Attendances

[gumboots]

1 hour ago, chaddyrovers said:

Rovers have a core fan base of around 10k to 11,500 fans. 

We will attract fans to the odds games but I don't see these people turning up to every game like the core fan base will. The damage was done much early in Venkys reign. The average attendance in our last season in premier league was 22,551. That figure will include away fans aswell. 

where are these all these 15k fans who turned up for the Oxford game, how many of them have been back this season? I really wonder, maybe 2 or 3 k. 

Waggott has already said why there is a surcharge for ticket sales after 12pm. 

 

Waggott can say as often as he wants why there is a surcharge on match day tickets purchased on the day but it doesn't make it right or good business sense. As an initial gesture without any significant cost to themselves, Rovers could drop it. If it brought a few more in to fill some of those empty seats wouldnt that be great? 

Edited October 13, 2018 by gumboots

[darrenrover]

8 minutes ago, gumboots said:

Waggott can say as often as he wants why there is a surcharge on match day tickets purchased on the day but it doesn't make it right or good business sense. As an initial gesture without any significant cost to themselves, Rovers could drop it. If it brought a few more in to fill some of those empty seats wouldnt that be great? 

Absobloodylutely Gumboots, it's ridiculous.

I think this thread is going great, we're all so passionate about Rovers and so what if 'CatWeasel' wears a Rovers tie, Owen Coyle did too but he looked a right dick because it didn't match his shorts and socks!

In any business, the voice of the customer and their perception, is actually how it is, irrespective of how it's ultimately dressed up.

 

Edited October 13, 2018 by darrenrover

[Leonard Venkhater]

3 hours ago, gumboots said:

Waggott can say as often as he wants why there is a surcharge on match day tickets purchased on the day but it doesn't make it right or good business sense. As an initial gesture without any significant cost to themselves, Rovers could drop it. If it brought a few more in to fill some of those empty seats wouldnt that be great? 

He certainly lost a lot of credibility with that silly stunt.

All the management speak in the world won't wipe away one jot of stupidity from the decision!

Edited October 13, 2018 by Leonard Venkhater

[Exiled in Toronto]

I see the issue as a little more nuanced these days.

Firstly, the ground is too big for the catchment area; it’s only been completely full a handful of times in 25-years. If Jack has stuck with the original 23/24k plan on the old footprint of the ground we’d have lost next-to-nothing in income, but gained a much better atmosphere and a bit of a scarcity factor for the big games.

One thing that struck me on my matchday visits in the glory days was that the makeup of our crowd was different to pretty much everyone else’s. We seemed to have a lot of extended families, which I suspect was the old core support getting their families interested, while other grounds were much more the usual suspects of lairy lads and fat, angry middle-aged men. So the cost of going - which shot up under Jack - was dependent on too few household budgets. A priority spend when Shearer was banging in hat-tricks against the best but not so much when Venky’s sank the ship.

I think we are stuck with a half-full ground for the rest of our days. Whether that is 14,000 or 16,500 makes no difference. It’ll never average 25,000 again.

[Mattyblue]

Generally agree EiT. 

If we ever do make it back to the PL it would be interesting to see just how much our crowds would go up by. 

There’s this expectation that thousands upon thousands will suddenly re-emerge. Of course, some will, as there are those that are only interested in PL. However, our already limited fan base was decimated in 2011 and 2012, this coupled with enormous demographic change in the town this past 15/20 years - ergo an ever more geographically disparate fan base, may mean we never do reach those kind of gates again - though Huddersfield esque pricing would undoubtedly help.

Only one way to find out - get us up Tony!

[47er]

9 hours ago, HowieFive0 said:

Not only tap into the actual supporter and get their ideas but theres another 91 clubs all with different ideas and  incentives regarding match day tickets concessions etc. Easy to cherry pick the best ones and give um a try.

Bradford have a thing called WebFlexi ..pay £75 quid then pay half price for match day tickets ( £10 ).Not guaranteed your own seat but allows people who either cant afford a season ticket or people who cant get to all the games so a  Season ticket wouldnt be value for money to get discounted tickets.

Lots of ideas out there ..just need the club to actually try a few !

That's a great scheme. Are there Forum members on here. Are they intending to pursue any of this?

