I think the club have been up front about this, it spells out that they want to secure some more regular income, a steady baseline before the unpredictable income bursts of ticket sales and season tickets. If it feels like the club are doing this out of desperation, maybe this was in the pipeline and our situation has brought it forward a bit.
I don't see it as a begging bowl at all though. We have 1000+ season ticket holders and that's beyond anything I could have ever imagined, but probably also at least the same again in fans like me who can't get to games very often, and chip in with some merchandise and streams when we can. I can see there being significant uptake from us in the fair weather, follow the match on BBC scores website type of fans.
I agree with everything redlichtie86 said in his comment, too.