West Brom chief executive admits £39 ticket is 'too high'
Chief executive Martin Goodman admits Albion’s £39 adult ticket price for category A games was too high for some matches this season.
Goodman, who joined the club in January, is currently reviewing the single match day prices ahead of next season.
He has already announced a five per cent cut in season ticket prices by introducing an early bird scheme, and has now hinted that he will reduce single ticket prices too.
“We are still looking at our match day prices but haven’t finalised plans yet,” he told fan representatives at a recent Albion Assembly meeting. “But I agree – I think £39 is too high for certain matches.”
Albion currently have two categories for single adult tickets, a £39 category A price and a £25 category B price.
The average attendance at The Hawthorns this season was 23,876, meaning on average, there was roughly 3,000 empty seats at each game.
Season ticket sales fells last summer from just under 18,000 to around 16,000 as supporters turned away from Tony Pulis.
However, fans started to return after Christmas, when the team was on an impressive run.
And Albion’s early bird scheme has been a success so far. The club sold more season tickets in the first four weeks of selling than any of the previous seven years.
Goodman is eager to fill the stadium again, and would like to recuperate 1,000 lost supporters for next season. But he responded to Assembly members who said he could have cut season ticket prices further by saying it would hurt the club too much.
He told supporters he would gladly slash season ticket prices in half if the other 19 Premier League clubs did it too.
“We would be in difficult position (if we did it on our own),” said Albion’s CEO.
“We all get Sky money, but if we cut our prices and other clubs don’t then we’ll be the ones disadvantaged.”
However, Goodman agreed to meet a new focus group of fans in December ahead of January, when he would be drawing up his season ticket pricing structure the following season.
Albion have been criticised for only introducing their £45 under-11 season ticket in the Halford’s Lane stand, where adult season tickets cost £499.
But the club have confirmed they had not ruled out rolling it out to other areas of the stadium in the future.
A sup-group within the Assembly has also been set up to discus ways of improving the atmosphere at The Hawthorns.
Goodman agreed to allow big flags into the ground next season, provided they had fire safety certificates.
The club are also replacing both of the big screens at The Hawthorns this summer and the new ones are expected to be in place by the middle of August.
