April 08 - The Wembley Run In
The Selling
Wembley ticket selling is not an exact science, You don’t get to go on a training course or get given a manual. We had to sort out a procedure of selling over the phone, online and in person.
Online was pretty easy. We had set up the shop after about 2 weeks of setting the site live. It is testament to its scalability that it stood up all this time without and issues and also with the amount of sales that were to be forced through it. We knew that the shop could export all order details for fulfillment quickly and accurately. Website just needed the tickets put on it and we were away.
Phone was much more tricky. We need to all the necessary information over the phone, take payment, record all the data in to an excel spreadsheet very similar to the website export. This opened up human error and a lot of time spent on the phone taking orders. We need volunteers and extra staff to help with this. We also needed to install new desks and spaces for these extra staff. We managed to get a very capable girl in to answer the phones solidly who was very very good. We also got a couple of volunteers to help and every one of us took phone orders at one time or another. So we had 5 weeks of constant sales over the phone whilst try to run a football club. You know when you have loads of work to do but the phone keeps going - it was like that for 5 weeks.
Sales at the club was the real massive issue though - everything that could have been awkward was. Firstly we had to collect everyones details when before we sold them tickets. - therefore we designed a simple form for everyone to fill in. We need to offer three payment methods - cash, card and cheque - the later two had inherent problems in themselves with respect to time taken to do them and the implements need to make them happen. For example we need a mobile credit card machine to process card orders and the base unit need to be plugged in to a phone line. The phone lines were constantly in use with phone orders. Gary was sorting out getting new phone lines put in for Wembley. We started this process off in early March. Our telephone company, after constantly screwing us around, had them installed last week (on the 24th May) - how is that for a service?! So we could take card payments at the club live - we had to record everyones details and process them when the phones weren’t being answered, i.e. at night. Therefore every day after a hard day selling tickets we processed the card payments.
The next issue was we need to set up a secure ticket selling cabin. The access to the office wasn’t sufficient for selling tickets when there was big queues and we still need to run all the normal club functions there. Maurice and Colin got out there tools and fitted out a storage cabin out in 2 days! They cleared it out, built counters, sorted out the electrics, fix wobbly floorboards and put up signs. They basically built something out of nothing for very little. That cabin was used first for selling tickets and latterly merchandise from Nike. It paid for itself 1000 times over. That was just one example of Maurice and Colin creating/fixing/improving the ground with little or no money. Priceless.
Security was another issue that need to be addressed. We had around £100K go through the club on the first day. Most of it was cash. We need to sort the insurance at the club as it wasn’t sufficient (we could have £10K out of the safe at any time and £25K in the safe), sort out a secure routine to transport the money to the bank and get police to patrol regularly on major selling days. On the first day of selling we did 5 trips to the bank. Each trip was with a bag stuffed with money. The small office under the stands looked like a scene from a bank heist film - money was all over the tables, getting counted and bagged up. We literally did cash runs every twenty minutes from the selling cabin with cash tins stuffed with money
Crowd management. How does a club that normally deal with gates of 1000 go about serving 23000 tickets? With great difficulty. People hate to queue, they hate waiting, they all want to get to the front of the queue. We sorted out a system of queuing that allowed only a certain number of people in a certain area. This allowed us to manage crowds, both from a safety and security point of view, but also to help manage the movement of money from the selling cabin to the bank. We had a team of 10 volunteers on the first day who made everything work. We would have had a lot of annoyed people on that day without them. They, all without pay or any reward, worked a 10 hour day that sold around 10000 tickets over all media. It was a huge achievement and a real eye opener to how much the club means to some people in the community.
Finally we had the coaches to sort out. We had 52 coaches to sort out in the end or 2000+ coach tickets. We had to arrange a place for them all to park, the cost of the coaches and print up ticket books for people. We decided to only sell these at the club and over the phone as they would, in the main, only appeal to locals. They did add an extra step of effort to the club when selling but they provided a necessary method of transit for a lot of local, particularly the older generation.
