Our magnificent support.I wrote yesterday about how it appears that our away allocations for the first few away matches of the season have been cut.
If you missed that article, or wish to read it again, you can have a look at it here.
I’ll give a brief re-cap of what was uncovered yesterday. Basically it came to light that our away ticket allocations appear to have been cut for the forthcoming season.
Instead of over 3,000 fans at Old Trafford on Monday evening, we will now have just 1,800. The same applies to Wolves, where we again could have had around 3,000 fans, yet we are only taking around 1,100. This means that a lot of fans are going to miss out, fans that either can’t get to, or don’t want to go to, St James’ Park will now find it more of a struggle to secure a match ticket for an away game. Those £20 memberships may help, but they most definately aren’t as helpful as they once were. (more…)
Our magnificent support.Newcastle fans get called all sorts of things, some of them less than complimentary. Deluded, impatient, demanding, passionate, partisan, thick, stupid are just a few tags that I have read about us.
There is one word I have missed out of all that though: Loyal. I can remember scenes from last season where we took 7,000 to Barnsley, 5,500 to Nottingham Forest among others. Clubs cashed in our away following, and rightly so. Why not?
We sold out practically every away end last season, and most of them gave us roughly the same amount of tickets as teams in the Premier League do. The demand is there. Newcastle have a massive fanbase from all over the country, all over the world in fact, and quite a few of those don’t get the chance to go to St James’ Park very often, for differing reasons, which means an away trip, to perhaps a more local team, is the more viable option. (more…)
Between a rock and a hard place...It’s not really a new story, but it is doing the rounds again so is perhaps worth a second look, although some of it doesn’t make for positive reading.
A new table has been revealed showing the value of sponsorship deals from each club in the Premier League. The revenue streams from shirt sponsorship at all clubs has increased, apart from at two clubs. On the plus side, revenue has dropped at Sunderland, despite them believeing that they are a big club. On the downside, our revenue has also dropped.
To be fair, part of the drop in revenue can be attributed to factors beyond the control of our football club. The credit crunch bit hard, and it bit Northern Rock particularly hard, meaning that any sponsor deal with them was never going to be as extravagant as it was previously. Add a relegation onto that, with the drop in exposure that goes hand in hand with that, and it is clear to see why the money we are being given to carry a name on our shirt has pratically halved. (more…)
Bank owned @ St James' Park?Things never run smoothly at Newcastle do they? Come on, you can admit it, it’s ok. And some interesting revelations today have ensured that the tradition unfortunately continues.
The Guardian have managed to track down some of the inner workings of what is going on behind the iron curtain, with the focus yet again being on the financial side of the club.
In quite stunning fashion, The Guardian have revealed that Newcastle no longer own St James’ Park, or the training ground, or the youth academy. They have also revealed that all the money owed to us from the sale of players such as James Milner and Obafemi Martins has already been borrowed against and is due to be repaid as and when we recieve it. (more…)
Could he be ahead of the game?All this talk of plans and statements, all these definitions of what capital outlay actually means, whether we’ll have money, no money or whatever has been done to death now.
But through all that, has Mike Ashley stumbled upon something. Has be bumbled his way onto the right path to a secure a sustainable and, heaven forbid, prosperous future?
The guys and gals at UEFA are meeting today and tomorrow to put the final pieces of their ‘Financial Fair Play’ document together. The aim is to force clubs to be more sustainable and to live within their means, and to put an end to the year-on-year losses incurred by clubs. It also seeks to put an end to mega-rich benefactors pumping money into clubs in the shape of loans. Under the new rules, owners will be allowed to put money in, but only for long-term projects such as new stadiums or training grounds, and that money can’t be in the shape of a loan but must be made up of permanent shares instead. So has Mike Ashley stumbled upon the way forward at a time when other clubs are struggling financially? (more…)
