fill endless lounges. 

Tourists are the target market not us locals.

[sidcow]

6 minutes ago, S-Platt said:

Tourists are the target market not us locals.

But we're miles away from having substantial numbers overseas visitors as well. 

Villa will need years of Champions League Football to aquire a big enough global following and Birmingham doesn't attract enough tourists who would take in a game whilst here. 

London has gazillions of the latter and Liverpool and Manchester the former. 

What works in those places just isn't going to fly in Brum. Not for a long, long time anyway. 

[Brumstopdogs]

11 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

 

Will the Warehouse project be open for the start of the 2024/25 season?

No.  The work to convert the Academy building is extensive and the new facilities will not be available until part way through the 2025/2026 season.  We are looking to provide a space that will allow multi-use as a ticketed venue space with capacity of circa 3,000 people.

 

I see a ticketed venue space is mentioned. Is the feeling that there will be a charge (in addition to the price of your match ticket) to get into the Warehouse?

[OutByEaster?]

9 minutes ago, Brumstopdogs said:

I see a ticketed venue space is mentioned. Is the feeling that there will be a charge (in addition to the price of your match ticket) to get into the Warehouse?

That I don't know, in the past they've talked about free entry on match days and where they say a ticketed venue space they might be referring to selling tickets to other events. I don't know.

[S-Platt]

13 minutes ago, sidcow said:

But we're miles away from having substantial numbers overseas visitors as well. 

Villa will need years of Champions League Football to aquire a big enough global following and Birmingham doesn't attract enough tourists who would take in a game whilst here. 

London has gazillions of the latter and Liverpool and Manchester the former. 

What works in those places just isn't going to fly in Brum. Not for a long, long time anyway. 

London is 90 mins away on the train and it's the premier league they want to watch not teams.  Only so many games each week fans on holiday can go to.

Having a superstar in your team helps too.  

I think Heck see that as the future not the legacy fans.

Villa Park is a stately home. It has a USP.

[Made In Aston]

42 minutes ago, Brumstopdogs said:

I see a ticketed venue space is mentioned. Is the feeling that there will be a charge (in addition to the price of your match ticket) to get into the Warehouse?

Does Heck shit in the woods?!

[Made In Aston]

34 minutes ago, S-Platt said:

London is 90 mins away on the train and it's the premier league they want to watch not teams.  Only so many games each week fans on holiday can go to.

Having a superstar in your team helps too.  

I think Heck see that as the future not the legacy fans.

Villa Park is a stately home. It has a USP.

The atmosphere is lacking so Heck should focus on making it a memorable, unique experience if he wants people to come from far and wide. Do something like Dortmund. That would be a start.

Edited May 29 by Made In Aston

[MrBlack]

The club trying their hardest to smooth the impact of the 919 supporters they're moving. Of course they are. It costs them nothing to do this. And they know that a load of then will bail out, or have circumstances around related seating situations that are so complicated that they can't possibly accommodate then. 

And the club will be absolutely delighted that this is the case. If a chunk of the 919 don't renew, as well as the 600 or so that also don't renew as they only go to be with one of the 919, that's an extra 1500 tickets they can sell at the massively hiked GA price, or an even bigger GA+ price. They'll make the money back from those lost STs in about 6 games time.

The least they should do is give them all the flexibility they can to offer them a new seat with whoever they want to go with that sits by then currently. But when they have a worse view, or a higher price, do they just expect the fans to be OK with that? They should never be moving them in the first place unless it's for compulsory regulation driven reasons.

[TDR V2]

1 hour ago, MrBlack said:

The club trying their hardest to smooth the impact of the 919 supporters they're moving. Of course they are. It costs them nothing to do this. And they know that a load of then will bail out, or have circumstances around related seating situations that are so complicated that they can't possibly accommodate then. 

And the club will be absolutely delighted that this is the case. If a chunk of the 919 don't renew, as well as the 600 or so that also don't renew as they only go to be with one of the 919, that's an extra 1500 tickets they can sell at the massively hiked GA price, or an even bigger GA+ price. They'll make the money back from those lost STs in about 6 games time.

The least they should do is give them all the flexibility they can to offer them a new seat with whoever they want to go with that sits by then currently. But when they have a worse view, or a higher price, do they just expect the fans to be OK with that? They should never be moving them in the first place unless it's for compulsory regulation driven reasons.

Erm, increasing revenue, that is their driven reason.. we should note though, that they can't comply with disability numbers or access regulations this quickly. That might be because wheelchair seats include a free carer/assistant seat.... Mr Heck isn't going to like that 

[Hobsons Choice]

2 hours ago, sidcow said:

But we're miles away from having substantial numbers overseas visitors as well. 

Villa will need years of Champions League Football to aquire a big enough global following and Birmingham doesn't attract enough tourists who would take in a game whilst here. 

London has gazillions of the latter and Liverpool and Manchester the former. 

What works in those places just isn't going to fly in Brum. Not for a long, long time anyway. 

