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How much do Lords members pay for membership?

Cric123

School Boy/Girl Captain
Does anyone know approximately know how much they contribute yearly? MCC seems to spend huge amount of money upgrading the Lords ground for the benefit of members without actually much boosting overall capacity. I noticed a plan to redevelop one area of the ground which would have boosted capacity close to 40,000 was rejected, and then a staggering £200m redevelopment (two of the stands will brought down and redeveloped) plan which will mostly benefit members but only see capacity increase by just over 1000 was approved. How much do these people contribute for them to be treated so royally? Lords has to have the worst atmosphere of any test ground in the world.
 
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Furball

Evil Scotsman
Does anyone know approximately know how much they contribute yearly? MCC seems to spend huge amount of money upgrading the Lords ground for the benefit of members without actually much boosting overall capacity. I noticed a plan to redevelop one area of the ground which would have boosted capacity close to 40,000 was rejected, and then a staggering £200m redevelopment (two of the stands will brought down and redeveloped) plan which will mostly benefit members but only see capacity increase by just over 1000 was approved. How much do these people contribute for them to be treated so royally? Lords has to have the worst atmosphere of any test ground in the world.
You'd imagine that such a redevelopment would allow the MCC to bring in a **** ton of revenue in hospitality.
 

Cric123

School Boy/Girl Captain
You'd imagine that such a redevelopment would allow the MCC to bring in a **** ton of revenue in hospitality.
Agreed. But still, after redevelopment of two stands for the capacity to to go up by just 1000 is being very short-sighted. All cricket authorities in this country seem to care about is maximising revenue, at the expense of the good of the game. The Sky deal means more and more kids now grow up oblivious of the game; the relatively small grounds in the country means ticket prices at internationals are very pricey, meaning ordinary fans are priced out of the game. It's almost as if the cricket authorities in this country are determined to kill the game off.
 
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WalkingWicket

State 12th Man
If I recall, the MCC has always vowed to very much keep Lords as a Cricket Ground, as opposed to a Cricket Stadium, meaning most probably redevelopments which would largely increase capacity can't happen happen. England doesn't really do big stadia.
 

Burgey

Request Your Custom Title Now!
I did the Lord's tour a week and a half ago, and the MCC member who conducted it said the idea behind Lord's is that it is to look like a big village green ground. That's why there's a hodge-podge of architecture around the ground. The idea is they use the architecture of the day no matter how it looks next to the existing buildings. So when they redevelop the Compton and Edrich stands in the next little while, they expect people to think of them as modern monstrosities.

The idea is like a village green where you might have a thatched roof old building at one end with a modern tin roof building next to it.

It's pretty eclectic, but I admit I like it.
 

HeathDavisSpeed

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Lords has to have the worst atmosphere of any test ground in the world.
What utter tripe. Certainly the atmosphere is different, but it's respectful of the players and of the game. Sure a good percentage of the members in the pavilion are asleep, but that doesn't mean the rest of us are. I've been to Lord's for about a dozen Test matches and I've been to the MCG, SCG, pretty much every ground in NZ and there's nothing wrong with the atmosphere at Lord's.
 

Jono

Virat Kohli (c)
Lord's day 1 vs. the other days is totally different too. There were mexican waves at Lord's day 5 India vs. Eng. No way they'd let that rubbish happen on day 1.
 

Burgey

Request Your Custom Title Now!
The members at Lord's fall asleep on big match days because they have to queue up from about 4 am to secure decent seating. By mid arvo they're tired as all ****.
 

Furball

Evil Scotsman
Agreed. But still, after redevelopment of two stands for the capacity to to go up by just 1000 is being very short-sighted. All cricket authorities in this country seem to care about is maximising revenue, at the expense of the good of the game. The Sky deal means more and more kids now grow up oblivious of the game; the relatively small grounds in the country means ticket prices at internationals are very pricey, meaning ordinary fans are priced out of the game. It's almost as if the cricket authorities in this country are determined to kill the game off.
The game isn't popular enough for counties to spend hundreds of millions of pounds upgrading their grounds, and there's no sports that can fit onto a cricket oval to help cross subsidise improvements. The ground development that's happened in the last 10-15 years in Australia has basically been driven by AFL, not cricket.
 

Riggins

International Captain
The game isn't popular enough for counties to spend hundreds of millions of pounds upgrading their grounds, and there's no sports that can fit onto a cricket oval to help cross subsidise improvements. The ground development that's happened in the last 10-15 years in Australia has basically been driven by AFL, not cricket.
So you might say that AFL is a sport than can fit onto a cricket oval?
 

