Brisa Attendance Improvement Proposal

[blue phil]

Not sure we're on the same track , Philip . How would letting kids in for free (with an accompanying adult ) differ from letting them in for a nominal pound as has been done in the past ?

[USABlue]

Quick two cents on this. Not a member but I would like to add something. Does anyone feel that, to some degree, new potential fans of any club will be drawn to a club with a better image? Locality obviously is a BIG factor but we have so much competition in our area for the Premiership Dollar. Now, many people have, in the past, mentioned trying to switch the TV facilities to the opposite side of the ground. I must agree, we have a stadium with 3 fantastic sides yet when I watch Rovers on Telly I feel like I am watching some 2nd Division outfit due to the view of the Riverside.

Surely we would look much more appealing to potential new fans if we could show off a top class stadia, something to be proud of. Just a thought. Some great points made here and good luck to all the hard working members.

I also agree strongly with the access to Ewood issues, if you want people to get off their arses nowadays you need to make it as convenient as possible to get in and out of Ewood, parking etc. The more difficult and time consuming it is the more people you will get who just stay at home or in the pub. Keep up the good work lads and lasses.

Edited January 22, 2006 by USABlue

[Martyn]

I think point 4.6.2, the Ewood Express, is a fantatic idea. At the moment I'm living in Lancaster and I don't drive, so my only option is to take the train which costs about £12 return. Say Rovers put a coach on from up here, charge maybe £4 for a return trip (or whatever is sufficient to cover costs) and hey presto, Rovers have made my match day experience £8 cheaper and it hasn't cost them a penny. It's also alot more convienient with no worries about delayed/canceled trains, I won't have to make the walk from Mill Hill the ground and it would also be quicker.

I think you'd also find alot of car drivers would use the service provided the price was reasonable given all the car parking issues around Ewood.

[Lee]

Contact the North Lancs Branch, they run a coach from Morecambe/Lancaster to all home games as far as I know.

See http://www.northlancsrovers.co.uk/

[DavidMailsTightPerm]

How is it that Blackpool charge £8.50 for a Junior - we charge between £5 - £10 and yet I bet nobody outside Blackburn know what good value for money the Junior tickets are. Premiership football for £5 - is an absolute steal - Rovers should have it publicised on every regional radio station across Lancashire !!!

[Timmy]

It's an excellent document, with some very intreasting points and ideas.

Some areas the doc hs picked up that I fully agree with

1. Ewood far to "family friendly" with a poor atmosphere. Any chance of getting rid of the drummer-it's just an exscuse for people not to create their own atmosphere.

2. Poor PR/marketing I've been attending rovers matches for 10+ years and I can count the number of promos through the door (during close season only) on one hand. Nobody has ever bothered to cold call me (not that this will work on me-but it might somebody).

3. Cost struture. £31 pounds to see bolton with stadium less than half full. Once you cost in the travel and car parking cost etc-it's about £50. Why ain't prices slashed if they are not selling?

[BlueMonday]

We should sell tickets for Cat B games, the same way Easy Jet sell tickets for their Flights.

The earlier you book your ticket the cheaper it is. As more tickets are sold and the less seats there are the price goes up incrementally.

We wouldn't neccessarily loose money and may fill the ground more, with people buying earlier. This would allow the club to organise catering and stewarding more effectively and may help to budget more efficiently.

Discuss

[Eddie]

It's a good idea, but it has certain downsides. Let's say we're going to play a game against Boro (are they cat B?), in itself it isn't an attractive prospect, but let's say because of results in the week or two leading up to the game the match becomes important then ticket sales a while before the game might not be good but potential sales just before could be.

[blue phil]

In that case the club would just nudge the price up accordingly to suit the demand . A bit like flights suddenly going up in the school hols or when a Euro tie is being played in the vicinity of an airport !

This seems to be a decent idea at first glance .

[FourLaneBlue]

Seems a very good idea that one actually.

Also...why don't Rovers hire a PR officer? If they already do then sack them and get someone better! There have been too many PR disasters over the last few years to give the club the benefit of the doubt, something needs to be done to address how the club deals with the media and the fans/prospetctive fans.

[mode_m]

This is an excellent document, hopefully it is taken into consideration and read by the Rovers board.

How I wish I could watch Rovers live every Saturday, oh how I wish.

Edited January 26, 2006 by mode_m

[philipl]

Are we going to get feedback on the meeting or have I missed it?

[den]

Are we going to get feedback on the meeting or have I missed it?

378809[/snapback]

It's on the BRISA website.

[Exiled in Toronto]

Thanks Den, I just went and read it.

Of course it's hard to get the tone of a meeting from the minutes, but since it's all there is to go on for those who weren't actually there, it'll have to do.

My biggest observation is that there seems remarkably little coming back from the club compared to the time and effort and content that went into the document. If they had had a few days to read it then maybe that would have been different, but "insufficient time to digest" is a time-honored way of avoiding debate.

The apparent unwillingness to take on board constructive feedback e.g. PR is disappointing but unsurprising. Effectiveness of PR and communication is measured in the response of the target audience, not the effort or intentions of the ones doing the communicating. If we feel badly communicated to, with many examples to demonstrate, then it's failing - simple as that.

I'd be interested to hear how the committee feels about where they are after 2 meetings with the club - is BRISA on track with its objectives?

Word of warning - being asked to advise on smoking policy and matchday atmosphere isn't much of a role, not worthy of the efforts put in so far by the committee and not worth a fiver of anyone's money (not that I've paid mine, so feel free to tell me to sod off)

[Scotty]

I think we all need to realise that BRISA intend to be in it for the long haul. And yes, while we maybe didn't get the comprehensive answers we'd have liked at the last meeting, we will continue to communicate with the club and will hopefully get answers in due course. Obviously, the club receiving the document at short notice didn't help either.

Our intention now is to focus in on some of the points in the document, perhaps look into them in more detail, and then give the club plenty of time to hopefully answer our questions regarding these points at our next meeting.

As for our relationship with the club, I think it's pretty good. Both sides have shown a willingness to work together and help each other, and the club seem to genuinely want BRISA to succeed.

We also agreed at the outset that we'd help provide feedback to the club if they wanted us to, and that's what they've asked for regarding the smoking issue. As for the looking at ways of improving the matchday atmosphere, I'd say that was a pretty important issue and is exactly the sort of thing BRISA should be doing.

[den]

Worry not EIT.

The crux of the matter is that the club hadn't enough opportunity to get together any kind of response to the ideas put forward to them. TBH, much better to wait for a considered response, rather than a hasty one.

BRISA will meet with them again, hopefully soon, to get a better idea of how they see those suggestions in the document.

[Anti Euro Smiths Fan]

To get the place filled the Rovers have to get kids in for free on a PERMANENT basis .

I think that's right Phil. Letting kids in for free might be a case of short-term pain for long-term gain in terms of Rovers' finances.

In the short-term the revenue will go down, but the long-term benefits of letting kids in for free are worth pursuing. It also has to be said that the initial reduction in revenue will be a drop in the ocean compared with the £20m per season we get from Sky.

The longer-term benefits will mean having more seats filled, an expanding fan base and hopefully an increase in shirt sales and food and drink purchased at the ground. As well as more kids becoming involved with Rovers, I would hope the policy would attract more Mums and Dads to the ground too.

There were some interesting attendance figures at yesterday's FA Cup matches. Bolton, whose game with Arsenal was screened live on BBC1, attracted just 13,000 to the Reebok Stadium - a very disappointing attendance for Bolton against one of the so-called 'Big Four'.

Coventry City on the other hand had a very impressive 28,000 at their home tie against Middlesbrough. I'm sure there will be far less than that at the replay up in the North East. Coventry slashed prices for the FA Cup tie and have a scheme where young kids are allowed in for free at the new stadium they moved into this season, the Ricoh Arena.

Most people would agree that West Ham are a bigger club than Coventry, but the Hammers only had 23,000 at Upton Park yesterday while Coventry were rewarded with a 28,000 crowd, a good atmosphere and a replay to look forward to.

As well as sponsorship from Ricoh, an electronics company, the new arena at Coventry has been funded, in large part, by Coventry City council and includes shopping facilities, a casino and exhibition halls. I can't quite see Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council offering to fund a renovation of the Riverside stand complete with shopping facilities and a casino....

I was disgusted by the recent comments of Arsenal managing director Keith Edelman who boasted about their forthcoming gate income:

"We will have 60,000 fans at the new stadium and we’ve got higher-priced tickets and more premium tickets than any other club in the UK."

We're constantly being told by club chairman that football is just like any other business. Well if that's the case, can you imagine the chairman of Tesco's boasting: "We've got the highest prices of any supermarket in the UK."

Can you imagine a pub landlord boasting: "We've got the highest beer prices of any pub in the country." Or the chairman of Dixons saying: "We charge higher prices for radios than any hi-fi retailer in the UK."

The comments from Keith Edelman demonstrate both the club's greed and the comtempt they have for ordinary supporters.

In justifying price hikes and naked commercialism, Arsenal and the other big clubs like to employ the vernacular of the marketplace. And so the supporters are repeatedly referred to as "customers" The club are exploiting the supporters' emotional bond to the club because they know that if this were a normal company, its constant price hikes would long ago have become unsustainable and uncompetitive.

I hope that Arsenal miss out on a place in the Champions League next season and Keith Edelman is sweating at the prospect of not having 60,000 at every match. A lot of people forget that after the Hillsborough tragedy, the Taylor report, as well as recommending all-seater stadiums, also said: 'There should not be a corresponding rise in ticket prices.'

Well what a sick joke that has turned out to be. Since the advent of the Premier League in 1992, some clubs have taken the opportunity to raise their prices by 600% or more - Chelsea being a classic example - they were charging Rovers fans £48 for a ticket for our match with them at the Bridge in October. Chelsea also had the audacity and greed to double prices for their disabled supporters to £49 per ticket.

If you thought Peter "I'm a lifelong red" Kenyon was the biggest double-crossing slimy @#/? in football then you might be right - but he does have some stiff competition from David "I'll take the cash, thanks" Gill - managing Director of Manchester United. In public, Mr Gill claimed to be strongly opposed to the Glazer takeover. In private he was a strong advocate on the board for accepting the Glazer offer and keeping his £900,000 plus bonuses job. No doubt in the coming few seasons there will be further price hikes at Old Trafford to pay for the Glazer's folly.

The Taylor report has clearly been selectively interpreted by the big clubs who have seen it as a 'Golden Fleece' opportunity to bleed supporters dry. They've simply ignored the bits in the Taylor report that they didn't like.

Old Trafford, soon to be extended to a 75,000 capacity, is a lifeless mega-stadium these days and sadly Arsenal are determined to go down the same 'prawn sandwich' route of Man United. There will be an increasing dichotomy of supporters: the shabbily treated 'genuine' fans who care for the club and the increasingly pampered corporate sections.

No doubt David Dein and Keith Edelman will say that high prices at Arsenal are justified because the club needs to compete on a European level. But if they were to compare their ticket prices with other top European clubs like AC Milan, Barcelona and Bayern Munich, they would find that those clubs all have average ticket prices substantially lower than Arsenal's.

One of the things that makes English football great is the passion of the supporters. But the warning signs of thousands of empty Premiership seats each week is a clanging alarm bell that clubs are losing sight of this, and the clubs risk not only damaging the relationship with increasingly disenchanted fans, but also the future of the game itself.

If Chelsea, Man United and Arsenal are determined to treat supporters with contempt in their voracious appetite for greed, then they should bugger off to form their own League and let the rest of us get on with watching real football with real fans.

In the meantime, Rovers should take a look at what clubs like Coventry have been doing and adopt a radical pricing policy that cuts the cost of tickets, particularly for kids. If that doesn't work, then at least the Rovers have tried. But as Blue Phil knows only too well, the demographics are against us. An increasingly sizeable Asian community that, thus far, hasn't shown enough interest in watching football, may cause long-term problems for the future.