[47er]

When (if!) we get back to the Premiership, the size of the crowds will not matter from a financial point of view. Waggot's job then will be to manage all that TV money and up the sponsorship stakes.

 I think we'll see that the attendance figures sort themselves out in that scenario and we will get back to 20000+ a game. Many will be away supporters but so what?

We can switch to moaning about transport and parking then! Happy days!

[darrenrover]

1 hour ago, 47er said:

When (if!) we get back to the Premiership, the size of the crowds will not matter from a financial point of view. Waggot's job then will be to manage all that TV money and up the sponsorship stakes.

 I think we'll see that the attendance figures sort themselves out in that scenario and we will get back to 20000+ a game. Many will be away supporters but so what?

We can switch to moaning about transport and parking then! Happy days!

I'm laughing out loud 47er, wouldn't that just be great?! I've a sneaking feeling that if we can just hang in there until January, there'll be a touch of positive investment here and there, where we all know where it's needed and we'll kick on in the final third of the season.

We all need to play our part but if I were a betting man, I'd stick a couple of quid on Rovers to go up this season and we can then whinge and whine about everything else ...........COYB!!

[darrenrover]

6 hours ago, Leonard Venkhater said:

He certainly lost a lot of credibility with that silly stunt.

All the management speak in the world won't wipe away one jot of stupidity from the decision!

2 pre-season fixtures: Liverpool and Everton. "I know what's a good idea to make a few quid, let's not offer players and club staff any complementaries and charge them face value for any tickets they want instead. It won't demotivate anybody at all because they are all minted."

I'll just leave that there for everybody's contemplation, that's how 'in touch' our executives are! Despite them........

COYB!!

[Stuart]

14 hours ago, Exiled in Toronto said:

I see the issue as a little more nuanced these days.

Firstly, the ground is too big for the catchment area; it’s only been completely full a handful of times in 25-years. If Jack has stuck with the original 23/24k plan on the old footprint of the ground we’d have lost next-to-nothing in income, but gained a much better atmosphere and a bit of a scarcity factor for the big games.

One thing that struck me on my matchday visits in the glory days was that the makeup of our crowd was different to pretty much everyone else’s. We seemed to have a lot of extended families, which I suspect was the old core support getting their families interested, while other grounds were much more the usual suspects of lairy lads and fat, angry middle-aged men. So the cost of going - which shot up under Jack - was dependent on too few household budgets. A priority spend when Shearer was banging in hat-tricks against the best but not so much when Venky’s sank the ship.

I think we are stuck with a half-full ground for the rest of our days. Whether that is 14,000 or 16,500 makes no difference. It’ll never average 25,000 again.

Such a shame, churlish even, that after everything Venkys have done anyone should point the finger at Jack for the bums-to-seats ratio.

Jack ‘thought big’ and he had a vision for what this club could look like. He accomplished what many many clubs haven’t in the time between.

Had it not been for the apathetic, ignorant and spoiled nature of his offspring we could still have been drawing in huge crowds even now. The TV money along with an excellent board would have meant offering great ticket deals - probably the lowest in the region. That would have brought in the numbers.

It is purely and simply Venkys fault for our empty seats, by ruining our club, and not Jack’s for creating too many of them.

[chaddyrovers]

Steve Waggott on #Rovers' ambitions (https://t.co/10GF4U0G5V), a passionate TM on the emotions of management (https://t.co/NvCCeFFlqi), and the boss on why there's reasons to be positive https://t.co/wcxdvrMzbV https://t.co/8abLSkXQ56

[JHRover]

1 hour ago, Stuart said:

Such a shame, churlish even, that after everything Venkys have done anyone should point the finger at Jack for the bums-to-seats ratio.

Jack ‘thought big’ and he had a vision for what this club could look like. He accomplished what many many clubs haven’t in the time between.

Had it not been for the apathetic, ignorant and spoiled nature of his offspring we could still have been drawing in huge crowds even now. The TV money along with an excellent board would have meant offering great ticket deals - probably the lowest in the region. That would have brought in the numbers.

It is purely and simply Venkys fault for our empty seats, by ruining our club, and not Jack’s for creating too many of them.

