[Archived] Poll - Falling Attendances.

[Modi]

Sorry but I'm going to hijack this thread for a moan after tonights game.

For a change from the Blackburn End I went in the Jack Walker Upper. I challenge anyone to give me an answer to the question.

Why oh why oh why, when there is only ONE bar open in the stand are there only TWO staff on it. I know it's an age old gripe but I went to the bar 2 minutes before HT and got served just as the second half kicked off. Lots of people werestood in the queue for 10 minutes before just giving up. They must have lost far more money than an extra wage and generated bad feeling to boot.

Miscalculation (and stupidity) on part of the club.

They know they've sold only around 6,000 tickets by Tuesday. They think, we don't need as many catering windows/staff. So far, so good.

Then they think, where don't people sit. They think, ah, JW Upper, and cut levels of staff and counters accordingly.

Totally forgetting that as every seat in the ground was the same price it was far more likely JW Upper would be pretty well populated!

[CAPT KAYOS]

After last nights performance they won't need any of the bars open

Think last nights result answers everything

[BRFC4EVA]

Why are people getting so annoyed about the crowd that turned up? Its what i would usually expect for a game vs a oppostion either from london like palace or fulham or the south, like saints or pompey. I think its important to remember that against wba we have 23,500 on, with 4,000 from wba. It take into consideration the the 1,000 travelling pompey fans, hey presto its about the same crowd (in terms of rovers fans.)

[philipl]

A very good analysis of the decline in Premiership crowds this year.

Incidentally, the Norwich v Everton game yesterday was the forst "good old-fashioned" English Premier League game I'd seen this season. A tremendous up and at them encounter with great skill and passion.

[Paul]

That really is a very good article. Particularly interesting to note that the only people with their heads in the sand are the Premier League themselves:

'Five or six years ago people were saying the league was a one-horse race. Now it's at least a three-horse race,' says a Premier League spokesman. 'We are still one of the most competitive leagues in Europe.

Total rubbish. The PL is one of the most boring leagues in the world. Great if you are trying to sell TV rights but for the every day fan who wants nothing more than a 3.00pm Saturday KO it has become a nightmare. The day the PL took the Sky money was the day football began to die. Sky TV is like a cancer spreading through the game and will eventually destroy what remains of the beautiful game.

[Tris]

The day the PL took the Sky money was the day football began to die. Sky TV is like a cancer spreading through the game and will eventually destroy what remains of the beautiful game.

Paul, I'm sorry but that is just rubbish.

I know you're completely anti-Murdoch and won't have Sky in the house (if I remember a previous post correctly) but you're going overboard here.

Top flight football before the advent of the Premier League (and therefore pre the first Sky contract) was a joke when it came to TV coverage.

There were reasons for that, the main one being that the public in general was disillusioned with football and its problems.

The Premier League and Sky's football coverage have grown together. Sky's coverage is designed to provide maximum choice for the TV viewer, and so it should. It's fine to moan about 1245 or 1715 kick off times, or Sunday or Monday games, but fans love it unless it involves their team.

How many Ewood regulars enjoy catching some PL football in the pub before and after the 3pm Saturday games ? A lot. How many actually cite KO times as the main reason for quitting going to live football ? Not many. There are plenty of better reasons.

And one last thing - Sky show live football right down to the Conference. Nowhere else in the world is there any TV broadcaster showing 5th tier football. You may mock Sky Paul, and ban it from your home, but as a football fan I think you're cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Accy Stanley and Morecambe were involved in the last two Conference games live on Sky. Both were screened on nights when there was pish all on normal TV. The option of live football was more than welcome in this house.

And one more last thing. If Sky TV is "a cancer spreading through the game" then the EU tried to nuke the whole set up. Other leagues in Europe (eg France) have EVERY top level game available live on TV - the EU wanted that in England too. You may love to hate Murdoch and co, but I'm afraid they're only the messengers.

Edited October 24, 2004 by Tris

[92er]

I stopped subscribing to Sky Sports partly because the quality of the extra matches wasn't as good as the best commentators were working on the 2 main matches.

[Tris]

The day the PL took the Sky money was the day football began to die. Sky TV is like a cancer spreading through the game and will eventually destroy what remains of the beautiful game.

Paul, I'm sorry but that is just rubbish.

I know you're completely anti-Murdoch and won't have Sky in the house (if I remember a previous post correctly) but you're going overboard here.

