Humphries was quoted in the SMH during the week complaining about the crowd last week at Campbelltown, saying that they made a $100,000 loss and needed 13,000 to break even. While there are dangers in reading too much into these off-the-cuff comments, what was said does give us an indication of the economics of games.
Fixed costs will always be there and it's hard to work it all out, but going off what Humphries said, a crowd of 9000 resulted in a $100,000 loss while 13,000 would have broken even. Working off this, the average spend per ticket is $25\. Is that reasonable?
An adult Bronze ticket is $25 but you have to consider junior passes and concessions, thus the club would rely on mum and dad buying a few beers and chips to meet that $25 average spend. So $100 for a family of four going to the game? This seems to be what the club is working off.
So when Campbelltown sells out and the club cans junior passes, the variable costs must plummet and a nice profit must be made.
Let's now work off these conservative assumptions and consider the $100,000 that the club makes from taking four games to Moore Park. For the club to walk away with that $100,000 at Campbelltown, they would need a crowd of 17,000 (13,000 break even plus 4000). Of course there are a lot of other fixed costs, etc. that we have to assume here and the deeper mechanics of the deal that we will never know, but I would be comfortable in saying that unless Campbelltown draws 17,000 then it makes economic sense to play at Moore Park.
Consider that the last few crowds at Cambo have been 9,700; 14,800; 12,384; 13,059 and 14,388, the club appeared to only break even three times and made a small profit twice.
Higher historical crowds from 2009-20011 saw the club fare a lot better.
We havn't been told of any figures for Leichhardt so it's hard to draw any comparisons. But for the sake of argument, the next time the crowd figure comes up at either Leichhardt or Campbelltown, hope that is at least above 13,000 if not north of 18k.
:sign:
Fixed costs will always be there and it's hard to work it all out, but going off what Humphries said, a crowd of 9000 resulted in a $100,000 loss while 13,000 would have broken even. Working off this, the average spend per ticket is $25\. Is that reasonable?
An adult Bronze ticket is $25 but you have to consider junior passes and concessions, thus the club would rely on mum and dad buying a few beers and chips to meet that $25 average spend. So $100 for a family of four going to the game? This seems to be what the club is working off.
So when Campbelltown sells out and the club cans junior passes, the variable costs must plummet and a nice profit must be made.
Let's now work off these conservative assumptions and consider the $100,000 that the club makes from taking four games to Moore Park. For the club to walk away with that $100,000 at Campbelltown, they would need a crowd of 17,000 (13,000 break even plus 4000). Of course there are a lot of other fixed costs, etc. that we have to assume here and the deeper mechanics of the deal that we will never know, but I would be comfortable in saying that unless Campbelltown draws 17,000 then it makes economic sense to play at Moore Park.
Consider that the last few crowds at Cambo have been 9,700; 14,800; 12,384; 13,059 and 14,388, the club appeared to only break even three times and made a small profit twice.
Higher historical crowds from 2009-20011 saw the club fare a lot better.
We havn't been told of any figures for Leichhardt so it's hard to draw any comparisons. But for the sake of argument, the next time the crowd figure comes up at either Leichhardt or Campbelltown, hope that is at least above 13,000 if not north of 18k.
:sign:
