Fans forum 18.07

[Red and white hoops]

For anyone who hasn’t seen it on twitter. Fans forum on 18 July at 18.00 in function suite.

I won’t make the forum unfortunately. If someone could post a summary of everything discussed that would be appreciated.

Points I hope are raised:

Aims for the season ahead
What happened to a glamour friendly for 150th year?
Kit (hopefully binning it)
Ticket pricing
Stadium purchase

Feel free to add to this list if anyone else can’t make it.

[Beckford]

Surely most important question should be why is McGowan still here, when will he be gone and what is happening with the stadium purchase (although sure the answer will be the wee rat is milking us for every last penny and causing as much crap as possible.)

Also now that we have Ben on board, when will we have a fit for purpose media output, website etc.?

[accie]

For anyone who hasn’t seen it on twitter. Fans forum on 18 July at 18.00 in function suite.

I won’t make the forum unfortunately. If someone could post a summary of everything discussed that would be appreciated.

Points I hope are raised:

Aims for the season ahead
What happened to a glamour friendly for 150th year?
Kit (hopefully binning it)
Ticket pricing
Stadium purchase

Feel free to add to this list if anyone else can’t make it.

Aims for the season, finish in the promotion play off spots.
Glamour friendly looking to be abroad before Xmas. Fans travelling with players.
Kit is staying but a better quality to be delivered soon. Serif chose it and agreed he may have got it wrong. Away strip sounds as though it will be blue and green hoops and fans will get a chance to pick the Anniversary strip which will be worn at least twice.
Ticket pricing is to make more from the bigger away supports this year. Doesn't think they can get our fan base to grow much this year no matter the gate price.
Stadium purchase more or less done, hopefully before the Ayr game.
Ben's working on various digital projects including Web site and shop, hopefully more in the next few weeks.

In addition there are plans for player of the year nights, both in Hamilton and Glasgow.
Might see another couple of players come in during this window.
Make better use of stadium for a social club and player nights.
Club. Spent £2.9 million last year, ticket sales brought in 150K, player sales around 750K sponsorship and Serif covered the rest.

[Stevie Clarke]

Thanks accie. Did fans make their voices known about the strips? Glamour friendly abroad. Eh? Ok for the wealthy fans then. God, we're a strange club.

[accie]

Serif dealt with the strip issue right at the start and by admitting he got it wrong took the wind out of any complaints really. I asked about a supporters dinner with ex and current players, or similar, in the club for the fans and something like that will happen..

[Red and white hoops]

Thanks for the excellent summary accie.

Always a worthwhile and interesting hour or so these forums.

[StewartP]

Yeah, thanks for the update on what was discussed

[Beckford]

As above thought tonight was really positive (as all the forums have been to date and really appreciate the fact that the owners take the time to do them.)

Although I still think the kit "launch" was a PR disaster, I'm still annoyed and frustrated that we failed to deliver on the promises made and I still don't like the design, I accept the explanations provided and the reasoning behind what they were trying to do. I also liked the way Serif took ownership of the (many) mistakes that have been made with the kit and what they said they will do to improve things. In principle I'm behind the idea of having our own kit and merchandise manufacturers that generate funds for the club, if decent quality, i will buy what i can in support and hope there's some decent gear on the way!! (Still can't see me buying that home kit though!)

I also like the ambition and the dare to dream a bit bigger attitude from our board. Like most fans, a season where we consolidate ourselves as a mid table championship club would do me, as long as we get the stadium ownership issue resolved and actions are taken to engage with the fans and grow the support. I can see how the PATG prices were still an issue for a lot of fans tonight and can't say I was overly impressed with the reasons for them tbh.

No mater what your thoughts were and let's be honest, it's impossible to please everyone, the motivation to succeed and desire to constantly improve within these owners can not be questioned.

[porcupine]

Again, Thanks for update from those who were there.

£900K Income v £2.9M Expenditure. £2M from Serif, then? He must have VERY deep pockets as this cannot be sustainable year on year for any individual.

[Spankatron250]

Anything about a shirt sponsor?

[Gav]

Again, Thanks for update from those who were there.

£900K Income v £2.9M Expenditure. £2M from Serif, then? He must have VERY deep pockets as this cannot be sustainable year on year for any individual.

Figure for ticket money is nonsense as would be 200 paying fans - apart from Falkirk games - and no mention of sponsorship and prize money.

[Spankatron250]

Again, Thanks for update from those who were there.

£900K Income v £2.9M Expenditure. £2M from Serif, then? He must have VERY deep pockets as this cannot be sustainable year on year for any individual.

The £2mil was covered by Sponsorship aswell as Serif.

Still concerning though

[Stevie Clarke]

The £150k ticket income surely must be season tickets only and not include weekly PATG. We were told we sold about 800 so that's about £187.50 each ticket therefore that seems about right. Serif may have put in a million or so but not two.

[accie]

I think there was an issue with season tickets last year and the final sales were only 300 or so.

[AccieDownUnder]

Anything about MacDonald?

[accies1874]

To answer the questions about shirt sponsor and Kyle MacDonald.

Zengin said that the reason the kit took so long is that he's still waiting to seal the deal with a multi-year sponsor who'll offer a good amount of money (he gave a figure but I can't remember it), however if that doesn't work out then he has two in reserve.

The first question was about MacDonald. Brown and Zengin communicated it really poorly and sounded very much like two men from older generations. Having seen the evidence, which is obviously something now of us have seen, their stance is to stick by him, but their attitude made me think that maybe they wouldn't be the best judges of the evidence. I have heard that they've taken all the right steps behind the scenes, though, so I'm hoping it's just a case of poor communication on their behalf.

[AccieDownUnder]

Sounds a bit of a “boys will be boys” attitude from our board. Playing down an indecent act which the court deemed necessary to put someone on a sex offenders register is a bit baffling. The morals of the club and the standard at which I live to clearly don’t align so I won’t be back. Not that they’ll care about me or any Accies fan as long as they’re getting high gate money from away fans to fund their play toy.

[Stevie Clarke]

I think there was an issue with season tickets last year and the final sales were only 300 or so.

They were boasting on the club website that they'd sold over 800 and their target was 1000. Found it a bit hard to believe that we'd leapt from 300 odd to that. What do mean an issue, accie? Was something said at the forum?

[AccieDownUnder]

Was anything mentioned about the poor use of social media and the fact that a rag has broken news before our official channels? Would love to know why someone (ohhh I wonder who) in the club leaks to the paper, especially when leaking mental stories like linking Greg Docherty.

[Stevie Clarke]

I think there was an issue with season tickets last year and the final sales were only 300 or so.

They were boasting on the club website that they'd sold over 800 and their target was 1000. Found it a bit hard to believe that we'd leapt from 300 odd to that. What do mean an issue, accie? Was something said at the forum?

Found it, it was on the breakaway Twitter account. No room for ambiguity here: "The club would like to thank our fans for their commitment to our #NewEra as we have now sold 848 season tickets".