In fairness it can take as long to get from London to Birmingham as it can from East London to West London at times. They could visit London and still get to VP.

This week I've visited 2 sites in London. One was West at the end of the M40- 2hrs from Shropshire, one was in Barking in the East- 4hrs. 

 

Edited May 29 by HKP90

[Mic09]

10 hours ago, sidcow said:

I still think there is going to be a ceiling for the number of people willing to pay for GA+ tickets. 

I'm a man with a reasonable amount of disposable income. I'm a Villa fanatic, but if I didn't have a season ticket and GA+ price level was the only way I'd get tickets I'd be thinking very carefully about if it was worth it. 

I just don't think Birmingham is awash with enough people to spend £120 per game to fill endless lounges. 

I am on the waiting list, but £120 a game is a twice a season type of a treat. Add transport, beers, a burger. I think we might see some empty seats at some point, because if we loses few and have to play Crystal Palace on a cold Feb Sunday morning, I doubt it will be a full house. 

 

[sidcow]

25 minutes ago, Mic09 said:

I am on the waiting list, but £120 a game is a twice a season type of a treat. Add transport, beers, a burger. I think we might see some empty seats at some point, because if we loses few and have to play Crystal Palace on a cold Feb Sunday morning, I doubt it will be a full house. 

 

Nah, it will be packed with Chinese in half and half shirts buying gourmet burgers and Madri deciding if they're going to support Villa or Palace today. 

[Mic09]

1 hour ago, sidcow said:

Nah, it will be packed with Chinese in half and half shirts buying gourmet burgers and Madri deciding if they're going to support Villa or Palace today. 

You laugh, but that's what I experienced in the hospitality end at Fulham last season! 

[rbcuk]

Wish they wouldn’t get rid of the season ticket cards, I never put mine on my phone last season but my mate he had issues with it on two of the games, so had to revert back to his card to get in

[CHW]

10 hours ago, MrBlack said:

The club trying their hardest to smooth the impact of the 919 supporters they're moving. Of course they are. It costs them nothing to do this. And they know that a load of then will bail out, or have circumstances around related seating situations that are so complicated that they can't possibly accommodate then. 

And the club will be absolutely delighted that this is the case. If a chunk of the 919 don't renew, as well as the 600 or so that also don't renew as they only go to be with one of the 919, that's an extra 1500 tickets they can sell at the massively hiked GA price, or an even bigger GA+ price. They'll make the money back from those lost STs in about 6 games time.

The least they should do is give them all the flexibility they can to offer them a new seat with whoever they want to go with that sits by then currently. But when they have a worse view, or a higher price, do they just expect the fans to be OK with that? They should never be moving them in the first place unless it's for compulsory regulation driven reasons.

By your rationale, we should never develop another stand and no club should ever seek to improve their stadium.  Chelsea should still be playing in a Greyhound track and we should be playing in 1980's Villa Park

[HanoiVillan]

15 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

Well...

There's a lot to get through and I guess one of the first things is about the tone of meetings - the meetings are certainly a lot more open than the notes are, there's often more discussion about the topics on the agenda with lots of small details that don't get added to the minutes that are discussed - more flesh on the bones as it were.

This meeting was up and down, there were some really positive moments and a couple that were slightly more fractious - but in general, you can speak your mind and Mr Hatton will endeavour to give you as much of an answer as he can. The key, and the reason (I think) to keep going is the hope that some things stick, that at some point someone in a club meeting elsewhere says "actually at the fans group meeting...." because something we said to them got into their heads - this isn't the more open group we had with Lerner, or the one given a little more play by Mr Purslow - this management group are unashamedly driven in their goal and their goal is increasing our revenue to help us win on the pitch - we can try to add some conscience to that, but they're clear that nothing will get in the way of it. That's football, we do what we can - and I like winning.

I think it's also important to recognise that we're a club doing really well, and in so many ways I've never been happier in my time as a fan, this ownership and their management team are a huge part of that and I think we have to frame everything around that while also remembering that ultimately it's their club, they're firing a lot of money into it and they have the right to make unpopular decisions if they think they're for the greater good.

I think the best way for me to add my thoughts is a bit at a time, although from a 'feel' perspective, I'll probably concentrate a little bit more on this one than some of the others - and there's every chance I might start with a bit of a rant.

Talking about how the meeting and the minutes can be different is for me really clear on this answer, which I think is really disappointing.

We talked a LOT about communication, not only when working through this point  but also in most of the other points on the agenda. We very often found ourselves talking not necessarily about unhappiness with the outcomes of the clubs actions, but the lack of clarity on them - the lack of any kind of clear communication around them.

One of the things we were clear on is that the very clear message from the fanbase is that we hate the way in which our biggest announcements are dropped into in-house media pieces as an aside at the same level as Mr Heck telling us how he's getting used to living in Birmingham or having seen Gabby's goals on youtube. That's not how the fanbase wants to find out about the shelving of a transformational hundred million pound stand reconstruction, or how fans want to find out news about the prices they'll be paying in the next footballing year.

