Middlesbrough Supporters Forum

[wilsoncgp 9,283]

Excellent work from Mark and a lot of other members of MSF. A lot of work went on in the background the past few days. Three vans full of stuff to pass over for aid to Ukraine as well as £3200 in cash. Led to believe supporters from both sides contributed so excellent stuff from Boro and Luton fans.

 

[Denzel Zanzibar 6,972]

Cracking stuff!

[TeaCider24 12,646]

Sadly I was a dozy git and got confused by which side the Legends Lounge was on or I'd have contributed.

Great effort from them though!

[TeaCider24 12,646]

Doubt it's something that these meetings could sort, but it would be nice if you didn't have to log in to your MFC account repeatedly when trying to access live streams.

Any time you refresh, you're logged out.

[wilsoncgp 9,283]

One more shout for this, doing it outside the Chelsea thread as it may be getting lost amidst the actual match/general Chelsea chatter.

If anybody who wanted one struggled and couldn't get a ticket for the Chelsea game please let me know.

The whole discourse around how we sold tickets for that game has been discussed at length within MSF between the group representatives. That includes the season card + guest part, the priority points situation, all of it. And I do have some information that I'm hoping to pass along shortly related to that.

I know Humpty in particular was expecting not to be able to get a ticket so if somebody else could prod him about that, that would be good. I can't help if he's not gonna speak to me about it.

[Changing Times 12,347]

On 8/16/2021 at 6:39 PM, wilsoncgp said:

- MFC are putting together a 5-year plan on match pricing which they want the MSF to be involved with. They say this will take 12-18 months to plan this out.
- MSF chairman asked if Gibson and Bausor are on board with this 5-year plan and was advised by MFC that they are on board with being 'more creative around tickets'.

I take it that the price rises aren't part of the 5 year plan, and MSF haven't been involved in it?

[wilsoncgp 9,283]

1 minute ago, Changing Times said:

I take it that the price rises aren't part of the 5 year plan, and MSF haven't been involved in it?

Of course. The club is reacting to a global situation that is affecting a lot of businesses and they showed us forecasts of how they expect these things to affect them over the next 12 months. These are both things the club were already concerned about back in August like the COVID deferrals but also more recent events such as the energy crisis and the situation with Russia.

We absolutely were not involved in allowing for these increases, every part of our discussions on tickets have been trying to help find ways to reduce the minimum season ticket price/implement memberships that will ease the burden on more targeted areas of the fanbase like 18-21s. You can see that in all our meeting minutes where that was discussed.

So you can imagine how MSF reacted a week or so ago when they had to tell us they were having to put the prices up. This was the first we'd heard that it was going to happen. Though admittedly, it is the first time we've spoken about tickets in a meeting since November through lack of availability club side.

Nobody was happy with it, we had a pretty big list of issues/questions we sent across to them the same day and that led to the meeting we had on Monday.

[Changing Times 12,347]

4 minutes ago, wilsoncgp said:

Of course. The club is reacting to a global situation that is affecting a lot of businesses and they showed us forecasts of how they expect these things to affect them over the next 12 months. These are both things the club were already concerned about back in August like the COVID deferrals but also more recent events such as the energy crisis and the situation with Russia.

So in these forecasts, what specifically were the increased costs going to be?  I don't mean the values, I mean the items.  Did they show any cost-cutting measures they were taking out of interest?

[wilsoncgp 9,283]

Just now, Changing Times said:

So in these forecasts, what specifically were the increased costs going to be?  I don't mean the values, I mean the items.  Did they show any cost-cutting measures they were taking out of interest?

The 4 big ones were NI contributions, utility costs, rise in minimum wage and of course, the deferred COVID black hole which sooner or later needs dealing with. There's one other big thing which I will try to go into later but I'm not sure how much I can talk about it, it's a bit different from the above reasons though and kind of demands a discussion in and of itself.

No cost-cutting measures were shown in these forecasts from what I can remember or what was taken in our notes, we suggested things like different beer providers for example to try and reduce those costs but I remember them saying that was only changed just recently.

[Changing Times 12,347]

8 minutes ago, wilsoncgp said:

The 4 big ones were NI contributions, utility costs, rise in minimum wage and of course, the deferred COVID black hole which sooner or later needs dealing with. There's one other big thing which I will try to go into later but I'm not sure how much I can talk about it, it's a bit different from the above reasons though and kind of demands a discussion in and of itself.

No cost-cutting measures were shown in these forecasts from what I can remember or what was taken in our notes, we suggested things like different beer providers for example to try and reduce those costs but I remember them saying that was only changed just recently.

Cheers mate, it's what I expected.  Essentially, the ticket price decision was made months ago then really in all likelihood, probably before your last meeting in November in fact.

The rise in ticket prices adds what this season?  About half a million, something along those lines?  That's about third of what we're paying Sporar this season.  It's less than we spent on Ikpeazu, and is obviously significantly less than we spent on McGree in January, when we would have been well aware of all of these increased costs, with the exception of some energy price rises.

[wilsoncgp 9,283]

We have a meeting currently scheduled for the evening of Monday 25th, anything anybody wants to raise with the club?

[Blanco 4,917]

47 minutes ago, wilsoncgp said:

We have a meeting currently scheduled for the evening of Monday 25th, anything anybody wants to raise with the club?

I’d say a certain Burnley would be on the agenda @wilsoncgp 😂😂😂

[wilsoncgp 9,283]

2 minutes ago, Blanco said:

I’d say a certain Burnley would be on the agenda @wilsoncgp 😂😂😂

Unfortunately it's not really the place for it but the club have mentioned numerous times about getting Scott & Wilder into proper meetings with us and how interested both were and I can't imagine a greater time people would want to grill them!

At least we've met Scott but it was kind of tacked on to the season ticket debate and felt a bit put on the spot rather than having any time to prepare. Good to have a chat with him but he said he'd like to do something a bit more in future.

[wilsoncgp 9,283]

Minutes from the latest meeting on 25th April now live for anyone who wants a read:

https://boro.support/middlesbrough-supporters-forumminutes-48/

[wilsoncgp 9,283]

Mark has set up a text line for Middlesbrough Foodbank in case anyone can't attend the collections or wants a quicker way of making payments! Pretty cool stuff!