| Club United proposal 20:40 - Jun 8 with 3282 views | wessex_exile |
Some of you may have seen on the OMB that a group of us are pulling together a proposal for Club United, which I wanted to flag up here in readiness, as it's gaining some traction with the club.
The original excellent proposal was from Coluphil, who thought spelling out "1937" in the North Stand in honour of our formation would help give the stadium some personal identity. Lofty came up with the idea that we could do so by swapping seats with the S3 white block in the South Stand to keep costs down (i.e. less new seats needed). So I threw together some suggestions for S3, ran a poll, and the idea of creating a stylised version of the Col U eagle was the preferred option.
SmithyD then did some inspiring Photoshop work to show what it would look like in the ground, and it is this (below) that we have put forward to the club. The club have indicated they like the idea, and are currently looking into the financials (e.g. new seats, labour to do the swap etc.) so the Club United proposal can be properly costed.
So this is just a heads-up that it will hopefully be appearing on Club United in due course, and if you like the idea we'd all appreciate it so much if you'd pledge your funds to support it.
Up the U's! |  |
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| Club United proposal on 10:20 - Nov 18 with 991 views | RSCOSWORTH |
| Club United proposal on 03:57 - Nov 18 by ghughes11 |
I see that this is now up to £1,220.64.
Pledged so far by 27 supporters.
Surely that's enough to move some seats around? |
1/4 of an eagle?
This needs pushing on Facebook. |  |
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| Club United proposal on 13:55 - Nov 18 with 955 views | burnsieespana |
You would have thought so as £5000 seems an awful lot |  | | |
| Club United proposal on 18:32 - Nov 18 with 927 views | wessex_exile |
| Club United proposal on 13:55 - Nov 18 by burnsieespana |
You would have thought so as £5000 seems an awful lot |
It was a best-guess based on a calculation about how many new seats would be needed, plus club staff labour costs to do the work. Unfortunately, despite repeated requests, the club wouldn't engage to provide feedback on whether or not it was a realistic figure. Despite the recent significant boost in pledges, I fear this will fall well short of pledges by the January 1st deadline. | |
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| Club United proposal on 22:57 - Nov 18 with 865 views | ghughes11 |
Strange that non of the proposals hit their targets. Not even Cowling's one raising money for Eddie's New Costume.
I thought that more people would get behind the Safe Standing Trial but only 11 people have pledged £582.71 out of the £15,000.00 required.
There's £14,568.44 in the pot - how much to sign Bonne???  |  |
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| Club United proposal on 00:34 - Nov 19 with 857 views | wessex_exile |
| Club United proposal on 22:57 - Nov 18 by ghughes11 |
Strange that non of the proposals hit their targets. Not even Cowling's one raising money for Eddie's New Costume.
I thought that more people would get behind the Safe Standing Trial but only 11 people have pledged £582.71 out of the £15,000.00 required.
There's £14,568.44 in the pot - how much to sign Bonne??? |
A cynic might observe that’s not a coincidence, but I’ll leave that to others to speculate. The proposal expires on Jan 1st, so I plan to resubmit on Jan 2nd for an outrageously low price - unless of course the club decide this time to reach out? | |
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| Club United proposal on 07:27 - Nov 19 with 851 views | noah4x4 |
We have a hard core of merely 1,700 supporters. If they donate an average of £10 each then merely £17,000 is raised, but I fear an average of £2 or £5 is more likely. Hence, frankly, only a few of these projects are realistic if wholly dependent upon this type of crowd funding.
Sadly, the vast majority won't contribute a penny , instead expecting the "rich" to pay more. I am surprised Cowling hasn't walked away given the personal insults that he has suffered. Campaigning for change is justified, but the kids in South Stand Block 1 have gone too far. How long before Cowling announces that the failure of these projects justifies that as the fans evidently don't care, so why should he care? I think we need to get back to basics, rather than pursue nice to haves.
We need to recruit more fans. The first step must be success on the field of play after years of continuous decline under the weak management of Cowlings pals. The club then needs to better market itself, but since Matt Hudson departed it has been clueless about building relationships with its existing customers, let alone finding new. It needs new leadership from somebody that truly understands the entertainment industry and retail marketing.