Top flight football before the advent of the Premier League (and therefore pre the first Sky contract) was a joke when it came to TV coverage.

There were reasons for that, the main one being that the public in general was disillusioned with football and its problems.

The Premier League and Sky's football coverage have grown together. Sky's coverage is designed to provide maximum choice for the TV viewer, and so it should. It's fine to moan about 1245 or 1715 kick off times, or Sunday or Monday games, but fans love it unless it involves their team.

How many Ewood regulars enjoy catching some PL football in the pub before and after the 3pm Saturday games ? A lot. How many actually cite KO times as the main reason for quitting going to live football ? Not many. There are plenty of better reasons.

And one last thing - Sky show live football right down to the Conference. Nowhere else in the world is there any TV broadcaster showing 5th tier football. You may mock Sky Paul, and ban it from your home, but as a football fan I think you're cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Accy Stanley and Morecambe were involved in the last two Conference games live on Sky. Both were screened on nights when there was pish all on normal TV. The option of live football was more than welcome in this house.

And one more last thing. If Sky TV is "a cancer spreading through the game" then the EU tried to nuke the whole set up. Other leagues in Europe (eg France) have EVERY top level game available live on TV - the EU wanted that in England too. You may love to hate Murdoch and co, but I'm afraid they're only the messengers.

And now for the rant on why I hate the crap part of Sky which unfortunately goes with their brilliant live coverage of the actual games.

They built up the Man U v Arsenal game for days on end. Even though there was another live Prem game as a curtain raiser, it was screened almost as an afterthought to the incessant hype surrounding the main event.

One of their pundits has since described this sort of game as "unrefereeable". One of the reasons for that is the incessant garbage filled media hype, most of which comes from the Murdoch stable.

The management and players of both clubs have played right into the hands of the trashy media, and only have their own disgraceful conduct in the showpiece match to blame for the subsequent tirade of claim, counter claim, soap opera and bullsh!t which looks like it could continue until the return fixture.

One thing is for sure for that return game - no-one, but no-one will want to referee it. Some poor sod will draw the short straw, but now it really is a totally impossible task. Thanks largely to the way Sky hype their big games.

[philipl]

TV viewing figures are down dramatically as well.

Football is losing its appeal in every conceivable way. Match of the Day is crud and its only redeeming feature is that its not the vomitorium otherwise known as ITV's Premiership. On Sky, Stelling has become a sanctimonious prat, Marsh is a bad self- parody, the rest of the Sky pundits have been at the juice and the "formulae" are looking as tired as George Best on an iffy day.

All I can say is lets pray for Everton and Bolton to finish first and second to rescue the Prem from becoming as boring a non-competition as Formula 1.

The only bright spot is that Man U will not qualify for the Champs League which will make everybody a lot happier.

[Mike Graham]

For the first time in years I missed a Rovers home game this weekend (Liverpool). I went to the Rugby League test at City of Mancs Stadium and had a fantastic time. The sad thing is that I didn't even miss watching Rovers and it wasn't until the next day I looked at the score.

I did however loan out my ST's to 2 lads who will use them again when i'm away on business.

I was chatting to 6 (yes 6!) ex ST holders in the pub last night, all very long term holders and one an ex employee at Ewood, and they all cited a total lack of interest in Rovers, overpaid nancy boys, the cost of watching soccer (eventhough Rovers are competitive with other clubs), and a Club that is now too distant from the fans. These are all similar comments to those in the Observer "the state of football" on Sunday which clearly showed that this is problem across football and inparticular the Premiership.

Football needs to take a serious look at itself before it self implodes.

[Hughesy]

For the first time in years I missed a Rovers home game this weekend (Liverpool). I went to the Rugby League test at City of Mancs Stadium and had a fantastic time. The sad thing is that I didn't even miss watching Rovers and it wasn't until the next day I looked at the score.

I did however loan out my ST's to 2 lads who will use them again when i'm away on business.

I was chatting to 6 (yes 6!) ex ST holders in the pub last night, all very long term holders and one an ex employee at Ewood, and they all cited a total lack of interest in Rovers, overpaid nancy boys, the cost of watching soccer (eventhough Rovers are competitive with other clubs), and a Club that is now too distant from the fans. These are all similar comments to those in the Observer "the state of football" on Sunday which clearly showed that this is problem across football and inparticular the Premiership.

Football needs to take a serious look at itself before it self implodes.

Proper fans will be there each game even if they do think they players are nancies or overpaid bla bla bla.

