Stoke City Annnounce Free Away Travel For Their Supporters
Its not a joke, Stoke City in a grounbreaking move are going to offer their fans free travel to all their Premier League games.
On the face of it this is not only ground breaking but forward thinking from the club in that in these times of supporters constantly being asked to pay more and more for everything from tickets to replica shirts, its good to see that one club at least is thinking of its fans.
The Stoke City official club site has heralded that it will be running free coaches to all 19 Prmeier Games on the back of the increased income from the TV deals for Premier League with club spokesman Tony Scholes saying.
“As a Club we are conscious that following football can be an expensive business, especially at a time when so many people are feeling the squeeze financially.
“We work hard to try and provide our supporters with value for money which is why we have not increased our ticket prices since being promoted to the Premier League in 2008.
“However, we realise how expensive following the Club away from home can be for supporters and we’re delighted to be able to offer free coach travel and hope it encourages more of them to give us their fantastic backing away from home.”
So what will it actually cost Stoke City ?
Doing a quick calculation here at TUI HQ and accepting that this is not likely to be accurate to the exact pound, I would say on average for Stoke City at least in a location where they have a fair proportion of the league within an hours drive and their longest trip would probably be our good selves that if we take an average cost as £900 per coach and a maximum exposure of 50 coaches per game if full allocations are taken up and everyone goes by coach, that it could end up with them being out of pocket by £850,000 approximately.
owever in reality its likely to cost them a lot less, firstly not everyone would want to travel by coach to every game, for trips to the likes of Manchester & Merseyside as well as Birmingham for West Brom & Wolves, the train fare wont be great and a lot more convenient, so over a season it might well be as low as £500k to run the scheme, a drop in the ocean when looking at the incresed income from the Premier TV deals.
But in terms of publicity and goodwill the effect is enormous and it can only encourage supporters to support the club more and it has to be said that perhaps they will see some supprters spending more in merchandise.
Perhaps the most important thing though will be the increased away support that Stoke will get, especially for the longer trips, if it helps them win more points then it could be a good financial investment, with even last seasons league table being worth about £725k per place, if the great away support that they will undoubtably get gains them a point that moves them up a place or even saves them from relegation then the outlay for these coaches will be easily recouped.
Perhaps more clubs will take notice of Stoke City and realise that gestures like this are not just good pr but they make sense in many other ways as well, the footballsupporters federation is campaigning about the cost to the travelling supporter in the Premier leauge, Stoke City have just done their bit towards helping their fans be able to afford those prices to support their team on the road.
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