Matchday revenue per head, up from £7.45.
Operations · One of two retainers
What a supporterspends is decidedinside the ground.
Digital brings people to a fixture. Operations decides what each of them is worth once they arrive. We audit the matchday, fix what is slowing it down and build what is missing.
(01)The caseRevenue per head is an operations number
A whole season oftrading fits into23 afternoons.
Food, drink and retail are sold to a crowd that arrives across two hours, disappears for forty-five minutes, returns for fifteen and then leaves. How well a club handles that is what revenue per head measures.
Three products, three curves. Ticketing front-loads. Drink builds through the afternoon and returns at the break. Food arrives in one crush at half time.
The half hour after the whistle takes 18% of the day and gets the least planning of any part of it.
In-ground revenue across a three o’clock kick-off, one National League South club.
Share of in-ground revenue by phase of the day.
(02)ExperienceWhere this comes from
Everything herewas built at a clubwe own.
Off Pitch comes out of running the commercial operation at Farnham Town, which went from a £30,000 members’ club to a seven-figure business across four seasons.
The food and beverage outlets, the hospitality packages, the retail range and the move to digital ticketing were built rather than recommended. We assessed more than twenty providers before choosing the ones the club runs on today.
We have made these decisions with our own money before making them with yours.
Every change described here is one we have made at a club.
On a Saturday, with a crowd in.
(03)What we doFive areas, in the order that suits the club
We watch amatchday run,then change it.
Five areas, across the whole of a matchday and everything feeding it. Most clubs start with the audit, which sets the order for the rest.
We spend the day at the ground counting, timing and recording, then go through the back of house line by line. You get written findings and a shortlist you can act on before the next home game.
Where the answer is a new supplier, a new outlet or a new range, we run that too. Research, shortlist, negotiation and implementation.
01Matchday audit
A day at the ground while a fixture runs. Queue length against service time, transactions per till, how early the ground fills and how fast it empties, what each outlet takes and what it costs to run. Written findings with a shortlist of what to change first.
02Suppliers and systems
Card terminals, point of sale, ticketing and stock. We know the market, having assessed more than twenty providers across it. We shortlist against how your club trades, negotiate the commercials and see the change in.
03Service and staffing
Rostering against the revenue curve rather than the clock, so a club is not paying for cover at one and short of hands at half time. Menu built for throughput, flow through the concourse, till configuration, payment speed, margin by item.
04Range and new operations
Building what the club does not have yet. A shop with a range beyond the replica shirt, an outlet where the queue forms, a pre-match offer that brings people in early, a way to buy through the week.
05Measurement
What each fixture took, by product and by phase of the day. A club that knows a Saturday made £24,000 can budget. A club that knows £11,000 of it came before two o’clock can change something.
Merchandise sellsfor the wholeof the day.
Retail is the one line not bound by the windows. It sells before the game, at half time, after the whistle and every day in between.
A wider range gives the supporter who does not want a replica shirt something to spend on, and a shop open through the week gives every supporter somewhere to spend it. Both are range and channel decisions, and both land inside a season.
(04)The proofFarnham Town
£7.45 a headbecame £17.60.
Across four seasons at Farnham Town, matchday revenue per head more than doubled while the average gate went from 85 to over 1,400. The ground is the same one.
New food and beverage outlets, hospitality packages built into existing space, a retail range beyond the shirt and a ticketing system that works on a phone. Each of them appears in the numbers below.
£17.60 is above the median of every division outside the Premier League. It was earned in the sixth tier.
Up from 85 a game in 2019, with sellouts above 2,300.
From a £30,000 members’ club to a seven-figure business.
Card, point of sale and ticketing providers assessed across UK football.
(05)Talk to us
What did yourmatchdaytake?
Bring a season of figures and a fixture we can come to. The first conversation ends with a view on whether the gap is the operation or the crowd, and both are ours to fix.
Retained partnership
Off Pitch works as an external commercial and operations function across the season, retained across a season and measured on revenue rather than output. Send your numbers and the conversation about scope costs nothing.
Priced against the scope of workEnquire about a partnershipConsultancy call
A working session on your club, booked for as long as it needs, with a written summary afterwards. Suited to a club with the people to do the work and no outside view on where to point them.
£250 for ninety minutes