The morning of the 31st, the first day the tickets went on sale, we got to look at the tickets for the first time. The number of boxes of tickets was the first surprise, the second surprise was that they came in one long reel with no definable siting plan (i.e. seat number just would jump by 10 for no reason) and finally none had any concession perforations. Shit! - was my first thought. 1 hour to go and we had to sort out the allocation of tickets (i.e. tickets for website, phone and onsite fulfillment). Then we had to knock up a stamp to mark all the concession tickets. Finally we need to rip up all 15K tickets (the size of the first allocation) in to rows. The volunteers started to arrive whilst we were all running round with wads of tickets in our hands. Luck for us, the volunteers all just sorted themselves out and got in to pair to do differing jobs around the ground whilst we faffed with the tickets.
20 minutes to go - we put everything in the selling cabin with 4 ticket sellers. Maurice, Tony and Colin were shuffling around the place putting up signs, liberally attaching queuing tape and chatting brightly - they were obviously wrapped up with the Wembley spirit. The queues outside the ground, which had started at 7.00am, were a 100 deep and getting a bit restless. We had got on top of the tickets and bundled them all up properly in to stacks. The weather was looking a little grey but overall it was alright - we had visions of it raining which would have added to the stress.
We opened the gates at spot on 9am, turned on the web orders, and started to take phone orders. We had 100 orders for tickets on the Website within 5 minutes. The first orders in the cabin were for 100 odd tickets between 3 people. The phone incessantly rang over and over with large orders of tickets. By the end of the day we had sold around 8K tickets. This number astonished the local media, us and the FA. We had, in one day, sold 2/3rd as much as Torquay would sell in the whole 5 week selling period.
Everyday for the next 5 weeks running up to Wembley we sold tickets. We were never as busy as we were on the first day but it was still a massive burden on the club as it tried to keep the normal match procedures going as well. We had sold 21.5K tickets and turned over £500K for the club by the start of Wembley.
The success of the Wembley wasn’t just down to ticket sales. Greg had sold 250 corporate table tickets and had got Mascots sorted. Rachel designed and produced the Wembley Programme. Tom had sorted out getting a bespoke kit made for the final and getting the Nike store set up (this ended up making a profit of about £20K). Gary kept the website ticking over pretty much single handed. Will sorted out or the preparation for the Team going to Wembley (like the hotel, travel, training). Harry filmed everything that moved and got Sacha to do a diary of the run up to Wembley. Tim conducted numerous press interviews. Cheryl ran the club by herself - including working from 9am-10pm whenever we had weekday games (which was often in the run up to the final).
The Fulfillment
Oh the horrors of fulfillment. We decided to sell all the tickets ourselves and fulfill (i.e. handle and send recorded delivery) them ourselves. This task, in hindsight, we seriously underestimated the work involved. Ticketmaster had offered their service but they wouldn’t provide at the club selling. It would have all been over the phone or online. They were also wanting to charge £4.50 handling (compared to our £1.50) and charge 8% on top of face value. We ended up saving the club (or the fans - dependent who the burden of the cost fell) over £100K.
The fulfillment started on the 16th April after two weeks of forum moaning (constructive critique as some would think it) about delivery times. We were all aghast by the disconnect between the reality of a virtual forum and the reality of actually being at the club. We were working all day selling tickets, spending the evenings processing credit card payments and after that website maintenance. We had no time or energy to fulfill tickets in the first two weeks.
Fulfillment was a very arduous process. We need to allocated tickets to each order based on where they wanted to sit, print personalised letter, record what tickets were going to whom, stick everything in an envelope and the package up for a recorded delivery (again noting the recorded delivery reference number). Some orders has coach tickets, they had differing cons/full price splits, some were for disabled fans. Just sticking thousands of stamps on envelopes was a pain (we couldn’t get a franking machine because of the credit rating of the club). The international deliveries needed special attention and took ages to process each one at the post office.
