Ajax (the professional football club from the Netherlands) found an efficient way to get the stadium every home game as full as possible. As a supporter you are able to purchase a season ticket, this is a ticket to visit every home game in the Dutch football league. Research has shown that not everyone with such a season ticket actually visits every home game, this may be due to several reasons. Because of this, the football club misses income, the supporters who have not come to the stadium are not able to buy for example drinks and snacks and of course the atmosphere in the stadium is less when it is not full.
Ajax has come up with an inventive idea to solve this problem and I have not seen this before by other Dutch football clubs before. The idea is that supporters who have a season ticket and are not able to make it to the stadium for some reason at a matchday, can offer their season ticket on the Ajax tickets market. Other Ajax supporters can in this way borrow these season tickets and borrow the seats that are bound to the tickets for a good price (of course you don’t actually have to lend your season ticket to the other supporter, because the other supporter gets an e-ticket). When the season ticket is sold at the tickets market the season ticket holder receives money back.
By this solution there are three happy parties. The season ticket holders receive money back, the other supporters have an extra opportunity to go to a match (when there are no tickets left for a home game there is a possibility that there are still empy seats in the stadium, because of the season ticket holders who for one time do not come to the stadium) and the football club theirself have extra income.
Unfortunately this part of the website is not in English, but here is the link.
I never heard of this but it sounds great! This will generate more income and more crowd to support Ajax!
Maybe there is one slight problem. I guess these season tickets give you entrance to 17 home games. The price of the average season ticket is about 350 euro’s a season. So one game is worth €20,59. If you are going to sell these tickets online and also the derby’s (like Feyenoord, PSV and maybe FC Twente) people try to make a profit on this system. This won’t be impossible because most tickets are more expensive as €20,59.
I guess this will be a great idea, but I hope nobody tries to make a profit on this system because it will end up with less people in the ArenA and less support!
I liked reading your blog because I’m a huge fan of football myself. Only, my support doesn’t go out to Ajax :P.
Hence, I liked the idea Ajax came up with. But I’m not really convinced Ajax is getting more income by this new market idea. The reason for this is that you make an assumption that every season ticket holder buys food and drink in the stadium and that every other supporter does this as well.
My experience is that most of the time I already ate before I go to the stadium. The reason for this is because the food in the stadium is very expensive next to food buying from outside the stadium. The second reason is that in the stadium you have to buy coins and have to pay your buying with these coins. I don’t like this system.