People say that our ground was built too big. But I don't think it was. Given our status at the time it was a sensible capacity and even as a mid table or bottom half Premier League club it was a sensible capacity. 

The problem is when we are outside the Premier League. But find me an ex premier league club that doesn't have a massive surplus of seats. As an example, Sheffield Wednesday usually have 16 or 17 thousand empty seats, similar to us on a poor day, I don't see their fans saying Hillsborough is too big. Everyone's ground is too big in this league, except Brentford and Millwall who haven't had Premier League crowds to provide for.

The magic solution is to get promoted.

[Mattyblue]

I personally think it is too big. Think we sometimes look back at the PL era with rose tinted glasses.

Post 90s, we rarely had more than around 20- 22k home fans in the ground, often lower. Slightly higher with the £199 ST period. Which is excellent for a club with our demographics, but it doesn’t need a 31k ground. Sell outs only really happened with 7,000 away fans and they often didn’t occur either - the famous Bentley hat trick against Man Utd had around 18,000 home fans in the ground.

Since that time to compound it we’ve shed 10,000 ST holders from an already limited fan base. If we did go up and kept STs at £330-400 levels and I personally think we get nowhere near filling it. Now go Huddersfield pricing, like the 2009 era here then we’ve much more of a chance.

Edited October 14, 2018 by Mattyblue

[JHRover]

More recently than us developing Ewood we've seen Wigan and Bolton construct brand new stadia whilst outside the top division - 28000 at Bolton and 25000 at Wigan. Even PNE are at about 23,000. None of those clubs remotely as successful as this one over the last 25 years and PNE/Wigan not as well supported yet all aiming for the mid-20's capacity wise.

Should Blackburn Rovers have a smaller stadium than those clubs? 

Jack Walker had the ambition. He could have built it smaller but saw the club dining at the top table and so built a ground fit for that, even planning for a redeveloped Riverside to go even further. Bold, ambitious yes, optimistic maybe, but had things panned out how he expected it to we might well have needed that capacity.

Easy 20 years on after his family and the Indians have taken a wrecking ball to his club to say he was wrong to build it that big. 

If we'd have restricted it to 24000 then we'd be turning people away.

Empty seats by the thousand are a fact of life for fallen ex-Premier League giants. A sign of more successful times and those seats will only be re-occupied if success returns, not after a decent start and 4 wins from 12 in the 2nd division. Positive times at the moment but baby steps in the scheme of what's happened here

Our job is to get back up and fill them then.

Edited October 14, 2018 by JHRover

[Mattyblue]

There’s no point harking back to the 90s, we were the best team in England with all the hangers on that came with that, that club and it’s extended fan base has gone. Jack was right then, he wouldn’t have had the foresight to see the changes in the game and our fairly rapid decline from the elite, we didn’t have the time to fully cement ourselves as THE club outside Liverpool and Manchester in this area for fans wanting to watch top football before we fell away. But modern BRFC, I personally don’t believe will ever need a ground this big.

Much better comparisons would be with the post Jack club, we’ve only come close to filling it with the ‘Taking Back Ewood’ campaign.

End of the day it’s 31,000 and that’s that. But we will never fill it at the prices we charge now, even in the PL. But with TV revenues we certainly could have a go with reduced pricing.

Edited October 14, 2018 by Mattyblue

[47er]

52 minutes ago, Mattyblue said:

I personally think it is too big. Think we sometimes look back at the PL era with rose tinted glasses.

Post 90s, we rarely had more than around 20- 22k home fans in the ground, often lower. Slightly higher with the £199 ST period. Which is excellent for a club with our demographics, but it doesn’t need a 31k ground. Sell outs only really happened with 7,000 away fans and they often didn’t occur either - the famous Bentley hat trick against Man Utd had around 18,000 home fans in the ground.

Since that time to compound it we’ve shed 10,000 ST holders from an already limited fan base. If we did go up and kept STs at £330-400 levels and I personally think we get nowhere near filling it. Now go Huddersfield pricing, like the 2009 era here then we’ve much more of a chance.

But on that Bentley hat-rick day the ground was nearly full! If you are going to be in the Premiership you need a ground that can cater for those big days when big teams bring thousands. I think 30000 is about right.