Will, Anna, Tom, Howezy, a random french journalist (who was over interviewing Will and Liam), Gary and myself all sat around the boardroom table at 10am on Wednesday 16th April. We had £1000 worth of stamps, 1000 envelopes, 1000 letters, 3000 tickets, 4 reels of recorded delivery stickers, sheets and sheets of return to labels, plenty of pop and chicken, my macbook and bit of Lemon Jelly playing in the background. We didn’t finish fulfilling all the phone and website orders until the following Wednesday. We moved the fulfillment to Will’s flat on the Thursday. The whole of his flat was covered with tickets all over the floor as we tried to sync up the odd number tickets to people. We were working through the night sometimes - aided by caffeine and beer. The relief on the following Wednesday was only temporary as in the intervening week we had sold more tickets. The process started again and never really finished until just before the 10th May. By the Wembley final we had 60 tickets out of 21,500 that hadn’t got to their recipient. We set up a collection point at Wembley for people to pick them up from. By the end of Wembley only 6 tickets hadn’t been collected. Therefore we had failed to fulfill less than 0.03% of all tickets. We didn’t have one complaint after the final.
Peter Norton became a pop star in late April. He had evolved in to a cult figure both at the ground (because of his gregarious demeanor) and on the myfc website (because of his two stella interviews on our TV player). A member, Justinho, decided to make a song based on his interviews - in the vein of fluffy white clouds by The Orb. The tune and video were member generated and both very professional considering the limited time and money spent on them. Peter peaked at 21 in the dance charts during the week. The exposure in the local media got Peter on the telly and radio though which he throughly enjoyed. He currently has 11,265 views and rising on Youtube.
The season ended against Oxford Utd at home on the 24th April. We lost 3-1 and it was a pretty disappointing result and performance. We finished at 11 but a win would have made us finished at a joint highest position in the clubs history at 7th. The table was tight at the end and didn’t really reflect the very solid season the team had produced.
May 2008
May was all about the build up to Wembley, sorting out ticket issues and dealing with the press.
BBC South East spent everyday doing a feature. The local papers gave away free goodies for Wembley. The local radio stations were running stories continually. Eurostar where bending over backwards to help us with adverts. We had journalists from France, Germany, Holland and Russia writing stories for magazines. Sky filmed the team as part of their build up to the final.
The team kit was a bit of a scare. Tom and Maurice need to get numerous small things sorted on the kits for the final. There was transfers needed, differing sizes sourced, the different sponsor logo needed applying and final packing for the big day. This, whilst it seems such a simple aspect, actually took ages and was the on of the biggest sweat on the run up to Wembley.
Merchandise sales at the club and on the website went potty. The good weather helped but there was always a queue to buy things during the week before Wembley. At the end of Wembley week, we only had fleeces left. The nike store and merchandise was an unmitigated success.
The was a real buzz in the air around Gravesham. The local Major and MP were even excited and both attending the final. We had requests for press passes from all over kent and all the broadsheet newspapers. The players were very perky and looking forward to the day and the stay in the hotel beforehand. The team and coaching staff went to Woodhouse in Bluewater to get fitted out with suits. Maurice even got kitted out in one. It was all starting to feel really special. It was liked being wrapped up in the FA cup build ups you got to watch as a kid.
We had weathered the storm and it was starting to fell less stressful. Gary and I spent most of the last week sorting out all the tickets that had not got to the recipients. Most people were perfectly happy to pick them up at Wembley and were also refreshingly unstressed about not getting them earlier. We communicated all the lost tickets to the FA, got new tickets reissued and sorted out a temp to give them out at Wembley.