Cabinet96

Global Moderator
Lord's day 1 vs. the other days is totally different too. There were mexican waves at Lord's day 5 India vs. Eng. No way they'd let that rubbish happen on day 1.
You're kind of right but it's not because they don't let it happen. It's just different people go. First four days cost the big bucks whereas day five is a turn up and pay £20 for adults, free entry for kids thing. Hence with England India tests you'll get the pompous upper/middle class English blokes for the first couple of days, few more middle class families on the weekend and then the Indian families will come in big numbers.
 

Jono

Virat Kohli (c)
You're kind of right but it's not because they don't let it happen. It's just different people go.
Haha that's what I meant. I didn't mean there were security guards telling people off on day 1 for doing mexican waves. Different people, different prices etc.
 

Cric123

School Boy/Girl Captain
The game isn't popular enough for counties to spend hundreds of millions of pounds upgrading their grounds, and there's no sports that can fit onto a cricket oval to help cross subsidise improvements. The ground development that's happened in the last 10-15 years in Australia has basically been driven by AFL, not cricket.
The costs of upgrading are not as high as that. The Lords plan had included lots of internal and external upgrades beyond simply boosting capacity. Several apartment buildings behind the two stands on either side of the media centre, restaurants and hospitality boxes as part of the stands were also part of the plan. Anyway, I am not talking about all counties, perhaps a few of the test grounds. I think 40,000 is a realistic target for Lords, the Oval and Edgbaston. Surrey quite often sell out their T20 games at the Oval. Also, bigger grounds could perhaps put a stop to the constant rise in ticket prices, to a level only the type of crowd you get at a Lords test match wouldn't have a hesitation paying.

Let's do some basic maths. Lords will have seen 120,000 pass through the gates the first four days of this test match. 30,000 times 4 days, which equates to gate revenues of £4.8m if we total the number of people by £40, which I am using for the average ticket price for a day's play. We are going to exclude members from our calculation for the sake of simplicity.

These are just gate receipts. I am going to discount other revenues, like catering, merchandise, etc made by the club during the test, which can be similar, or even exceed gate revenues, during big international days.

Let's say we had a capacity of 40,000. 40,000 times 4 days gives us 160,000 total passing through the first four days, instead of 120,000. 160,000 times £40 = £6.4m.

You have approximately £1.6m from gate receipts over the four days by having 10,000 extra capacity. Higher capacity will also bring in higher non-gate reciepts. And even after costs associated with manning the higher attendance, the extra revenues will outweigh the extra costs.

And before you say Lords wants to keep a ground feel, they were pretty adventurous when they commissioned the 'spaceship' media centre for the 1999 World Cup. I think these two stands would have made the ground look awesome, and it would have looked great on the TV. But the members weren't going to benefit much from the addition, so they scuppered it.

http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/...0825_Lord_s_Herzog_Picture_007_compressed.jpg
 
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Furball

Evil Scotsman
Right. That sort of expansion is viable for Lord's because it gets 2 Test matches a year, plus at least one limited overs game.

Increasing the capacities will lead to short term ticket price rises, not falls, because the only way to get a return on the investment is by selling tickets. And you need to bump the prices up to cover the cost of all the shiny big stands you've built.

You say redevlopment won't cost hundreds of millions of pounds, but it would. The counties are upgrading their grounds piece by piece because they can't afford anything more than that. This thing at Headingley:



cost £21m. Just for a new pavilion. They've got plans to redevelop older parts of the ground over the next 20 years that will boost capacity from 17,000 to 20,000. Those plans are projected at £50m. So at £50 a ticket, over 5 Tests (assuming of course that Headingley gets Tests that are attractive enough to sell out over 5 days) means that those new developments won't pay for themselves until the 67th Test match played at the ground. Bearing in mind that Headingley has no guarantees - an English summer typically has 7 Tests, 2 of which are played at Lord's, one at the Oval, meaning that the other 8 Test grounds are competing for the other 4 Tests every year - and you're starting to get an idea of the finances at play (and even these numbers are crude as they do not take into account any costs associated with hosting).

Then of course, by the time the upgrades do pay for themselves...the ground's old, dilapidated and in need of upgrading.

It's different in Australia. There's only 6 states (and Tasmania barely counts) so typically the grounds are all going to get a Test each every summer; you've also got a winter footballing code which means the grounds are widely used all year round. That doesn't happen in this country.
 

Jono

Virat Kohli (c)
No state governments to allocate funding, and local councils aren't big enough to provide sufficient support.
One benefit of state governments hey? Vic government has done wonder for sporting stadiums in Victoria. Where did they get to on the Junction Oval? Has that all been secured?
 

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