[Mattyblue]

Not with our fans, only remotely full because our away allocations were much bigger than anyone else. Most Premier League clubs offer 3,000. Jack didn’t build it to sell 8,000 away tickets a handful of times a season.

If you all think we need it, fine, my opinion doesn’t really matter because that’s the ground we have. But on this mythical promotion, there will still 10,000 or so empty seats for most matches if we continue with our present pricing. So we need to be creative to fill a ground that was built for an entirely different football club.

Edited October 14, 2018 by Mattyblue

[Leonard Venkhater]

3 hours ago, Stuart said:

Such a shame, churlish even, that after everything Venkys have done anyone should point the finger at Jack for the bums-to-seats ratio.

Jack ‘thought big’ and he had a vision for what this club could look like. He accomplished what many many clubs haven’t in the time between.

Had it not been for the apathetic, ignorant and spoiled nature of his offspring we could still have been drawing in huge crowds even now. The TV money along with an excellent board would have meant offering great ticket deals - probably the lowest in the region. That would have brought in the numbers.

It is purely and simply Venkys fault for our empty seats, by ruining our club, and not Jack’s for creating too many of them.

I agree, Stuart. Now to add the vinegar sponge...

Did anyone else see the Waggott quote about 10th place at Christmas being a good show?

This sums up my ongoing issue about managed decline.

Our self inflicted (bordering on deliberate in my book) relegation experience has now allowed them to depict mediocrity as success. The trouble is that it plays on our natural sympathies with Tony and the players, who fought their way out of the third tier....

 

[Leonard Venkhater]

Just now, MCMC1875 said:

FOV

...A.D..

[chaddyrovers]

55 minutes ago, MCMC1875 said:

Every penny Chaddy spends on Sky Sports contributes to an empty seat at Ewood. Debate...

what a load of rubbish MCMC1875. Sky give millions of people the chances to watch loads of sport and tv series/boxsets they wouldn't be able to watch otherwise. I take it you don't have Sky then? 

So I do you watch games that you don't attend then? 

Do you not a season ticket then? 

 

 

[gumboots]

I'm with you here Chaddy. I have sky. I don't use it to watch Rovers as I don't enjoy watching them live on tv. If I'm going to actually watch the whole thing I would be at the ground. But I watch cricket, rugby, films and other programmes on it and the money that makes for them means they can pay everything they do to televise football matches. I can't help that. If it were possible for everything to be on terrestrial TV I'd be much happier but then you'd have to pay much more for terrestrial TV. 

[chaddyrovers]

18 minutes ago, MCMC1875 said:

Good post Gumboots but I'm afraid there are many lapsed fans who will take the option to watch Sky and red button instead of going to Ewood.

Thats their choice but dont starting accusing people of being to blame for people not attending game. Cos I am season ticket holder and attend every league. 

I also notice you didnt answer any of my questions. Wonder why? Cos you have sky and watch Rovers on it? 

18 minutes ago, MCMC1875 said:

Shaun Harvey should be sacked for the red button deal.

Why? What about fans who dont live locally or miss games due to work and family commitments surely this give the chance to see their club live at least

[chaddyrovers]

Just now, MCMC1875 said:

Red button will kill attendances

No answers to my questions poses

[Mattyblue]

The impact of the red button will only be properly seen in future seasons. If the crowds of EFL clubs substantially fall then yes the league have made a big error.

The EFL does not have the attraction of the PL, having 10+ home games a season live on TV could make a lot of folk question their future ST purchases*

The deal before this one was fine, 1 or 2 live matches a weekend. I had no expectation to see every midweek away game on my TV, there was no demand for it amongst fans. Will I watch the Swansea away game? Too right I will but I wouldnt shed a tear if it was scrapped - bigger picture.

 

*Yes I know not you chaddy, you’ll be there regardless.

Edited October 14, 2018 by Mattyblue

[chaddyrovers]

1 hour ago, MCMC1875 said:

What are you asking mate.

Sky give millions of people the chances to watch loads of sport and tv series/boxsets they wouldn't be able to watchotherwise. I take it you don't have Sky then? 

So I do you watch games that you don't attend then? 

Do you not a season ticket then? 

 What about fans who dont live locally or miss games due to work and family commitments surely this give the chance to see their club live at least on Sky by having the red button option?