The Thursday before Wembley was a whole day sorting out the financials and how to present them to the members. We had the Phil - the MyFc accountant down, Sandra - EUFC’s accountant, Steve and Chris from the trust board, Will and myself all chatting through the accounts. We spent many an hour looking over tens of spreadsheets and quickbooks exports. It was a blisteringly hot day which it much more difficult than it should really be. I had to keep going in an out fo the meeting to manage ticket issues. By the end of a long day we had a schedule for producing the accounts, a format to put them in and a design for the financials page.
By the Friday before the Saturday final, I only had my suit to get and to sort out my parents who were coming down for the Final. I rushed around Hammersmith in the heat looking for a suit to wear on the day. I ended up getting some nice shoes but the suit made me look like Rodney from “Only Fools and Horses”.
I also forgot to get my hair cut. Basically I looked like a pleb for Wembley - which was nice. To celebrate getting through the busiest period of my life - Phil and I went out with a few of my friends from Chiswick and had a some beers. We played darts until the early hours and got pretty drunk - the perfect tonic for the nerves I was feeling about the big day.
The Wembley Experience
I had to get up early on Wembley day. I needed to deliver collection tickets to Wembley and meet the temp at 9am in the ticket office. Phil gave me a lift to Wembley before he went of to pick up his dad who was also coming to the final. Wembley is most impressive when no-one is there. It is a massive and imposing building - all glass, concrete and walk ways. I went to the West ticket office and to drop off the tickets and spoke with Rebecca the temp. She was all ready to go and she didn’t need to do much other than hand over tickets as people asked for them. I though I would take the opportunity to walk around Wembley with my staff pass.
Wembley is awkwardly shaped, the arch side is much deeper than the other TV gantry side. I entered through the main security gate, looked at the nearest stadium map and made my way to the pitch. The inside of Wembley is cavernous - there are many winding corridor that supporters will never normally get to see. It took me 10 minutes of aimless wondering around and asking for directions off stewards to find the pitch. I went ventured outside from one of one of the access tunnels and we greeted by Wembley in all it’s glory. The seats engulfed my view, the pitch was luminous green and the nets pristine. The stewards were getting their prep talk from a Wembley official. They had around 200 stewards all sitting down in the seats like a school assembly get told what to do. I sat down on on off the seast and took it all in. It was very overwhelming. We had, between a very small team, sold the tickets for 21.5K people who were about to turn up within the next 5 hours. There was now hundreds of people waiting to look after them, serve them food, direct them to their seats and to keep them safe. It became very clear that we had produced some kind of miracle over the last year. From a chat in a pub to Wembley in 12 months. I walked back down from pitch, back around to the ticket office to meet the girlfriend and my parents.
My mum and dad had always not really understood what I did. The had knew I worked for myself and, in there eyes, didn’t have a real job. The internet is pretty alien to them but football isn’t. My dad is a Liverpool fan and my mother an Everton fan. I grew up an Everton fan, make of that what you will. They were both keen on football and a trip to Wembley was pretty amazing for them and they got to see me for the first time since Christmas. Charlotte, the girlfriend, didn’t have a clue about football and was there to give me a bit of support.
The day went better than I could have hoped. My access all areas pass allowed me to watch the game with my parents for a while, watch it with Will for a while, watch it with some friends for a while and the go up stairs to the royal box for the trophy presentation. Ebbsfleet won the trophy for the first time in their 100 year odd history. It was an amazing moment. It topped off a unbelievable year. The website, atleast in it’s first year, had been a success. We had achieved something that most other clubs and fans dream of - a Wembley win.
Summary
What will the next 12 months hold for MyFC? What does it hold for me? Will Ebbsfleet get we get promoted next season? Will the idea succeed and grow? Will we make Wembley again?
The year has been a huge amount of work and rewarded me with unrepeatable experiences. If it all ends tomorrow then I won’t begrudge a second of it. I am just glad I managed to documented the year so I can look back on it when I am an old man. I doubt many of you have read all of this but if you have then thanks for sticking with my rough prose, absymal spelling and pre-school grammar. 9050 words!
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