Slick salesmen aided flawed migration policy
Over 250 season ticket holders have already been relocated in what West Ham are describing as an “ongoing process to keep like minded supporters together.”
Some season ticket holders have pointed to the ‘plus two’ part of strategy as being the major flaw while others blame a far too small family section or indeed even caring at all where supporters were relocated to.
But you know what? We really have a very simple answer to the issue. The reservation centre was full of eager sales people earning bonuses on reaching their sales targets when positions were being sold to us punters.
Many of these sales person who no longer work for the club were rival fans of other clubs who would say anything and everything to make their sales figures.
They did an excellent sales job in getting rid of over 52,000 season tickets but cared little where those they were “serving” sat, who they sold to and who they sat next to.
They sold over 10,000 kids tickets together with 15,000 parents so in reality we would have needed a 25,000 family section. West Ham allocated two small sections in the Bobby Moore Upper containing just 1,400 which quickly sold out and we learned later weren’t exclusively ‘families only’ anyway.
Sales advisers knew full well that the new Bobby Moore Lower and the South corner of the West stand lower traditionally stood at the Boleyn Ground would continue to stand in the London Stadium.
In fact the club had previously talked about re-locating like minded ‘singing areas’ at SAB meetings I attended and sale advisers would often wink when asked if supporters would be able to continue to stand when they choose their season ticket seats.
Despite this knowledge, reservation sales men and women continued to sell these ‘singing sections’ to the young and the old alike without warning them what kind of sections these would likely be.
When I attended my sales meeting in Stratford I was told that there was no specific family stand but that the whole stadium was family friendly.
I was told my Liverpool supporting salesman that I should be able to continue to stand. Later during an amnesty I was offered two further tickets in block 113 in the Lower West Stand.
The two under-16 tickets I purchased for my children are in a relocated block which traditionally stood, the two seats are fifteen rows away from my season tickets but the salesman sold me them anyway and said it wasn’t a problem despite no adult sitting next to them.
I am not suggesting that the board should have stood over over sales person to scrutinise over season ticket sale but someone should have been in control of sales strategy.
The person is charge of sales was an american called Charles Bruner in his role as ‘Head of new stadium sales’. He previously worked for Arsenal in a similar role for over four years.