Tottenham Trust meeting Thursday 7 February

[BoringOldFan]

I went along to the meeting of the Tottenham Trust tonight. Guest speakers from the club were Paul Barber and Ticket Office manager Ian Murphy. It was a really good evening.

The Trust will be sending out proper minutes, but here are some of the points that came up.

The online ticketing system! I brought this up and it was immediately hijacked by season ticket holders who had never used it before and were complaining about the time it took to get their CC Final tickets. Boo hoo! For me the most important point is that Ian Murphy said that it can only process less than 250 transactions per minute and the reason for this is the time it takes to validate the credit card transactions.

Two members of a supporters club spent a long time talking about the situation about loyalty points being moved from individual members and then to a club pool, and then not being able to get CC Final tickets. There were some eye-opening statements about supporters' club benefits - they do pretty well!

Our allocation for the CC Final is around 31k. The UEFA Cup finalists will receive 13k each and the FA Cup finalists will only receive 21k each.

There was some discussion of the proposal to play one game overseas per season. Paul Barber said it is at a very early stage and all that had been agreed was that it needed to be looked at in more detail.

Paul Barber said that the more expensive versions of the Opus are selling the best. People who opted for the one signed by BMJ were offered the option to have it signed by Ramos as well. Some declined the offer. The raffled Opus at the Man U game raised around £6,000. All proceeds from all sales go to the Bill Nicholson Trust and not to the club.

There was some discussion about the stadium but nothing new came up. The club is still hopeful that the new training ground plans will go ahead.

We have entered the Intertoto Cup as a safeguard for not qualifying for Europe by dint of league position of another Cup competition.

There was a draw for the 12 CC Final tickets that the Trust had been given by the Football Supporters Trust. I can vouch for the complete randomness of the draw. It made the World Cup final draw look like a game of snap. The Trust will notify winners. If a winner has already got a ticket by other means (ST or member) then it will go to another Trust member (more than 12 draws were made).

These are my recollections and in no way constitute an official record of the evening!

 

[leffe186]

Thanks BOF, much appreciated, have some rep.

I didn't realise we'd entered the Intertoto...

 

[Real_madyidd]

These are my recollections and in no way constitute an official record of the evening!

Since you were very very drunk?

 

[Chuba]

Thanks BOF all that info its well appreciated, good to see we have entered intertoto just in case, a very wise decision in my view and it will guarantee that we will be in the draw for the proper competition stages, something that we never considered previously and has left us out of europe for so long, can't imagine a season now without european competition.

 

[BoringOldFan]

Since you were very very drunk?

Huh! I wish! Firstly I was driving and secondly we were moved to an upstairs room to get away from the noise of the Irish dancing going on next to the one we were given. And there was no bar upstairs so I was only able to grab a quick pint before I left!

The Intertoto thing was quite funny. I asked Paul Barber directly if we had entered. He answered along the lines of "It would be wise for us to explore every option to get into Europe next season". But he wouldn't say yes! Apparently the club don't want to come out publicly and say we've entered because it's tantamount to an admission that we won't qualify by other means.

So the statement that we've entered is mine not the club's - but I think it's safe to say we have.

I would also like to add what thoroughly nice chaps Paul and Ian are. At the end of the evening, Paul went round and shook everyone by the hand and had time to answer any further questions they had. For a PL club the size of Tottenham I think it does them great credit that they are prepared to send senior executives along to meet the fans in this way.

 

[JamesTheYiddo]

Nice one BOF.

 

[ever]

good work fella :up:

 

[Bonjour]

Intertoto.

Wicked.

 

[donny1013]

i started a thread about the Intertoto the other day, i am glad we have entered now on hindsight as European football is important for a club the size if Spurs. We will have to finish above Blackburn and Man Citeh though.

 

[mrboombarrakoomba]

thanks BOF.

 

[vegassd]

I would also like to add what thoroughly nice chaps Paul and Ian are. At the end of the evening, Paul went round and shook everyone by the hand and had time to answer any further questions they had. For a PL club the size of Tottenham I think it does them great credit that they are prepared to send senior executives along to meet the fans in this way.

Well said!

Did they mention any plans about improving the ticketing system re. the credit card processing thing? They must be able to spread that load somehow to improve throughput.

