Tribal Football

Aston Villa business chief Heck: We'll take care of most loyal fans

Paul Vegas
Aston Villa business chief Heck: We'll take care of most loyal fans
Aston Villa business chief Heck: We'll take care of most loyal fansAction Plus
Aston Villa business chief Chris Heck says they've made adjustments to Villa Park with an eye on not disrupting their most loyal fans.

Heck has explained the changes to premium seating.

Advertisement
Advertisement

He told Crossing Broad Sports: "Here, you could have the richest owners in the world and it doesn’t matter. It’s how much you actually generate. So how do you do that without ticking off your most loyal fans?

"That’s the formula that we have found, let’s protect our season ticket base, our local fans first, the core fan, protect them, and then find new revenue streams to pump up the value of the club and the spending opportunity of the club.

"That’s the big difference between baseball and the Premier League. We actually have to make money as opposed to somebody going into their bank account."

He added: "One area we’re focused on is that we put a lot of money into completely changing all of our premium seating. It’s a big stadium and we have 5,000 premium seats, about half of which before were made up of suites.

"So we wiped them out and made restaurants, clubs, loge boxes, at all of these different price points. Some really cool things. We sold those in a much different fashion to generate a lot more money. Who does that affect? It affects the rich, so the common fan doesn’t get upset with that."