Southampton are set to register their lowest attendance in the FA Cup for 15 years when they take on Swansea City in the FA Cup and this has to be mainly down to the price structure set by the club for this tie.
The FA Cup used to see attendances rise when compared to League games, but in the modern era this trend has reversed and club's have to work hard to fill their stadium's by using it as a chance to encourage youngsters and those who would not normally attend to take the chance to watch the team and to build the fan base for the future.
15 years ago we took on Shrewsbury in the 1st round and then Cheltenham in the 2nd, back then being in League One we did not get a bye to the 3rd round, the attendances were 10,410 & 9,276 respectively, a look at the club's online ticket system suggests that we will struggle to match even the lower of the number, unless Swansea sell out their full allocation, which at time of writing they have failed to do.
When a team is playing well and attractive to watch, you can have demand, but when a team is doing badly, to get bums on seats it means cheap prices .
For the visit of Swansea prices have been cut, but they are not cheap, the price now for Adults over 18 is £22.50 with those under 18 set at £7.50, which in fairness is a good price, all of these come with £1.50 per ticket booking fee.
So if Children want to go then they need to be accompanied by an adult, so a family of four who want to go would need to fork out £66 including booking fees for the privilege of seeing Saints take on a mid table Championship side, that would increase by £1 a ticket if they don't have the Saints to receive the ticket digitally on their phone.
Put bluntly it is just not attractive to encouraging families and new supporters to the club and those that do turn up won't be impressed by a stadium that is set to be only about a third full if we take ticket sales as at this morning.
Don't even get me started as to why you close the biggest stand in the Kingsland and the one that has traditionally seen the most seats filled for games, the club has just stuck two fingers up at those in the Kingsland and said find a more inferior seat in another pat of the ground, I know plenty of fans in this area that would have probably gone, but can't be bothered as they have to find another seat in another area they don't want to go in.
Normally games like this have a decent walk up on the day, but with ticket prices rising £2.50 if you haven't bough a ticket by the end of Friday, the increase aimed at encouraging fans to buy early, will actually have the reverse affect.
To clarify just how expensive this is, the cost to watch Swansea City at St Mary's in the Championship last season would have enabled you to buy tickets at £20 for adults in certain areas and between £25 to £30 in most other areas of the ground.
So basically buying individual tickets for this cup game, would not cost you much less than it would have last season for an important league game.
Those responsible for marketing and ticket prices are getting this badly wrong here, are they blind to what has been going on around them this season, the fans are very disgruntled with not just the team, but the way the club is being run.
They needed a gesture from the club to show that they appreciate their support, it is fine to build fan zones and open an expensive pub, but you have to cater for everyone.
As the old saying goes "You can lead a supporter to a standing area home end, but you can't make him sing"
This game was an opportunity to reconnect with not only the core support, but also those who are not attending at present and those such as those on low incomes or families who can't afford to go on a regular basis.
We had a great opportunity, but we have blown it and instead seen Saints fan social media full of disgruntled fans who feel that this is a kick in the teeth from a club and it's owners who do not care one iota about the supporters.
Personally I think that is not the case, that the club do care about the fans, I am not one of these that think that as John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood once said " Football is a geezers game", football is for everyone and one of the good things about it is that is transcends everything, you can have a hod carrier sat or stood nest to a solicitor or for that matter a bus driver, it doesn't matter who you are or what you do, what race you are, whether you are male or female, it is all about a shared interest and that is supporting a football club.
So why have those responsible for marketing and selling tickets, got things so badly wrong ?
Again a personal view is that these days football clubs get in people to do this who have no affinity to the club they are working for and do not understand it or its supporters, they see what Liverpool or Arsenal or any of the big clubs do and think all they have to do is replicate that.
They fail to realise that these clubs attract fans from all over the country even the world, they have big waiting lists for season tickets and fans who jump at the one chance they get to watch a game when a cup game comes along.
They fail to realise that at clubs like Southampton it is a community thing, that you have to work hard to get people through the turnstiles and to buy merchandise, this is not Manchester United where you just have to build a big club megastore and they will come.
So Sunday against Swansea won't be one of those cup ties where a full(ish) stadium roars on the team and it becomes one of those games that we all remember, it will be one where the fans rattle around the stadium in the cold and wish they had never come.
Well done Southampton FC Marketing & ticketing.