Email to Cas fans from steve Ferres

Quoteicon_biggrin.gifear Season Ticket Holder,

I am not going to hide behind the fact that 2012 has been a difficult season for you as a fan of the Castleford Tigers. We have struggled with numerous injuries to our key players, and without a deep enough squad to select from, our overall performance has suffered.

Sunday’s defeat against our local rivals Wakefield Trinity Wildcats brought about a new low at the club. Our performance on and off the field leaves a lot to be desired, and clearly performances like this can not be tolerated and we are determined to improve.

At this time of year, we usually write to you regarding your Season Ticket renewal with various offers to encourage you to renew your ticket as early as possible.This year however, things need to be different.

I want you to know that as the new Chief Executive, I am fully committed to Castleford Tigers and to you, our most loyal fans. I know that you have not been happy with regards to our on field performance and the general running of the club and believe me neither have I, but I would like to reassure you that I am absolutely determined to improve the situation both on and off the field.

I’ll get straight to the point. This year, if we want to see a stronger squad and our ambition is improved performance, then I cannot offer you a ridiculously cheap season ticket package. The ‘Pledge’ type campaigns that have been offered by Wakefield, Huddersfield and most tragically, Bradford are not a way of improving the situation for any of us. We may achieve higher ticket sales initially, but the lack of overall revenue would not allow us to grow our business so we can re-invest in players.

I know that you have been promised a new Stadium, which would enable us to attract more investment from local businesses and offer additional uses for our stadium to promote conferences and concerts. A lot of hard work and many man hours has gone in to delivering what would be a fantastic facility and we will be in a position to give you an update on this next week.

In the meantime however, we need to focus on what we can do now and I can’t tell you how important your support for the club is to us, now more than ever.

So, whilst we can't offer you a discount this year, we can provide you with added benefits to your Season Ticket package. We want you, our most loyal supporters, to really become a part of the club via a brand new membership scheme which will be included in every Season Ticket package.

This will give you a whole host of benefits including exclusive merchandise, over £150 of discount vouchers, a savers card at outlets you regularly use, money off official merchandise and most importantly invitations to exclusive events such as Q&A evenings with myself and the players and opportunities to help us make decisions on certain aspects of the club.

We are still finalising the scheme at present, but will have something firm to share with you shortly.

In the meantime, please bear with us. We know things are at a very low point, but I am ambitious and will make changes to ensure that we do things differently and better, and that’s across all aspects of our club.

Whilst we can't offer a discount on your season ticket, we can promise that we will strive to ensure you get more out of it, so please invest in our future and join us again next season.

If you want to get in touch, then please e mail us at info@castigers.com or call us on 01977 552674.

Yours,

Steve Ferres