Dot Counting Home Sellout for Boxing Day vs Cambridge

[Foley]

This is the Cambridge website - don't know who venuebox are, and how easy/difficult it is for the club to use compared to Ticketmaster, but the presentation and navigation is just so much more customer friendly in my opinion.

Cambridge United Football Club Cambridge United FC Ticket Ordering

www.venuetoolbox.com

I am an old Git and find the oufc one relatively simple, and ordering the seats that you want is good.
What do people find difficult with it?

 

[Thecurraghofkildare]

1.30pm update on Wednesday and there are now just 839 home seat tickets left, meaning sales today of 98 so far.

Remaining seats are split:

North Stand - 51
East Stand - 176
South Stand Upper - 176
South Stand Lower - 436

 

[LeftSideLarry]

Thanks to @Colin B and @Thecurraghofkildare for these updates. They add to my level of anticipation to an extent greater than they probably should.

 

[Golden Dr Otto]

Why the hell are the club so half arsed with these things???!!!

OK, so they've done something but why be so vague? The below took me ten minutes to check just now.

North Stand - 98% sold
East Stand - 93% sold
South Lower - 78% sold
South Upper - 92% sold

All Home Areas - 91% sold

It's not rocket science, and it's not difficult. If I, as just a fan, can do this in ten minutes why can't the club do it?

Love your work. Almost agree with 98% of your posts. I think you’re being a little harsh and overthinking on this one. I’m sure we’d all do it slightly differently but actually those numbers will move quickly and I’d say that the wording is sufficient to create the sense of urgency

 

[Thecurraghofkildare]

5,45pm update and there are now 793 home seats available, with 144 sold so far today. That means home seat sales (excluding boxes) of 8,761.

Remaining seats are distributed

North Stand - 46
East Stand - 159
South Stand Upper - 172
South Stand Lower - 416

 

[Eaststanding]

Why the hell are the club so half arsed with these things???!!!

OK, so they've done something but why be so vague? The below took me ten minutes to check just now.

North Stand - 98% sold
East Stand - 93% sold
South Lower - 78% sold
South Upper - 92% sold

All Home Areas - 91% sold

It's not rocket science, and it's not difficult. If I, as just a fan, can do this in ten minutes why can't the club do it?

Because they don’t need to?
Surely the average fan just wants to know whether they can get a seat in their chosen stand, they probably don’t, like a lot of us, give a toss if there’s ’92% sold’, just whether there’s ’limited avaliability’ or not. No disrespect to you and others that do the dot counting but I really don’t expect the club to get involved in committing staff to providing such levels of detail, we just don’t need it.
I’d rather they were focussed on selling tickets for games.

 

[Coffin dodger]

I am an old Git and find the oufc one relatively simple, and ordering the seats that you want is good.
What do people find difficult with it?

Because some people love to criticise

 

[brassmonkey]

How many have cambridge sold?

 

[Steve Gilbert]

It’s good to see the club finally post something about the game even if it was due to a nudge from this thread.

It could have been worded differently but I guess Rome wasn’t built in a day.

We had it last season where the club reacting to posts off this forum rather than being proactive themselves but I’m starting to think that maybe the club just lack that 1 person who’s job it is to purely deal with social media.

 

[Thecurraghofkildare]

11.30pm update on Wednesday and there are now only 744 home seats available, which are split:

North Stand - 44
East Stand - 144
South Stand Upper - 153
South Stand Lower - 403

That means 193 in total sold today.

Overall home sales are therefore 8,810 (excluding boxes).

 

[Colin B]

Because they don’t need to?
Surely the average fan just wants to know whether they can get a seat in their chosen stand, they probably don’t, like a lot of us, give a toss if there’s ’92% sold’, just whether there’s ’limited avaliability’ or not. No disrespect to you and others that do the dot counting but I really don’t expect the club to get involved in committing staff to providing such levels of detail, we just don’t need it.
I’d rather they were focussed on selling tickets for games.

I beg to disagree.

As long as there are empty seats, the club should do EVERYTHING it can to fill them. Why would they not? Do they not care, or are they incompetent? An early sell out of the available seats allows for the moves to be made to free up extra seats (they do exist) to enable an even bigger attendance, and the associated revenue that brings. It also prompts people to get onboard earlier for the Derby County game, and increases the chances of a higher attendance for that game, as FOMO kicks in. It's called marketing and promoting.

