From the Boardroom
Chief operating officer Chris Pearlman brings fans up to date on events and progress off the pitch at Swansea City in today's edition of Jack Magazine.
Good evening and welcome back to the Liberty. Welcome, also, to the directors, players and supporters from Birmingham City, and a particularly warm greeting to Garry Monk, with whom I know many Swansea City fans have shared a number of special memories.
I wanted to briefly touch upon three current and recent examples of the phenomenal support which Swansea City fans have put behind Graham Potter, the players and the whole of the club.
The first is with regards to season-ticket renewals for the 2019-2020 season. At the time of writing, we are currently pacing more than 26 per cent ahead of where we were at the same time last year in terms of total season ticket renewals.
While an early-bird window extension and price reduction have no doubt incentivised some supporters to renew early, it is a testament to everyone’s belief in Graham, the type of football the team is playing and the direction he is taking the club that we are seeing this type of increase in renewals.
Fans appreciate the effort the players are putting in week in and week out and there seems to be a special connection with many of the younger players who have come up through the Academy and are making big contributions.
The early-bird window ends this Thursday so, if you have not done so already, this is a great time to go to swanseacity.com or visit the ticket office to renew.
The second example is around the support from fans in this past weekend’s FA Cup fixture against Gillingham. It isn’t often that a stadium is as loud and energetic for a cup match as for a league fixture.
However, the Jack Army was out in force on Saturday with over 15,000 fans in attendance. That is quite a turnout for a cup tie, especially when you consider we had less than 10,000 at the Liberty for last year’s fourth-round fixture against Notts County.
Over 2,200 fans came to the match as part of the ‘Come With Your Club’ initiative. A special thanks goes to the Swansea Junior League in helping to coordinate the campaign, of whom 43 clubs (76 teams) turned out in their local club gear.
It was great to see, and hear, the next generation of Swans fans supporting the club together. It was no doubt the first-ever Swansea City match for some of the youngsters, coupled with our 'Kids for a Quid' scheme, and I’m sure many will remember the experience for their entire lives. A strong performance and win from the team certainly will help make the memory a positive one.
The final example of fan support is with regards to this upcoming weekend’s fixture at Bristol City. After quickly selling out our maximum initial allocation of approximately 2,200 tickets to the match, we were able to work with Bristol City and police to get access to an additional tranche of 1,100 tickets.
Those were also very quickly snapped up by fans. As a result, over 3,300 Swans supporters will be making the trip to Bristol this weekend to back the Swans in what is certain to be an important fixture in our league campaign.
But tonight, our sights are set on this equally important match against Birmingham City. We come in with an unbeaten run of six matches stretching back over a month, where we have outscored our opponents by 15 goals to five.
Let’s hope our momentum continues to carry us forward with another strong performance where the Jack Army can be heard loudly singing and supporting the team.
Enjoy the match.
Chris
