First hurdle for getting fans back? Socially-distanced toilets

[ASFN Admin]

There are a lot of logistics in getting fans back, including ordering in toilets because we have to have portable toilets for social distancing. The problem is that our building was built in the 1930s and there are narrow passageways for the entrance so you have to let someone go out before you go in, which would need stewarding. You weigh up the costing and the time it takes to take people in and out, and it was more cost effective and better to hire a load of temporary toilets. It costs about £7,500 to stage a match. We’ve sold 1,500 season tickets so we’ve had the money for that. We have the additional costs of operating the stadium with fans. You actually need more stewards for fewer fans as you are shepherding people around. Then there are toilets and sanitiser, which all adds up. Based on an average ticket price that we need 600 fans to break even, taking us to 2,100 in the stadium. Our Covid-capacity is about 2,500 so if we’re in Tier 1 we’ll make a small profit from the 400 tickets. If we are limited to 2,000, we’ll make a small loss. It is not the financial solution to lower-league football. But we are better with fans. Clubs exist for fans, so we are going to do everything we can to maximise the number of fans we can get in. My message is ‘Let’s not waste a space’. If a season-ticket holder can’t come, let us know and we’ll resell that seat to somebody who can. I think our fans will engage with that, they know we have been fighting from day one to do everything we can to get back. We’re planning to play Mansfield on the first day fans are back. We heard the news 4pm on the Monday and had a meeting at 9am on Tuesday and we’re working through decisions and what we’ve already had in place. There is some boring detail to make it as Covid-secure as you can make it. It helped that we staged a test event earlier in the year. We were also one of the two pilot clubs, along with Charlton Athletic, to work with Movement Strategies, who the EFL used to look over our ground and prepare a detailed report. For the Fulham game we held, we did a lot of tweaking with our ticketing system, so now when people are buying tickets in a bubble of three it wipes out the seats around them to maintain social distancing. We’ve automated the process but it means we cannot be precise on our capacity because that will depend on the size of the bubbles. We desperately want families of six to come.

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