The club would not need to "get involved in committing staff to provide such levels of detail" they already have it. The data I use is on their ticket site and, as I said, took me about ten minutes. Whether it's "95% sold" or "Only 200 seats left" it's an attention grabber that would resonate far more than the rather vague information the club did give out. Imagine being a potential new fan and turning up on Boxing Day, expecting to pay on the day, as the club's message wasn't clear enough. You'd be pretty pissed off and wished they'd made the situation clearer. It would possibly be a lost new fan, and so unnecessary. They obviously decided to do SOMETHING, but I think it could have been done much better, without any extra effort required.

If they really don't have anyone who's capable of doing this sort of stuff then things are worse than I thought.

 

[Scotchegg]

I beg to disagree.

As long as there are empty seats, the club should do EVERYTHING it can to fill them. Why would they not? Do they not care, or are they incompetent? An early sell out of the available seats allows for the moves to be made to free up extra seats (they do exist) to enable an even bigger attendance, and the associated revenue that brings. It also prompts people to get onboard earlier for the Derby County game, and increases the chances of a higher attendance for that game, as FOMO kicks in. It's called marketing and promoting.

The club would not need to "get involved in committing staff to provide such levels of detail" they already have it. The data I use is on their ticket site and, as I said, took me about ten minutes. Whether it's "95% sold" or "Only 200 seats left" it's an attention grabber that would resonate far more than the rather vague information the club did give out. Imagine being a potential new fan and turning up on Boxing Day, expecting to pay on the day, as the club's message wasn't clear enough. You'd be pretty pissed off and wished they'd made the situation clearer. It would possibly be a lost new fan, and so unnecessary. They obviously decided to do SOMETHING, but I think it could have been done much better, without any extra effort required.

If they really don't have anyone who's capable of doing this sort of stuff then things are worse than I thought.

I know that I'm more positive than most, but the frustrating thing is that what you're asking for is really basic and yet we seem to get it wrong time and time again.

The 10k threads were started in January 2022 in order to spike a bit of interest and atmosphere. The simple fact that we were talking up the attendance on here, along with your daily sales updates, created a real buzz. We were lucky to have some big games and a run of last minute winners which helped keep that buzz going, but it was the first time that people were talking about the attendance as well as the performance and results.

Although the results fell away at the end of that season we had something to really build on, but we had an awful season ticket launch, communication and marketing became non-existent, and Robinson had his meltdown whilst the powers to be dropped the ball with player recruitment.

Things have improved in a number of areas, but we still can't get some of these easy things right. We should have been promoting the Boxing Day and Derby games prior to the Burton game as well as the half season tickets. We could have even had someone on hand to help people sign up to the online accounts. Then we should have used all the media that followed the win to promote these games. Not just the normal Chris Williams lines about the crowd being great and "we go again", but specifically referencing that we're looking to sell out the next two fixtures, and pre-order will be essential.

Then we had from Sunday onwards where we could have been putting social media that had things like "What do you get someone that has everything for Christmas? Oxford tickets!" or even putting together a cheesy video clip of someone unwrapping their presents to find a pair of socks, a rubbish jumper, and a pair of Oxford tickets before beaming to camera and saying that it's the perfect Christmas! It only takes a little imagination and a willingness to make things happen.

Even today, when there is finally a release, its functional but its all a little bland. Nothing that gets the blood going or making people rush online to book. Nothing that encourages people to share the social media with others or get their kids involved. Not even the bloody Grinch again!!

I'm sure that there are people from the club who read these posts, so please have a look at what is going out and give thought to how this can be so much better.

 

[Eaststanding]

I beg to disagree.

As long as there are empty seats, the club should do EVERYTHING it can to fill them. Why would they not? Do they not care, or are they incompetent? An early sell out of the available seats allows for the moves to be made to free up extra seats (they do exist) to enable an even bigger attendance, and the associated revenue that brings. It also prompts people to get onboard earlier for the Derby County game, and increases the chances of a higher attendance for that game, as FOMO kicks in. It's called marketing and promoting.

The club would not need to "get involved in committing staff to provide such levels of detail" they already have it. The data I use is on their ticket site and, as I said, took me about ten minutes. Whether it's "95% sold" or "Only 200 seats left" it's an attention grabber that would resonate far more than the rather vague information the club did give out. Imagine being a potential new fan and turning up on Boxing Day, expecting to pay on the day, as the club's message wasn't clear enough. You'd be pretty pissed off and wished they'd made the situation clearer. It would possibly be a lost new fan, and so unnecessary. They obviously decided to do SOMETHING, but I think it could have been done much better, without any extra effort required.

If they really don't have anyone who's capable of doing this sort of stuff then things are worse than I thought.

Quite simply if someone’s thinking of buying a ticket they’d ask the ticket office for what’s available based on what the club has put out; a release telling us the Cambridge game is selling well, thanks, that’s all i need, I’d be ringing them fairly sharpish for this one. Of all the things to lay into the club about, to me this isn’t one of them. Different priorities I guess..

