Sunday Times - FAI hits the prawn eaters.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle4641743.ece
FAI hits the prawn eaters
Soccer chiefs target corporate hospitality in €185m ticket sale at new stadium Paul Rowan
WE weren’t good enough to qualify for the European championships. Stephen Ireland and Andy Reid don’t want to play for us. But the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) is planning to charge supporters through the nose to watch the national team play at the redeveloped Lansdowne Road.
The FAI is set to announce plans to raise ¤185m from the sale of 10-year tickets at the new stadium, charging more than twice as much as the Irish Rugby Football Union for premium seats.
Documents obtained by The Sunday Times show that the FAI is planning a sliding scale of ticket prices for the scheme, with the most expensive 10-year seats costing €32,000 each, making them one of the most expensive season tickets in the world.
The ticket scheme is being run by the London-based marketing group ISG, a subsidiary of IMG, the American sports firm founded by Mark McCormack, and is modelled on a scheme to sell tickets at Wembley.
The FAI’s plan is certainly ambitious. Its 9,700 tickets are divided into four categories with four different pricing levels. The most expensive seats, 2,400 of them on the halfway line, will sell for €32,000. This will comprise an upfront “membership fee” of ¤12,000 followed by an annual fee of €2,000 for 10 years. Should the FAI sell all its seats in this category, it will raise €76m.
Sideline seating has a membership fee of ¤9,000 and an annual fee of ¤1,000. Corner seats have a once-off cost of €7,000 and annual fee of €750, while the cheapest seating behind the goal will have a membership fee of €7,000 and annual fees of €500. The behind-goal seats are the only ones that work out cheaper than the IRFU’s 10-year scheme, where all seats were the same price of €15,000. These have already sold out.
The FAI was expected to sell its seats at around €10,000 each. If it had done so, this would have raised the €74m it has committed so far to the redevelopment of Lansdowne Road. If it sells its full consignment at the higher rate, however, it could be left with a surplus of nearly €100m.
Olivia Mitchell, Fine Gael’s spokeswoman for arts, sport and tourism, said: “It’s a hugely ambitious target in the current climate but we have to assume that the price represents the best advice of ISG, whose job it is to sell these tickets. It is in everybody’s interests that this sales campaign goes well, given that the taxpayer has made an investment of €192m in the stadium.”
The FAI yesterday refused to comment, saying it would not do so until the launch of the scheme on September 18. However, ISG has already set up a sales office in Ballsbridge and is engaged in what it calls “a soft launch” of the scheme.
The seats guarantee access to about seven matches a year, made up of friendlies, competitive games and the FAI Cup final. Contacted by The Sunday Times, one of the sales team said: “The top prices are pretty steep but the seats are on the halfway line and you get access to the restaurant and other fringe benefits. It’s all about personal choice. We’ve spent the last year and a half doing extensive research and we have got the pricing right, we feel, to meet the requirements of the private individual or the blue-chip institution.”
Selling all or nearly all of the tickets would represent an enormous coup for the FAI and raise questions about the IRFU's own marketing. The pricing structure is sure to lead to charges of greed and elitism, but a source close to the project pointed out that charging premium prices at the top end would help keep down prices in the rest of the stadium for ordinary fans and generate a huge windfall for the grass roots of the game.
But will soccer’s prawn sandwich brigade be prepared to swallow it?
