Help me! *footy twattery*

[daleylama]

Righty

Give me ideas to make RAFC financially better. I'm open to any wacky stupid idea and equally anything that has succeeded at your club.

For example, oi sith, can you give me any tangible details about Bormufs 'help us buy a player' scheme that worked well in my eyes a couple of years ago.

For further example, any schemes run/running at your club that are in your opinion positive rather than negative, be it ticketing, pricing, encouragement, commercial, social, etc etc etc you get the picture.

To explain, I've got an ear who is more than happen to listen to me and my voice thats prepared to say anything I fancy. Not through choice I may add, I've been nominated without knowledge but am happy to go awag with a million and one ideas as I think it could be funny.


Genuine post

[daleylama]

PS. We are still going up as fugging champions.

[njkk]

Here we go Lama'

Get the club to rig out a big trailer with some mini floodlights and goals with nets, get some footy in the community guys to take it around the local estates etc and get the kids to play nogger, give away some dale shirts and free tickets to a dale game to a few of them.
Make them feel wanted and i'm sure they'll pay you back by supporting the club who cared for them

[JohnnyNeptune]

oi lama, which one, we had 2

i) chairman turns up on rivals and says 'we want to bring X back but haven't got any money' and fans pledge £15K in 12 hours

ii) playershare - set up as a registered charity, think only 50 people can join - they fund player wages and things and, nominally, get paid back when the player is sold etc.. i say nominally, in effect, the club stole the money and never paid it back. ohh bad sith.

there an FAQ here www.playershare.co.uk/faq/playershare.html - we also have a playershare raffle where fans get the chance to win tat for £1 and the proceeds go to playershare.

it should be said that while i thought this was a great scheme when first launched when it was used properly, i.e to help the club out of a hole, the club over-relied on it to the degree that i thought it had become detrimental - also, with such over-reliance on it, it turned into the fans fault when we couldn't get players in, not the clubs.

[parttimesupporter]

Call yourself Manchester United 3rd team

[winger]

What is RAFC?

[ab]

Royal Air Force Cocks?

[belly77]

We have an excellent scheme pioneered by Amber_Psycho called the South Stand Initiative. We designate 4 or 5 games a season and offer the South Stand to local residents. Over 300 000 leaflets have been sent out to local residents over the past couple of years which allows them to apply for free tickets.
It’s worked really well and over 10000 new fans have witnessed games that they previously wouldn’t. Even if they choose not to come back it always helps boost programme and food sales and ads a bit more atmosphere to the place.
You should speak to Pyscho about it, he’s been on the telly talking about it and everything.

We’re currently running a promotion fund. The directors have asked the fans to raise money to boost the squad in the current transfer window. The amount we raise will be matched by the board.

[daleylama]

RAFC, they are a football team, they dumped your shower of shyt out of the Carling Cup this season, you must remember them, they beat you at your place on occasions too.

[daleylama]

Ooooh, i like that second one Belly, I wanna see his face when I mention that idea!

[brispie]

We do free season tickets for under 11's. Get them young and they'll be bored from an early age.

Seriously, there is loads. Get into the community, a bit like njkk said, give the kids freebies, give them a reason to support Rochdale and feel proud of their home town club. Get local kids footy teams along for free.

Improve the catering (see Kidderminster), give fans a reason to get there a bit earlier and east some decent grub.

Spruce the place up, it doesn't cost a lot to give it a lick of paint, replace a few lightbulbs and clean up the seats.

Cater for the fans with music before the match and at half time. Do requests, birthdays etc etc.

Make the programme smaller, but cheaper. Too many clubs go for the big glossy one, full of advertising that cost at least £3. If it was a club focussed one with limited adverts, giving an update on what is happening at the club more people would buy it.

There's loads more.

[Fenton]

don't bother giving away loads of free tickets to school children ... as soon as you stop handing out the freebies, then your gates drop massively

Ask any of the 'ull types

[CaptainSambuca]

FALSEHOOD

[e17hoop]

Get a Formula 1 racing team boss to invest heavily into your club.

[richhtfc]

I think you need a unique selling point, you should take the food concessions away from whichever god awful contractor is there at the moment and the club should run it itself and concentrate on selling excellent local produce like pies, pasties, home made soup etc etc... Added to this you should sell decent local hand pulled ale and a good selection of lagers. Obviously this would take a bit of effort and arranging, but it'd make you a completely different match day experience to the rest of the league, you'd be an unmissable away trip once word got round I reckon, ands you might even end up with people turning up early and leaving late to consume the stuff.

Ive often thought this would be a good idea at a club, as far as im aware no ones doing it.

[jerichoharris]

Given that you're club is one of the most consistent in British football I don't understand what the problem is.

[GlasgowTangerine]

We have free season tickets for under 8s, as long as they're accompanied by a full priced adult season ticket holder.

We also held a Christmas Raffle, with all the proceeds going into the transfer budget. I wouldn't recommend this though. The raffle went down so badly I think it ended up costing the club money

We also used to have a close liasion with schools. Bloomfield Bear would go into assemblies for prizegivings and players would go along every now and again too.Then they would have a big party at the end of the year at the club for all the kids who had 100% attendance. At that party they gave away holidays and tickets and shirts and the like. For one season they even used to set aside a small block of the ground to give tickets to schools for kids who had 100% attendance that week. Each kid would get one for them and one for their parent. It brings in money for replica stuff and food and programmes. (If I sound like I know too much about all this, my mothers a headteacher of a Blackpool primary)

Oooh, and every year, we produce a calendar and then hold a signing session just before Christmas. This completely packs out the club shop, and people are buying stuff galore.

Other than that though, our club is pretty much useless at everything off the pitch. These are suggestions based on things our club has got wrong:
If you get to Wembley you want to try having some stuff in your shop in the week before the play off final. We didn't do that. We had a wrack of black t-shirts, some scarves and some goalkeeping shorts.
If you're going to release something that's going to be sold elsewhere don't charge twice the price of the other place. We released a couple of DVD's in the latter part of last year. In the shop the cost £25 to buy the two, I got them both on HMV.com for £17.
Employ people with brains.
Build a stand. More places for people to sit, the more people you'll get through the gates. Oh, and don't publish in the programme that you're only locking out 50-100 people a game when you know it's bollux.

[Hertz]

Build a stand ? That'll never work ;D

[Catfish]

Psycho's World Famous TV Interview is on YouTube somewhere.

[supawooly]

Stand outside footy grounds with buckets.

Of course that would rob you of the single oft-repeated insult that your lot keep banging on about.

Bit skint are we?

[Wizaard]

Get promoted and play against teams with bigger gates who will bring loads of away fans.

[sideshow]

Sponsored doorstep scrubbing.