 

[brassmonkey]

11.30pm update on Wednesday and there are now only 744 home seats available, which are split:

North Stand - 44
East Stand - 144
South Stand Upper - 153
South Stand Lower - 403

That means 193 in total sold today.

Overall home sales are therefore 8,810 (excluding boxes).

Lots of the available seats left are single seats, which doesnt really appeal to family's wanting to go together on boxing day,

 

[holdsteady]

Lots of the available seats left are single seats, which doesnt really appeal to family's wanting to go together on boxing day,

By 3pm Boxing Day a bit of space between me and my family is all I want.

 

[Scotchegg]

Quite simply if someone’s thinking of buying a ticket they’d ask the ticket office for what’s available based on what the club has put out; a release telling us the Cambridge game is selling well, thanks, that’s all i need, I’d be ringing them fairly sharpish for this one. Of all the things to lay into the club about, to me this isn’t one of them. Different priorities I guess..

If you wander through a market you almost expect to hear the old guy from the fruit and veg stall shouting out about the 20 punnets of Strawberries selling fast, and to get them now before they're gone etc. Now they know that the Strawberries will sell anyway, they've probably sold out every week since he's been there. But he shouts out to create a demand, to attract those wanting to get Strawberries to pick up something else while they're there. It also means that once the Strawberries have all gone, he can use the front of the stall to push the raspberries and blueberries that are not selling so well. It's called marketing and people do it because it works.

We will sell out the normal home seats for Cambridge, and will likely follow the same with Derby. That's great. But stronger early sales for Cambridge will allow us to take a block back from the away end, or restrict the allocation given to players families in order to sell more. Then when we have a pre-Christmas sellout, all the focus goes towards Derby to ensure that sells out too. And when that does, we can push the half season tickets with a comment about never having to miss out again etc. Or we look to promote the less attractive Northampton fixture in January 3 weeks ahead of the game.

This is all pretty basic, market stall stuff. We're hopefully 30 months or so away from wanting to attract 15,000 home fans in to the new stadium every week. We need to get these things right.

 

[Eaststanding]

If you wander through a market you almost expect to hear the old guy from the fruit and veg stall shouting out about the 20 punnets of Strawberries selling fast, and to get them now before they're gone etc. Now they know that the Strawberries will sell anyway, they've probably sold out every week since he's been there. But he shouts out to create a demand, to attract those wanting to get Strawberries to pick up something else while they're there. It also means that once the Strawberries have all gone, he can use the front of the stall to push the raspberries and blueberries that are not selling so well. It's called marketing and people do it because it works.

We will sell out the normal home seats for Cambridge, and will likely follow the same with Derby. That's great. But stronger early sales for Cambridge will allow us to take a block back from the away end, or restrict the allocation given to players families in order to sell more. Then when we have a pre-Christmas sellout, all the focus goes towards Derby to ensure that sells out too. And when that does, we can push the half season tickets with a comment about never having to miss out again etc. Or we look to promote the less attractive Northampton fixture in January 3 weeks ahead of the game.

This is all pretty basic, market stall stuff. We're hopefully 30 months or so away from wanting to attract 15,000 home fans in to the new stadium every week. We need to get these things right.

So tell the club about it?

 

[MJB]

Lots of the available seats left are single seats, which doesnt really appeal to family's wanting to go together on boxing day,

Oh I don’t know.

Getting away from the family for a few hours sounds pretty good to me!

 

[CCYellow]

So tell the club about it?

Tsk, why did no one think of that?

Do you have the address of where the fans forum is taking place next week? Or an email address the club actually reply to? (I emailed the feedback one on the website, as well as Chris Williams, asking why they didn't mention ahead of the Maidenhead game that the chip shop and the burger van were unavailable. The response was "we didn't know this" (Yet OUSP knew this, and this forum knew the chip shop was shut three weeks ahead of the tie)).

You make it sound like letting the club know is so easy. If it is, then can you enlighten us how?

 

[Eaststanding]

Tsk, why did no one think of that?

Do you have the address of where the fans forum is taking place next week? Or an email address the club actually reply to? (I emailed the feedback one on the website, as well as Chris Williams, asking why they didn't mention ahead of the Maidenhead game that the chip shop and the burger van were unavailable. The response was "we didn't know this" (Yet OUSP knew this, and this forum knew the chip shop was shut three weeks ahead of the tie)).

You make it sound like letting the club know is so easy. If it is, then can you enlighten us how?

F***ed if I know, you’re having a go at the wrong person here, isn’t that what supporters groups are for…..?