Fundamental to any solution is public transport. This was deemed a critical success factor when the club relocated from Layer Road and the decline in gates can be directly correlated to the withdrawal of shuttle buses and decline in team performance. The original shuttle buses would have been cost effective if First Bus had properly inspected tickets and taken appropriate fares. Instead, thousands of fans would taxi or be dropped off at the ground and then get a free ride back to town hence the revenue shortfall. Everybody knew this, except Col U management, which killed the service rather than implement the obvious solution.
The result is we are now dependent on a hard core of merely 1,700 fans, hence at rock bottom in our 84 year history. The club seems to be waiting for regular bus services to the new Chesterwell Woods housing to commence, but I believe they are indefinitely postponed due to disputes about road adoption and Section 106 money.
However, if no bus services are using the bus turning circle, why does the gate to Boxsted Road remain shut? Many of the car park frustrations are caused because of the congested exit. Now that the road has been improved from the NAR to Boxsted Road and (soon) right up to the stadium, why not encourage cars to leave by that exit whilst pedestrians head in the opposite direction? That gate was never in the original NAR and Axial Way plans. It was installed to seperate pedestrians heading for buses and cars. But if no buses.......?
BTW, I recently discovered that the (rare!) 81a now picks up on Boxted Road, upon Saturday's, at 17:20. This is a little closer than Mill Road and Defoe Crescent. Whose bright idea was it to switch so many Saturday games to midweek where transport is far more difficult? But at least the park & ride was open for the last evening game.
Restoration of the fans bar is essential as fans currently have no pre-match focal point. The lower West Stand (or previously East Stand) cannot indefinitely be an NHS vaccination centre. We campaigned for years after the closure of the Layer Road Corner Bar, got a decent facility, and we are now back to square one, with nowhere for fans to congregate, and nowhere to call our "home". The reopening of the Fan Zone was a welcome step forward for the Scunny game, but it is dismal compared to fan facilities any other League Two (or non-league) ground. No real ale, and the same ambiance as the breeze block urinals etc. Before, we had guest ales and even a local band. Hopefully, this will improve, but in the absence of Matt Hudson, who will drive this?
Sorry, but I think any money raised by crowd funding would be better spent on resolving these basic issues, rather than picking out 1937 or an Eagle in the seating. Whilst cost cutting has been prudent during the pandemic, the club needs to get back to basics as regards customer wants and needs. That requires investment. Instead, it seems that we have put up closed for business signage at club shop, ticket office, catering etc. We have to emerge from the economic strangle hold of the pandemic at some point. Why are we last? |  | | |
| Club United proposal on 10:24 - Nov 19 with 830 views | burnsieespana |
Seemingly the 81a is an ECC funded service operated by Panther Travel.
No wonder these type of routes carry few passengers as they never seem to be advertised.
Since Panther Travel are a niche private operator they are the very people the club could contact and ask them to provide a commercial service on match days
With proper advertising/exposure this could be commercially successful. | | | |
| Club United proposal on 10:44 - Nov 19 with 828 views | wessex_exile |
| Club United proposal on 10:24 - Nov 19 by burnsieespana |
Seemingly the 81a is an ECC funded service operated by Panther Travel.
No wonder these type of routes carry few passengers as they never seem to be advertised.
Since Panther Travel are a niche private operator they are the very people the club could contact and ask them to provide a commercial service on match days
With proper advertising/exposure this could be commercially successful. |
Indeed, many on here will remember Panners (something like PanCab as a username) on here, who worked for Panther Cabs.
However, the concept behind Club United specifically excluded infrastructure work that the club would otherwise have to pay for themselves, so fanzones, supporters bars and public transport initiatives couldn't be considered. The concept was for innovative ideas that the club wouldn't specifically have to do, but which might make the JobServe more of a home to U's fans.
The other thing to bear in mind as this is spent money, there's no fund-raising per se, the funds already exist as a pot of money that otherwise would have been refunds to supporters following the curtailment of the 2019/20 season. At its launch the pot was just over £11k from 309 supporters, which has since grown to £14.5k (supporters can add funds to the pot whenever they want). The seat design proposal is the most successful of them all so far, but still has only attracted just over £1.2k of pledges. Of course, not everyone will like proposals, and everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but my worry is that there might be a large number of supporters with funds in the pot who either are blissfully ignorant of Club United, or just have no motivation to engage with it.