[Paul]

Old Trafford, soon to be extended to a 75,000 capacity, is a lifeless mega-stadium these days and sadly Arsenal are determined to go down the same 'prawn sandwich' route of Man United. There will be an increasing dichotomy of supporters: the shabbily treated 'genuine' fans who care for the club and the increasingly pampered corporate sections................

...............If Chelsea, Man United and Arsenal are determined to treat supporters with contempt in their voracious appetite for greed, then they should bugger off to form their own League and let the rest of us get on with watching real football with real fans.

379485[/snapback]

An outstanding post from AESF and one with I fully agree.

We often read of the "ordinary" fan being priced out of the game. At OT on Wednesday night I wondered how true this is. My thoughts are based purely on observing the Utd fans milling around before the game and, mainly, the huge number we shouldered our way through after the game. We were amongst the last Rovers to leave the ground and found ourselves surrounded by Utd fans outside the East stand and back to car parks.

Many of these fans looked like ordindary working people to me. Very few suits and smart overcoats but many people dressed in sweats, tracksuits, team shirts, hoodies etc, So just how true is that the ordinary fan has been priced out? Did the fact the tickets were on open sale mean many local Utd fans attended who normally would not?

[thenodrog]

The vast spaces in the away sections of the Wigan v Arsenal Carling game and the Bolton v Arsenal FA Cup. plus their declining results on the pitch would make me rather nervous of filling the new Highbury at those prices if I were Mr Edelman.

Edited January 29, 2006 by thenodrog

[OscarRaven]

I was disgusted by the recent comments of Arsenal managing director Keith Edelman who boasted about their forthcoming gate income:

"We will have 60,000 fans at the new stadium and we’ve got higher-priced tickets and more premium tickets than any other club in the UK."

379485[/snapback]

Agreed.

One of the things that makes English football great is the passion of the supporters. But the warning signs of thousands of empty Premiership seats each week is a clanging alarm bell that clubs are losing sight of this, and the clubs risk not only damaging the relationship with increasingly disenchanted fans, but also the future of the game itself.

379485[/snapback]

Too late. A few selective temporary price cutting gestures doesn't fool anyone.

The bubble has burst, thankfully it didn't pop its just slowly losing air!

[cletus]

AESF.....fantastic post!

[cn174]

Many of these fans looked like ordindary working people to me. Very few suits and smart overcoats but many people dressed in sweats, tracksuits, team shirts, hoodies etc, So just how true is that the ordinary fan has been priced out? Did the fact the tickets were on open sale mean many local Utd fans attended who normally would not?

379491[/snapback]

Well from talking to people who come into my shop, United fans were only paying between £17 and £26 for that game, and this has been the case for every cup game this season as they wouldn't fill the ground otherwise. They get away fans to pay £31 by saying the it is £5 off for 'Man U members' which of course away fans aren't.

[stuwilky]

Well from talking to people who come into my shop, United fans were only paying between £17 and £26 for that game, and this has been the case for every cup game this season as they wouldn't fill the ground otherwise. They get away fans to pay £31 by saying the it is £5 off for 'Man U members' which of course away fans aren't.

379562[/snapback]

It costs £26 a season though.

[Manchester Blue]

The vast spaces in the away sections of the Wigan v Arsenal Carling game and the Bolton v Arsenal FA Cup. plus their declining results on the pitch would make me rather nervous of filling the new Highbury at those prices if I were Mr Edelman.

379533[/snapback]

They already have sold 45,000 season tickets and have a waiting list on top. However if this season continues to be a poor one then it would be interesting to see if they suffered for it.

[cletus]

They already have sold 45,000 season tickets and have a waiting list on top.  However if this season continues to be a poor one then it would be interesting to see if they suffered for it.

379594[/snapback]

The 'novelty' factor of being in a new stadium will ensure full houses next year.