Clive Palmer has more dollars than sense

Thats less than they made on Adam Griffiths....

Redb Be a game person to sit down with ... especially if it was around feeding time... little bloke like me ... one bit I think looking at the size of his belly... The guy has ever only been interested in making the ACL ... mining contracts .. China / Asia in general... BTW have you ever heard the football chat ... You fat bastard , You fat bastard, You ate all the pies ... I can here this being sung to CP at every match ... the more I see of em the more I the ...""White Shoe""""...

Mid, you better get someone to sit big Clive down and have a chat. Redb

Col Clive wants both he is happy to pay for a PNG side.....some reason... influence in minning contacts..

wasn't someone saying clive wanted to try his trade with an NRL licence..??? anyone; Midfielder??

Palmers got enough money he should just build his own stadium. I think these two boneheads are empowering there idiotic behaviour. Another argument against the lack of professionalism existing in the sport. The quicker we get rid of guys like Miron the better. The team is great, great players and skill but all of this nonsense is overshadowing the team. I dont think it is the death of the club but it will be harder to gather support. FFA should be much more selective in who they issue licences too. Palmer is a great argument that just because you have the money doesnt mean you should be allowed a club.

This would have to be the biggest stuff up from a new sporting club in Australian sporting history, from the start they have alienated people from there own community, Palmer and Miron andthe club itslef come across as arrogant, the prices to matches are double what the truly worth and man of such buisness skills should know a new business undercuts older established business to get a foothold in the market place, family tickets should of been $40 dollars for 2 adults and two kids, while seating behind the goals should of been no more that $15 dollars just in the 1st couple of years to get people interested in the team, but not only have they priced themselves out of the marketplace, they now have shown a total lack of respect for the people of Gold Coast by limting potentail crowd numbers. This club is finished already, there is no way they will get any sort of crowds ever, a total make over with Palmer behind the scenes is required, NZ knights mark II.

altho in doing so do they have 3 teams, across the state, getting more crowds combined than one did in brsbane? more youth teams, more marquees in the game and more headlines than before

and they cld make a series of those few brave souls. and call it the "4200". and lo it came to be shown on late night cable tv. actually isn't that already a late nigth b-grade show? good spin though Gibbo. one things for sure - it will be interersting to see how this kerfuffle all pans out.

FFA had the worst idea makin 3 qld teams the FFA are losing it in my opinion

I really doubt anyone will be locked out, cos i dont reckon there are more than 5,000 people who want to go. Fans being locked out is nothing but sensational fear mongering. And who knows, perhaps, and just perhaps, what might happen is the 4,000 or so who do keep turning out for their games this season, and next season, they might manage to bond together through these lean times; the quality on the park, the close proximity of their seats, the otherwise empty stadium... who knows, 4, 5, 10 years down the track these 4,000 loyals may be a rusted on part of a much larger support base who remember how rough the early days were, and speak in wonderment of the steps C.Palmer took to ensure the survival of the club. Rather than bleed money and then fold, the man has taken action. And if GCU is still playing in 10-20 years this will all be a blip, a distant memory, but one which helped define the struggle it took to establish Gold Coast United as the no.2 [behind Melbourne] ranked football team in the country sure, i'm speculating. but so is everyone else. hard times have all the potential to bind people together as the good times do.

By all accounts Palmer made little effort to engage with the local football community, to ensure support. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

Palmer is obviously an astute businessman, I don't for one minute believe that he is doing this lightly. In light of their failure to get 10,000 through the gate each week it's obvious that there are going to be significant costs if they continue to get average crowds of 6 - 8000. Has anyone considered that he may be trying to make a statement to the Stadium Management that a jump from $40,000 to $100,000 for one person more than 5000 is too steep a cost hike? Maybe he's trying to play hard ball with Stadium Management and get them to drop the costs down to something more manageable?

chris parasevkas' artilce on goal.com has some good points on this issue too - ie an attempt to run a football club as a business. worth reading if people havent already.

some interesting stories on 442 re:GCU. if any other sports admin wants a model on how to screw things up off the pitch here's your blueprint. am amazed that even when they attract 4900 people, they arent satisfied. They still make decisions to alienate those few people who still wish to turn up (kids prices going up, broken promses re:tickets, transport). maybe clive wants the stasdium to himself - a billionaires equivalent of home cinema? how wld FFA react if they won the comp i wonder (in an empty stadium) speaking of business - if they fold after one season iwonder if FFA can sue for breach of contract/ recovery? would the knock on effect be Canberra getting a team? wld be some good players on the "market"...

It's not just the 100k stadium deal it's the 3.XX state tax (transport plan) which makes the 5001st fan cost you 115,000k Personally I think people would be more understanding if it was sold in a better way. "We have to do this for the long term sustainability of the club, if Clive writes a cheque for $115 k he doesn't want to give it to Anna he want's it to improve GCU" "Sorry for the incinvenience at this time, hopefully it's just temporary" Unstead they lashed out and blamed the fans that come to the game and the people of the gold coast who didn't come to the game. They also blamed the GFC .... but no regret about being the most expensive club in Australia to support.

No, but do the maths dasilva, consider how much Palmer would stand to lose if GC manage 5500 for the rest of the season. Don't they have another 9 home games? So he should throw away almost $750K (or so which is a huge portion of the salary cap) for an extra 4500 cumulative fans to come the game? I think Palmer should do more to get the game out there, if he can be gauranteed 7500 a week he will probably be willing to lose money on the stadium but otherwise it's nonsense. Some of the blame must lay with the FFA who no doubt entered this market and have already got a team in financial jeopardy (without their sugar-daddy that is) already. They should have prioritised other markets first but of course they had to enter a pissing contest with the AFL.

Fair point that you can't expect to cover the cost of $100,000 per match (although something tells me that flying players in a normal commercial airplane may offset some of that cost) However I do believe that the stadium deals was 10,000 people to break even. He signed the deal knowing full well beforehand that there was going to be $100,000 per match over 5k crowd. Obviously that didn't bother him then and only when he failed to convince crowds to come over that he is worrying about it now. Really you have 7.5 k people in the first game. Now wouldn't most clubs be like, how can we improve the crowd and get the extra 2.5k crowd into the game to break even instead of let's cap the crowd to 5k to cut our losses. This was a serious mismangement. There are 8000 registered football players in Gold Coast and he expected to get 10k per match. How can he signed such as stadium deal beforehand knowing that. I think that the Carara stadium which has a maximum of 18000 (compared to 27400 at Robina stadium they are currently in) would have gotten a cheaper deal and better atmosphere during the matches and probably cheaper tickets that would have avoided this whole debacle. This is pretty much overestimation of the clubs worth and now the fans are paying for it. So no I don't really think Palmer should get off the hook here.

Just a question out of intrest what happens if the 5000 tickets are sold pre game and the is a big intrest for more tickets and this happens a few times during the rest of this season? they are gonna keep it cap at 5000 even though they could get something like 8 1/2 to 10 though the gates? also now they have drop the ticket pricess doesnt it make more sence to have whole stadium open and advertise, with resonable ticket pricess and a bit of advertising they would start to get crowds