This would be a terrible shame, because I actually think as a concept it is an excellent idea, but more than a year down the line and with all proposals so far either failing to attract sufficient pledges, or looking like they'll fail, eventually the club will surely mark it down as a failed experiment and shut it down.
The club can't be seen to promote one proposal over another, I get that, but surely they could do far more to just promote Club United, get some through traffic from supporters who might have forgotten all about it? | |
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| Club United proposal on 14:48 - Nov 19 with 800 views | noah4x4 |
| Club United proposal on 10:24 - Nov 19 by burnsieespana |
Seemingly the 81a is an ECC funded service operated by Panther Travel.
No wonder these type of routes carry few passengers as they never seem to be advertised.
Since Panther Travel are a niche private operator they are the very people the club could contact and ask them to provide a commercial service on match days
With proper advertising/exposure this could be commercially successful. |
Spot on Burnsie. My frustration as a former FTSE250 Marketing Director is that solutions are possibly easy to find.
Moving 1,000 to 2,000 people from Bus Station to Bruff Close to Stadium and back must be profitable at the right ticket price. After all, every previous shuttle bus was chocca full and was operated on a continuous loop. The mistake was that too few paid their £2.50, and regular free bus passes were also being accepted. A regular First Bus return to Mill Road is £3.80, but regular buses run almost empty. Instead of a free programme, I would much prefer the club to "invest" in this as it must directly support a drive to recruit more supporters.
Bar staffing seems to be a current issue. I suspect local CAMRA members might volunteer to man a 'real ale station' (as they do at Exeter City). Whilst Green King IPA is shi5, the brewery does offer a few more drinkable options.
However, nobody seems to want to engage with supporters and listen. That is probably why there is apathy about Club United. From day one at the stadium an attitude has prevailed that only corporate hospitality is worthwhile. We had to fight to get the Fans Bar open and now we are right back to square one. | | | |
| Club United proposal on 18:58 - Jan 5 with 596 views | wessex_exile |
Evening everyone.
Those of you who might have made pledges to support the original seat design proposal will have noticed your pledges returned on New Years Day as the proposal did make its target - a target I add that we had to guesstimate as the club didn't engage in meaningful dialogue to determine whether or not it was realistic. After discussion on the OMB, we have decided to resubmit, as invited to do so in the e-mail response I received from the club on New Years Day, but with a significantly reduced target cost (£500 instead of £5,000). This is currently under review by the club, who presumably will feed back if the revised target is wholly unrealistic, but otherwise I would expect to see it go live on your dashboards before too long - thanks in advance to anyone who feels it in themselves to support the proposal. | |
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| Club United proposal on 10:24 - Jan 6 with 528 views | Daniel |
This project really does epitomise how disconnected the club is with its supporters.
There was a documentary series a few years back on either Amazon Prime or Netflix which followed the fortunes of Sunderland for a season or two. I recall there was one episode where Sunderland supporters had complained to the club that their stadium was looking run down and the club listened. Rather than the rich owners throwing money at it, they engaged with the fans and arranged a day where the fans repaired and replaced seats. Such a simple thing which saved the club money and made the supporters feel valued. |  | | |
| Club United proposal on 17:03 - Jan 6 with 498 views | mfb_cufc |
| Club United proposal on 10:24 - Jan 6 by Daniel |
This project really does epitomise how disconnected the club is with its supporters.
There was a documentary series a few years back on either Amazon Prime or Netflix which followed the fortunes of Sunderland for a season or two. I recall there was one episode where Sunderland supporters had complained to the club that their stadium was looking run down and the club listened. Rather than the rich owners throwing money at it, they engaged with the fans and arranged a day where the fans repaired and replaced seats. Such a simple thing which saved the club money and made the supporters feel valued. |
Fans have offered to move the blue and white seats around for free, to make this project work. I have myself. But I think due to health and safety issues, this offer was rejected. |  |
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| Club United proposal on 19:37 - Jan 6 with 482 views | wessex_exile |
| Club United proposal on 17:03 - Jan 6 by mfb_cufc |
Fans have offered to move the blue and white seats around for free, to make this project work. I have myself. But I think due to health and safety issues, this offer was rejected. |
To be fair, it wasn't that the idea of fan involvement was rejected, it was just there was no engagement from the club to discuss that or any other cost mitigation options. Now they have to review the same proposal at just 10% of the original estimate, maybe they will this time? | |
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