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Attendances: A cause for concern


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The home crowd attendance figures over the seasons categorically state that isn’t the case, as I’ve said above, when x amount of ST holders don’t renew in a summer, the vast majority stop coming entirely, which is mirrored in a home crowd reduction the following season.

* Believe you me, I’m sad enough to have combed through the figures…

Edited by Mattyblue
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1 minute ago, Wheelton Blue said:

I agree.

If we had more season ticket holders, that increase would likely come from the 'floating fan' pool, which in turn would reduce. Hence the overall attendance wouldn't necessarily increase, rather the make up would change.

The trick to increasing attendances is to find fans who are currently not attending at all.

For me the main cause for concern is, what are the club doing to try to encourage people to attend the games. It seems to be very little.

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1 minute ago, Mattyblue said:

The home crowd attendance figures over the seasons categorically state that isn’t the case, as I’ve said above, when a ST holder doesn’t renew in a summer, the vast majority stop coming entirely, which is mirrored in a home crowd reduction the following season.

In my experience that isn't the case.

Most of mates who were season ticket holders now pick and choose. They haven't disappeared completely.

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Completely different than my experience, pretty much every friend or family member that I know that have stopped coming at some point over this lost decade haven’t been back, at all.

Unless for a freebie on someone else’s seasons ticket etc.

But of course, there will always be a flux, some ex ST holders will come down if they fancy, just like some floaters will stop floating and disappear. But the cold facts are, if we lose 1500 ST holders, the home crowd will be down by that amount, which is exactly what we were seeing pre Fulham. We also saw it when we lost sales under Coyle, when we lost sales in 2003, and the opposite is also true the other way.

Edited by Mattyblue
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2 minutes ago, Mattyblue said:

Completely different than my experience, pretty much every friend or family member that I know that have stopped coming at some point over this lost decade haven’t been back, at all.

Unless for a freebie on someone else’s seasons ticket etc.

Are you allowed to use someone else's season ticket ?

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No arguments there, Wheelton!

Rigger - not officially, but of course it’s a regular occurrence, there’s always different folk sitting in the ST seats near me, especially for night matches, folk in my family/friends lend them out if they can’t make it etc… they aren’t checking IDs on the turnstile!

Edited by Mattyblue
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I don’t know whether rovers are guilty of under thinking or over thinking ticket sales. I suspect the former but there’s been a couple of goofy promotions this season that have felt like some marketing department spiv dreaming up nonsense (perhaps even Swag himself). ‘London double decker’ and marking a 147th anniversary with £14.47 tickets or whatever it was. 

Here’s an idea free of charge sell season tickets at £15 per game so £350 ish, perhaps slightly more in jw. Then make walk on prices £20 regardless of the opposition and regardless of the day. Then occasionally pick a drab old game make tickets £5-10 or kids for a quid and advertise it all over the shop.

Or better yet instead of speculating why the numbers are significantly down they have a ready made database of fans who buy tickets or used to buy tickets but aren’t season ticket holders or no longer go at all. Pick up the phone and call them. They might just convince a few floating fans to commit or at the very least build an accurate picture of why a lot of fans are no longer committing to season tickets - whether it’s the Venkys, cost, relocated, Mowbray, lost interest, only interested in the prem, etc. Whatever the reason they’ll know what issues to address in the future. 

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Reading Swag in today’s LT has put paid to any chance of a chance to actually attract a mega crowd in the run in with a no strings £10 game, just more bundles that attract three men and a dog over a real opportunity to fill the place for a crunch game, it’s like Oxford was all too much for them down there…

 

The club are hoping for an increase for games with Millwall and QPR on the back of a £25 ticket initiative in the lower end of the Darwen End, with the prospect of a five-game bundle for the other remaining Ewood fixtures.’

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21 hours ago, Mattyblue said:

No, it doesn’t usually work like that. If you look at our average gates through the seasons, whatever the increase or decrease has been in ST sales that summer, the average home crowd will mirror that increase or decrease.

Which makes sense, as many floating fans aren’t interested in a ST and will buy a match ticket when they fancy, with more of said floaters getting involved when we are doing well, whilst when a ST holder doesn’t renew they often just disappear entirely. 
 

If I'm honest Matty, that doesn't make sense to me. Im no expert but that would mean that if we sold 10000 season tickets then an extra 3000 would be walks on that aren't currently walking on. 

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21 hours ago, Mattyblue said:

The home crowd attendance figures over the seasons categorically state that isn’t the case, as I’ve said above, when x amount of ST holders don’t renew in a summer, the vast majority stop coming entirely, which is mirrored in a home crowd reduction the following season.

* Believe you me, I’m sad enough to have combed through the figures…

I thimk I can see your thinking here. ie that generally the people who are walk ons are always just walk ons......and the season tickets holders generally either buy one or just dont come at all and it's those that we need to attract?

Edited by Beafo
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I think outside the prem we probably have an ST ceiling capability of 10k without cheap initiatives then there'll always be 2 or 3 thousand walk ons.

So the target is or has to be get back to ten thousand season ticket holders and get the walk ons walking on every game.

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Overall crowds don't fall because season tickets fall. They'll both fall or rise togther, mainly as a result of success on the pitch; they're both symptoms of the same thing.

Anyway, we're just guessing and surmising here. The source of truth will be the club's commericial and marketing teams. Or it should be!

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Not true. If one season ends with 8500 ST holders, and the season after we have 7,200, considering there is always a similar numbers of walk ons, even if we are doing a little better on the pitch or similar, the home crowd will have fallen by approximately that number in the following season.

Now once you start doing really well, walk ons tick up, but they can’t do the heavy lifting of those missing ST holders. A prime example to why crowds are substantially smaller than 2001, we then had c12k ST holders, not 8k walk ons were similar.

Facts are facts, no ‘guessing’ from me.
 

Edited by Mattyblue
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9 minutes ago, Wheelton Blue said:

Overall crowds don't fall because season tickets fall. They'll both fall or rise togther, mainly as a result of success on the pitch; they're both symptoms of the same thing.

Anyway, we're just guessing and surmising here. The source of truth will be the club's commericial and marketing teams. Or it should be!

Absolutely, if the walk ons were comprised of say approx 60% lapse season ticket holders and 40% pure walk ons, that's quite a different task than walk ons being approx 10% lapsed st holders and  90% pure walk ons.

And yes the club have got to get some kind of approximation to know what they're dealing with......even a bit of stats regression might do the job!

Edited by Beafo
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2 minutes ago, Mattyblue said:

Not true. If one season ends with 8500 ST holders, and the season after we have 7,200, as there is always a similar numbers of walk ons, even if we are doing better on the pitch, the home crowd will have fallen by approximately that number in the following season.

Facts are facts, no ‘guessing’ from me.
 

I suppose the crux is how many of those 1300 walk ons were previously st holders.

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Who knows, it’s all a flux of individual circumstances.

However, the raw data tells you that with walk ons largely staying static (unless you are charging up the league), average crowds therefore wax and wane pretty much exactly with the waxing and waning of ST sales.

That’s why it is so vital to push, push, push sales of them.

 

Edited by Mattyblue
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2 minutes ago, Mattyblue said:

Some will be, but not large amounts, as there is a large core of folk who only ever buy match tickets due to their commitments and general approach to match going.

I'm sure done your research on this Matty and hats off to you! Fingers crossed that the club are as on the ball as you are. 

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