JOHN DELANEY continued to talk up the progress being made with sales of premium 10-year seats for the redeveloped Lansdowne Road yesterday, but the launch at Irishtown stadium of two incentive schemes aimed at drumming up additional business from within the “football family” appears to confirm that the continuing deterioration of the economic climate here is adding to the challenge of finding buyers.

The association’s chief executive, along with Andrew Hampel, his opposite number at the company doing the actual selling, ISG, remained bullish about the situation, insisting the original monthly sales targets are being met and even going as far at one stage as to insist that a higher than expected percentage of the 10,000 seats being marketed under the scheme will be sold by the time the stadium opens for business in the autumn of next year.

While denying that the new schemes amount to a discounting of tickets – many observers felt were grossly overpriced when they were launched last September – they did concede that the timing of the “initiatives” has been influenced by the scale of the economic downturn.

Under the new plans, a total of 4,000 premium or “Vantage Club” tickets are being made available to purchasers involved in football on special terms.

The first scheme, which is said to run only until June 30th, allows members of the “football family” to purchase their 10-year seats without having to make the substantial upfront payments that were originally required.

Instead, the total cost of the ticket can be spread, interest free over 10 years and paid off with 120 equal payments.

Under the scheme, a seat behind the goal costing €12,000 which was originally to be paid for with a €7,000 deposit followed by 10 annual payments of €500, can now be obtained with a monthly direct debit for €100 over the 10 years. For the best sideline seats, priced at €32,000 (normally requiring a €12,000 down payment followed by yearly instalments of €2,000) a purchaser could now opt to pay €266.67 per month.

The offer is ostensibly restricted to those with an involvement in football, although those qualifying include not only players, coaches and the like but also League of Ireland club season tickets holders and parents of juvenile players.

To a “football family” then, that is presumably suffering in equal proportion to the rest of the population the effects of a hangover from years of easily available credit, it appears the FAI are in effect offering a sort of “hair of the dog”.

The second scheme, meanwhile, is primarily aimed at clubs (although other affiliates are also entitled to avail of its terms) and involves tickets being offered on the original cash terms but with significant pay back in terms of product from sponsors of the association.

For each ticket purchased, regardless of the price category, the club will receive annually €250 in vouchers to purchase Umbro products, €250 in vouchers to pay for products of a soon to be confirmed sponsor of the association, 25 schoolboy tickets for one game at some point during the 10-period and the right to have one child from the club on the pitch as part of the FAI’s opening ceremony at the new stadium.

Delaney said yesterday that in addition to the €5,000 worth of vouchers, these tickets would provide “huge fundraising opportunities” for clubs with seats purchased then available as prizes for competitions or as incentives to major sponsors.

He says he anticipates a strong demand for them and cited the instance of a club that had informed him on Sunday that it would like to take 10, something that would require an upfront payment of at least €70,000.

Asked if the two schemes did not amount to a slightly roundabout way of discounting tickets in order to address poor sales, Delaney claimed that they did not. “No,” he said, “we’re not discounting.

“The price of the tickets hasn’t changed and the cost of these schemes is being largely met by our sponsors.”

Nevertheless, a portion of the value of the sponsorship deals in question is clearly having to be diverted to provide the incentives even if the cost involved falls well short of the face value of the vouchers.

Both Delaney and Hampel insisted, however, that sales to date have met expectations and that these offers, having been envisaged 12 months ago, are merely “innovative” ways of keeping the process moving forward.

There would, said Delaney, be further “initiatives” launched between now and the opening of the stadium.

A little like builders selling apartments after the price has been cut, however, the FAI and ISG will have to deal with those who have already committed coming back and looking to avail of the new terms. Hampel confirmed that where the purchasers qualified this would not be a problem.

The two men declined to put a figure on the level of sales to date but when a rough estimate, based purely on their comments yesterday, of between 1,000 and 2,000 was put to them, Hampel said that this was not “a million miles away”.