Its just an excuse for them to stop supporting anymore.

Give them a few years and they will say 'We support Chelsea or Arsenal'

GLORY HUNTERS!

[AlanK]

Hughesy lad, you have a lot to learn.

Its not just Rovers that people are losing interest in, its football in general.

Most of my mates are football mad down here yet when the Man. U v Arsenal game was on T.V we all missed it so we could have our own kick about.

Now I know that things change but years ago nobody would have missed that game because it would have been the only live game on that week or possibly even month.

[92er]

An interesting article in the Daily Telegraph today:

Away fans staying at home in ticket row.Some fans from clubs are not willing to stump up what they consider to be extortianate prices, sometimes for poor views.

Premier clubs are supposed to provide 3,000 seats or 10% of capacity,whichever is lower.However,although home clubs used to make the seats available on a sale-or-return basis.Now, however, clubs are basically giving 1,500 seats on a sale-or-return basis and any figure above that has to be prepaid.So if they are not sold, the away club has to face a loss.

[Kiwiwannabe]

That has been going on for a little while and it has affected Rovers a few times in the past. Though I think the ticket office now seem to have a pretty good idea of what demand there will be for each match.

I think the controls on away ticket prices need to me looked at again. Man U fans were charged £45 for a seat by Birmingham for a Tuesday night match earlier this season!

[thenodrog]

These are all similar comments to those in the Observer "the state of football" on Sunday which clearly showed that this is problem across football and inparticular the Premiership.

Football needs to take a serious look at itself before it self implodes.

Proper fans will be there each game even if they do think they players are nancies or overpaid bla bla bla.

It's the way it is now. Scottsh football has come south!

Unless you support one of three top clubs, then the cost of the season ticket is basically for the priveledge of watching your team avoid relegation.

[philipl]

A great article in the LET graphically describing the over-exposure of football.

[speeeeeeedie]

After reading the article I'm inclined to agree; you can only watch so much football. Living in the States, the blessing that is Fox Sports World often shows 3 games back to back on a Saturday. You get the 12:45 live game, the 5:15 live game then they normally throw one more in on taped delay for laughs, plus the two sunday games, and the live monday game. I've got English mates who'll either watch all of them or tape them for later. I'm stuffed after one, unless it's a cracker like Arsenal-Spurs last week. It's nice when Rovers are on as they are this weekend.

Just wait though, eventually it will turn into USA style market saturation. Yanks follow more sports eagerly than we do. Most sports fans like a baseball team, 2 American football teams (one professional, one university- unbelievable to see 110,000 sell outs every week), 2 basketball teams (same as minus the massive crowds). You can get packages that show game after game after game. Attendances are up across the board as the marketing geniuses do a good job of duping dramatic Americans into thinking that they need it. Also there are rules stating that if the ground/arena is less than a certain percentage full the game is not shown on TV in the local area. However the size of the country and the blatently unfair bias toward the big few in all sports makes small market teams (like us) have not much following and even lesser success.

The more games on TV makes it easier for people to not go to games, not just for the casual fan who likes football but the genuine supporter. If there are loads of games on the mrs., or whoever, will probably get mad about a bloke going to a game. If he's at home watching at least he's around, at a stadium he can't leave the game for 5 minutes to go to the shop for some milk.

I think dropping attendances are due to many factors, not limited to the high cost of going with your family, ever changing kickoff times, proliferation of Sky TV, idiot footballer behavior, girl power taking over, making men (the traditional football watcher) hen-pecked, and access/parking/traffic problems at many grounds.

Will it be solved? Who knows but football clubs need to as most are losing money fast.

[Tris]

A great article in the LET graphically describing the over-exposure of football.

philipl, I can't agree - it's a crap article by a poor journalist.

The amount of people watching live Premiership football on Sky this season has dropped by an astounding 22 per cent

= this is not true, the total figure has gone up, but because there are more games televised the average number watching each televised game is slightly down

And more alarmingly, the BBC's flagship Saturday night programme - Match of the Day - is in freefall. [...] only 3.454million viewers are now tuning in. That's 340,000 less than The Premiership, ITV's sorry excuse for a sports package

= means nothing. MOTD now has the first "match choice" session on Football First on Sky in direct competition in its timeslot, which has never happened before. The number of viewers watching highlights on Saturday nights is substantially higher than before. Many viewers of MOTD will continue watching Premiership highlights in the later sessions of match choice.

