Photo credit: FC Copenhagen
Author: Tim Berggren, Business Developer at NewC
There is no doubt that Danish and International football clubs are going through a difficult period with the current global Corona pandemic. Everyone is working to find financial solutions in order to come out stronger through this crisis.
At NewC, we deliver ticketing to 7 out of 14 clubs in the Danish 3F Super League. For these partners, we have a solution where season tickets are paid for as a subscription, with a low fixed monthly payment and with no expiration date. This subscription solution has many advantages in terms of making it more financially accessible for fans, especially young fans, to be a season ticket holder in the Danish 3F Super League.
Even in the current Corona crisis, this solution has proved its worth once again. In more than 90 % of the cases, the season ticket holders, who use the subscription solution, have agreed to continue their payments to the clubs – despite the lack of matches.
In Denmark there is currently no prospect of spectators in the 3F Super League before September 2020 at the earliest.This means that the clubs continue to have over 90 % of their normal monthly revenue from season tickets, despite no matches being with spectators in the near future.
The political restrictions of the Corona crisis occurred in Denmark in the first week of March. This resulted in the matches, in the 3F Super League, being played without spectators – and subsequently the tournament was postponed indefinitely. This meant that a solution had to be found through subscription payments.
Here at NewC, we developed a solution where clubs could leave it to the individual fan to decide whether they would be exempt from the upcoming payments. This gave the individual season ticket holder a choice, rather than the club making the choice for them.
From the beginning, we had high expectations for this solution, but in reality (and by the good will of the season ticket holders) we ended up being greatly surprised. The clubs using our subscription solution can show impressive results with over 95 % of subscription customers continuing to pay despite no matches being played with spectators.
For further information, I can say that – on average – our seven partner clubs in the 3F Super League have been growing their season ticket numbers by more than 16 %, since we introduced the subscription solution in the summer of 2018. There may be other reasons for this development as well, but there is no doubt in my mind that the season ticket subscription solution has been a strong driver behind these results.