Saints look set to see some decent crowds at St Mary's in the next couple of weeks.
Saints policy of reducing prices for the visit of Nottingham Forest alongside the importance of the game itself, looks set to give Saints their biggest gate of the season so far, even taking into account that the last Saturday before Xmas traditionally has a low gate.
With three days to go before the visit of Forest sales have topped the 23,000 mark and are still selling at a steady rate, meaning that a gate of 25k plus is highly likely.
Reading has the added bonus of a full complement of away supporters and with nearly a fortnight to go, sales are heading towards the 20k mark, a couple of good results in between could see a late surge in sales and that too could be heading towards the 25k figure.
Of course this would be a great boost to Saints finances and also an aid to dealing with the bank in that the Club can show that the support is still out there and will come back if the results improve.
With 11 games gone Saints are averaging 15,740 making them the 14th best supported club in the division, however if they can pull in 50,000 between the next two home games, although it wont push them up too much in the attendance stats table, it would push the average attendance over the magical 17,000 break even figure for the season so far.
That would give them a good base to try and keep above this mark in the New Year, historically most of the sides who attract big followings to St Mary's and therefore decent attendances are in that period, including the London trio of QPR, Charlton & Palace, who all arrive in the final part of the season when crowds tend to go up especially if there is something to play for.
Man Utd tickets are also selling well and heading towards a sell out, with members having the chance from today to buy a ticket without twinning with another home game, there are around 7,000 tickets left, with around 9,000 season ticket holders and 5,000 members, this has meant that there has been a good take up of tickets especially by those season ticket holders who have purchased extra tickets.
When tickets go on general sale on Monday the club would expect there to be around 5-6000 available.
All in all these three matches will bring in an estimated £1 million in revenue over and above that budgeted for on the current break even figure, however its important to note that even with a gate of 25,000 the Forest game will barely bring in any more receipts than an attendance of 17,000 at full price, perhaps even less, those that clamour for reduced prices would do well to note that in order to do this on a regular basis, Saints would need to be guaranteed an extra 11,000 per game, the mathematics are quite easy, 17,000 X £10 reduction = £170,000, £170,000 ~ £15 ticket price = 11,333.
I would concede that these figures are not accurate being that they generalise and dont take into account reduced prices for season ticket holders or concessions, but you get the general drift and i would also point out they are my own calculations and based on my own assumptions and not those of the club itself.