3pm: I head off to a major sports bar in the hope of catching a Premiership game beamed live from a European channel.

A real result here. Half of the screens are showing Liverpool v Birmingham on French TV channel Canal+, while the rest are screening the Norwegian coverage of Chelsea v Everton at Stamford Bridge.

= if this loser is trying to write that there's too much football on TV in this country, how can he base it around the fact that he watched two games simultaneously - in a bar - on foreign TV ? The very fact that these bars RISK showing the foreign channels means there's a market for the games to be screened.

And finally, call yourself a sports editor ?? what tosh - how can you let a line like this through into your own article :

And the added bonus was that Canal+ showed goals and near misses from all the other games as they went in.

If the near misses were going in for him then he should clearly not attempt any more all day sessions.

The only thing that's happened as far as Premiership on TV this season is that there are more live games so therefore more choice. And the advent of Football First has given people an excuse not to travel away from home.

[American]

...one university- unbelievable to see 110,000 sell outs every week...

Yes, Penn State, not near any major city, had one of their lowest home crowds in years last week. Only 90,000 (yes, 90k, not 9k).

You also have to look at the new markets the sport is expanding to thanks to Uncle Rupert and Al Gore (inventor of the Internet). Just looking at this site, we see fans from Aussie, the States, Norway, heck, even Malta. I love the fact that I can watch the 12:30 match, listen to the Rovers at 3, watch another match or 2 if they look any good. Part of the problem is that most of them just don't look any good. Too many uninspiring clubs out there, making uninspiring matchups. For every Spurs/Arsenal of last week, or Everton/Norwich of a few weeks back, we get Anyone/Bolton, Everton/Brum, Spurs/Chelsea a while ago. Most Liverpool matches of last season under Ged, etc. If the quality of the football (ok, maybe not quality, but excitement), was more like Spurs/Arsenal every week, then those articles wouldn't be written. They'd be writing about the rebirth and new found popularity of the sport.

[Tris]

Too many uninspiring clubs out there, making uninspiring matchups. For every Spurs/Arsenal of last week, or Everton/Norwich of a few weeks back, we get Anyone/Bolton, Everton/Brum, Spurs/Chelsea a while ago.

But that's just the way it goes. Spurs v Arse wasn't broadcast in this country last weekend - of the games they pick for broadcast you can't expect them all to be riveting entertainment.

And you get the odd unexpected cracker.

Aussie v Norway (just into injury time) was fairly tame earlier on, but I've left it on in the background and the last 1/4 of the game has been fairly entertaining.

It's certainly of more interest than the crap being spewed out by the terrestrial channels, and that goes for most live games broadcast midweek - even down to Conference level.

[Scotty]

The bottom line is that there's too much football on television now and crowds are decreasing (partly) as a result.

[waggy]

with brum being one off the poorer away followings at ewood, plus the game being telivised and the fans who are dissillusioned after tp's sacking.

we could be heading for a poor gate on sunday,i have asked a couple off polish lads at work if they fancy going,taking advantage off the cheap tickets,they said they are going to watch the game in the pub-they are really living the english life

[1864roverite]

Scotty I have to agree with you on that last point you made, however, I can think that we can safely add the current plight of our own team is a major factor in that as well. I mean, like waggy has said, His Polish friends would no doubt have jumped at the match tickets IF Rovers were say mid to upper placed in the league. As they are bottom, quite rightly they can watch the game for free and spend the entry money on 5 pints or more !

No matter what gimmick Rovers introduce to try and lure a better home attendance thee is always going to be problems whilst we languish at the foot of the table.

Along that lines, and we are talking direct at season ticket holders, one way to get the hovverers back is to introduce the free travel to one particular away game like they have in the past. I mean, Villa away this season could be the one where we could maybe guarantee a 3-4k following if free travel was offered for being a ST holder. I am sure that although its not the top attractive offer in the form of free coach travel, giving a little back may help the public to make that choice of getting a ST knowing that the club are actually making an alternative effort to luring the stay away fans back.

[Paul]

Along that lines, and we are talking direct at season ticket holders, one way to get the hovverers back is to introduce the free travel to one particular away game like they have in the past. I mean, Villa away this season could be the one where we could maybe guarantee a 3-4k following if free travel was offered for being a ST holder.

Isn't the plan to fill Ewood rather than Villa Park?

[92er]

I know of at least 2 extra people going on Sunday.