Good work as ever BOF. :wink:

 

[BoringOldFan]

Well said!

Did they mention any plans about improving the ticketing system re. the credit card processing thing? They must be able to spread that load somehow to improve throughput.

Good work as ever BOF. :wink:

The issue is the speed at which Ticketmaster can get its transactions processed by the credit card companies, so to that extent it is out of Spurs' hands. But Ian Murphy said that Ticketmaster is working with the CC companies to improve this (it affects their other ticket-selling business not just us) and Spurs are being informed of developments.

 

[beals]

Interesting read cheers BOF...

 

[BoringOldFan]

Something else I just remembered about the stadium. Not on its location, but Paul Barber spoke about the importance of getting the size right. He didn't think we could fill a 60k stadium, and the capacity is key.

Apparently there have been instances where clubs have moved into stadia that exceed their initial requirement. The result of this is that season ticket sales decline, because fans know they can pretty much walk up on the day and get a ticket without paying for 20 in advance.

Ian Murphy said that for the upcoming Slavia Prague game at home, 24k tickets have been sold and he expected only 30k on the night. So not a sell-out by any means. He did add that this might be due in part to people waiting to see how the first leg goes and still paying off Christmas credit card bills.

 

[BigRed]

The issue is the speed at which Ticketmaster can get its transactions processed by the credit card companies, so to that extent it is out of Spurs' hands. But Ian Murphy said that Ticketmaster is working with the CC companies to improve this (it affects their other ticket-selling business not just us) and Spurs are being informed of developments.

I'm sorry, but that is bullshit. If the system can handle 250 transactions a minute it should be able to go through every single season ticket member in less than 2 hours. That assumes we all logged on at the same time. Spread that out over a day and I really can't believe there's any valid reason for anyone to have been waiting more than an hour or so.

 

[louisg]

nothing to do with it being on a thursday night and also on tv then?

Louis

 

[chrissivad]

Something else I just remembered about the stadium. Not on its location, but Paul Barber spoke about the importance of getting the size right. He didn't think we could fill a 60k stadium, and the capacity is key.

Apparently there have been instances where clubs have moved into stadia that exceed their initial requirement. The result of this is that season ticket sales decline, because fans know they can pretty much walk up on the day and get a ticket without paying for 20 in advance.

Ian Murphy said that for the upcoming Slavia Prague game at home, 24k tickets have been sold and he expected only 30k on the night. So not a sell-out by any means. He did add that this might be due in part to people waiting to see how the first leg goes and still paying off Christmas credit card bills.

As long as they consider that it might not be long before we could sell out a 60k stadium and that the 50-55k one i hope we get will be easly exspanded and not a start again situation.

Cheers for the info BOF :up:

 

[BoringOldFan]

I'm sorry, but that is bullshit. If the system can handle 250 transactions a minute it should be able to go through every single season ticket member in less than 2 hours. That assumes we all logged on at the same time. Spread that out over a day and I really can't believe there's any valid reason for anyone to have been waiting more than an hour or so.

No it is not bullshit, BR. What happened with the ST holders (many using the system for the first time) was that they wanted to go with their mates. If they just dipped in to book one or two tickets, it would have been much better.

But there were groups of 6, 10, 12 wanting to sit together so spent much longer than the average time looking for those number of seats. The same happened on the phones so some people were on the line for 20 minutes or more looking for a block of seats to accommmodate them.

 

[idlepete]

Spurs go Intertoto. Nice. Cheers BOF.

 

[BigRed]

No it is not bullshit, BR. What happened with the ST holders (many using the system for the first time) was that they wanted to go with their mates. If they just dipped in to book one or two tickets, it would have been much better.

But there were groups of 6, 10, 12 wanting to sit together so spent much longer than the average time looking for those number of seats. The same happened on the phones so some people were on the line for 20 minutes or more looking for a block of seats to accommmodate them.

But that's a completely different issue to the speed at which credit cards can be processed. If the problem is the time that people spent logged in it doesn't matter if they could process a million transactions a minute if they can only have 10 people logged in at a time and each of the 10 stays logged in for half an hour.

So the issue is how many people can be logged in at the same time. Obviously a tricky one, because you can't have a free for all, but rather than yammering on about the number of transactions they can make in a minute they should look at a way of easing the congestion caused by this bottleneck.