Summary of Meeting with Club - March 2026

On Monday 23 March, we met with Darren Royle, Chief Executive Officer, and Craig Dootson, Chief Operating Officer, as part of our regular monthly engagement with the Club. These are our notes from the meeting.   

This month’s conversation covered:

• Lego

• Ticket Prices

• Ticketing System

• Away Priority

• Away Capacity Restrictions

• Rochdale Road End Hill

• OASF Kiosk in Fan Bar

• Drink Prices in Fan Bar

• Smoking Areas

• Rochdale Road End Catering

Lego

We told the Club about our plans for creating a lego Boundary Park in partnership with Bricks in a Bag.

Ticket Prices

We have been in conversation with Craig and others at the Club about ticket prices for next season. They sent us the latest proposal for ticket prices last week. In the meeting, we gave feedback that the proposed increase to ticket prices in the Joe Royle Stand was too high. We pointed out that the infrastructure isn’t sufficiently better than elsewhere and people will move out of the stand, reducing the financial benefits of increasing the price.

Craig and Darren explained that there will be improvements to the Joe Royle Stand’s facilities on a matchday, like toilet facilities inside the fan bar. They also explained they’ve looked at a variety of factors in developing ticket prices: comparisons with other clubs; socio-economic research by OASF; and closing the difference between costs and turnover. Darren pointed out that, now we’re in League Two, we’re subject to Salary Cost Management Protocol which means the Club can only spend 50% of what it makes on wages. If we want to increase the wage budget to compete, we need to increase our revenues. They stressed that, under these proposals, tickets in the Joe Royle Stand would still be cheaper than most comparator clubs – we don’t want to be a club that charges near the highest. Definitely don’t want to be a club that is at the higher end of ticket prices.

The pricing proposals have caused some debate within the OASF board, and we recognised it would be impossible to make everyone happy. We discussed how you could rebalance the price proposals to maintain the revenue increase the Club is seeking whilst sharing the pain a little more around the ground while still increasing the prices in the Joe Royle Stand the most. As a compromise, we agreed that Craig would develop a second proposal which increased the season ticket prices in the Rochdale Road End and Main Stand by less than 3% to offset the increase in prices to the Joe Royle Stand while maintaining the Club’s target revenue increase. This proposal will then be presented alongside the other which would freeze prices in the Rochdale Road End and Main Stand at the club board meeting this week for a final decision.

The Club will launch season tickets as soon as they can after that board meeting to capitalise on the good feeling at the moment. We agreed to publish our analysis alongside the season ticket release.

We discussed the ticket collection point introduced on Saturday for Crewe tickets. We acknowledged this was a sensible common sense change that had improved the experience. Craig confirmed the plan to keep those going and have a ticket office/collection point permanently separate to the club shop next season.

Ticketing System

FutureTicketing are holding the Club to its contract which doesn’t expire until just before the beginning of next season. This means that the Club have to sell season tickets through them until then. The Club want to move to the new supplier as soon as possible; they sought alternatives that would have allowed that and wouldn’t have disadvantaged FutureTicketing but they insisted. The new ticketing system is good and was used by Southend for their playoff games last season, for example. The Club will look to iterate and add to it across the season too.

The Club have put data safeguards in place for the migration to the new system with both the current and future supplier. They’ve done a dummy run of the transition already so that no data will be lost for those buying season tickets on the current ticketing system.

We also passed on feedback from members that you are currently unable to buy a child’s ticket online – you can only do so in the club shop. Craig agreed to take that away with the ticketing team.

Away Priority

Following our previous discussions, Craig agreed to move away from their original idea of a paid membership scheme for away priority to a points-based system. Due to data issues with the current system, we will start from scratch next season but points won’t affect away priority until the season after. Given the newness of this approach, we thought that a standing start for all fans was probably the fairest way anyway. Next season will still be based on season ticket holders and non-season ticket holders.

Craig is considering a name for the points system and we said we’d share any ideas we came up with. The points system will reward people for attending games as well as buying tickets, so season ticket holders who attend more games will get more points. The points will start with ticketing but the vision is to integrate kiosk purchases too in future years and other ideas, like points for volunteering at the Club, e.g. cleaning Boundary Park. We also proposed extra points for being an OASF member. We offered to help with the points system design and announcement.

Away Capacity Restrictions

Following the Grimsby game where the away allocation sold out even though there was plenty of space in the Chaddy End, we asked whether there is a restriction on capacity in there. Craig confirmed there wasn’t a restriction on Grimsby and there isn’t one on Notts County either (which hadn’t yet sold their allocation at the time of the meeting). Chesterfield and Tranmere did sell out and could have sold a few more, but it would have been more expensive to take more on because the Club would need to have more police in the ground.

Rochdale Road End Hill

We followed up on the safety concerns for supporters travelling up and down the hill between the Rochdale Road End and Joe Royle Stand. Craig told us he is considering closing the path off with so that supporters have to take a longer route around that is less steep. Improving safety on the hill is high up the infrastructure to do list. In the long-term, depending on what happens with SportsTown, Craig would ideally fence it off or put steps on it.

OASF Kiosk in Fan Bar

We mentioned that at the most recent Saturday home game our usual spot in the fan bar had been taken by the pop-up club shop and asked if that was its permanent home. Craig told us that it was not meant to be there. It is moving around the ground to test out where the best places would be and won’t be in that spot again.

We also discussed how we’ve successfully transitioned from three separate lotteries across the Club, OASF and Community Trust to a single lottery – the Giant Cash Bonanza. We’ve encouraged our previous members to move over and are securing sign-ups online and at our kiosk in the fan bar.

Drink Prices in Fan Bar

After it was raised by a member, we asked why drinks in the fan bar are cheaper than at the kiosks. Darren and Craig explained that the Club runs the fan bar but the kiosks are outsourced to another company. They will speak to the kiosk company but to equalise prices would probably mean fan bar prices going up rather than kiosk prices coming down because the Club don’t control the prices in the kiosks. We agreed that wouldn’t be ideal. Craig and his team will get feedback on catering later this year and look to make more improvements – we offered to help with surveys and focus groups. The contract with the catering company is going to be extended as the Club isn’t currently in a position to take them on, but improvements will be made.

Smoking Areas

After previous meetings where we raised the issue, we asked what further thoughts had gone into smoking areas at Boundary Park to keep that out of the toilets. Craig has spoken to other clubs, like Notts County, and drawn up plans for most stands but the Main Stand is the main sticking point due to the lack of space. He agreed to keep looking into it and said it will happen, but it needs more work.

Rochdale Road End Catering

We asked Darren about our previous suggestion about extending fencing around the Rochdale Road End to make more space for catering facilities. Darren said they had looked into it but its on hold until the United Utilities works are complete.