I joked at the time of the interview with Mr Heck and Gabby and the 5% statement that I immediately went to the Official Site to find out more detail, and felt a bit of a pillock when I got there and there was nothing - but there's a lot in that in terms of what the club should be improving on. It's a headline with no story.

In general, most big companies do these things the same way:  there's a statement, with some detail on what they're about to do. They put that out through their regular channels and then their CEO or President or whatever they want to call him comes out and does interviews either internally or with the press and talks about how exciting the thing in the statement is and all the positive stuff it means for people. Cake first, then cherry. 

There are some business's where the CEO or President or whatever speaks first and the detail comes after - these tend to be the owner/CEO business's run by 'characters' like Elon Musk - they're a little bit Wild West by design - risk takers, go getters, trendsetters (I'm sure you can think of other words) - but in general, their words are usually followed by a slightly more staid statement that expresses the often slightly greyer truth of what they're doing - Giant cherry, dull cake.

What we're doing isn't what anyone else is doing - it's the CEO throwing in a line about the biggest things we do, in a fluff piece interview that usually purports to be about something else, preceded or followed by....well, nothing at all. No detail, nothing to learn or understand or follow, nothing you can plan around, nothing that has any reasoning or explanation. 

Half a cherry on a plate. A beige plate.

We made this point over and over and over again - the club shouldn't have announced the 919 people being moved before providing some detail as to which of the potentially 10,000 people that might have been affected were going to be moved, a business shelving a hundred million pound construction project should have a written statement, it should be clear why it's happening and what the plan is, it shouldn't be an aside, season ticket prices shouldn't be half announced to Gabby Agbonlahor as a throwaway line in a fluff piece - as stakeholders, as customers, as the blummin' lifeblood of this football club, the courtesy of some sort of clarity shouldn't be too much to ask.

The club says that the interviews were watched by 82,000 people and were generally well received - I don't doubt that for a minute - it's the only place to find out anything about the club; people in the dark will gather around even the smallest candle. Fans are going to tune in just in case Mr Heck tells us that he finds driving on the left really funny, he likes Eastenders, he's changing the shirt colour to pink and he's really enjoying a full English breakfast. 

For clarity, in my opinion, and I think it's a fair reflection of the views of the group and probably the wider fanbase, the ideal number of club interviews that Mr Heck should give each year is zero, or at least as few are as required in support of announcements and information. The club has a website, various forms of social media, links to the local and national press - if Mr Heck want's to support all of that with a nice stroll around the pitch with a former player then great - but it can't be a replacement - it's ridiculous.

The message from the group to the club on this was that the communication is nowhere near good enough, there's no detail, no information and the timelines can be enormously frustrating - it's been a couple of weeks since 5%, a week and a bit since "time for a new kit" - the club knows its schedules on these things, it knows the plan, it's just stopped telling us.

In the meeting, this seemed to be getting through, there was an acceptance from the club on some of the things we were saying about communication, from my seat it looked like they "got it". That's where the meetings can often seem more positive than a read through the minutes might suggest. There are smart people running things at Villa Park and they aren't deaf.

So it's disappointing that the answer is this slightly strange defence of "Chris has taken part in two club interviews this season which we believe is the right number."  

No one in the group and very few people in the fanbase are concerned that Mr Heck isn't doing enough of these type of interviews - we're almost all very concerned that they're a ridiculously poor way for the club to communicate to us. They are the problem - more or less of them isn't the concern.

I know that for some people that might seem a strange one to feel so strongly about, but their communication is how the club shows us the degree to which the care about fans, and for me it's the single thing that can be improved most and make the biggest difference to how we all go forward together.

This is a brilliant post OBE, and I agree with Every. Single. Word. It echoes much of what I've said on here about club communication and I don't want to repeat what you've written but in worse words, so I just want to add one more related point to this:

The ownership have (rightly) received a lot of praise for the achievements of their time in charge, especially for meeting the Champions League goal which I think nobody would have held against them if they hadn't met. In all footballing ways, we want to be seen as a big club; certainly getting Emery was a big club thing to do, and we're trying to make big club signings, and they're lapping up the praise from the football media for matching our performances with some of the biggest clubs in the league during the season.

But in one crucial way, they are benefitting from the fact we are a small club in terms of media interest. If Man Utd, Liverpool or Chelsea announced a new stand, complete with planning permission, renders etc, and then cancelled it as an aside in a chat with the CEO but then left the plans on the official website, they would be the laughing stock of the media. We see how much shit Man Utd get for the state of Old Trafford, they wouldn't be getting away with the same thing. There'd be endless leaks from insiders, Kaveh and Dharmesh would be speculating about what was really going on all day, MPs would be bringing it up as a way of showing they get their constituents' concerns, etc. If we want to be perceived as a big club, getting communication with fans right isn't optional, and their current method of sharing important information won't do.