League 1 Attendances

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travellingblade

travellingblade

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With only 2 games gone, the attendances at League One games so far have been totally dire.

We have attracted most fans with just over 18,000 for our opener against Shrewsbury, closely followed by the local derby of Portsmouth v Bournemouth at just over 17,000. After that there was very little of note, especially for nice, warm, opening day.

Last night, at Coventry we attracted just over 12,000 fans in total, with the next highest being just over 7,000.

No wonder clubs are going to go to the wall with those kinds of attendances. Just imagine what it's going to be like when it's cold and wet?
 



Absolutely dire, after one home game each it looks like this. If we are in financial difficulties, how do some of these others cope ?
Sheffield Utd 18286
Portsmouth 17703
Coventry City 12621
Preston 10034
Swindon Town 7658
MK Dons 7409
Shrewsbury 6444
Doncaster 6380
Yeovil Town 6006
Crewe 5718
Bournemouth 5407
Brentford 5269
Tranmere 5063
Notts County 4913
Colchester 4335
Walsall 4205
Carlisle 4192
Hartlepool 4132
Leyton Orient 3564
Oldham 3496
Scunthorpe 3215
Crawley Town 3172
Stevenage 2736
Bury 2659
 
SotonBlade said:
I'd like to see that table in terms of percentage of ground full. might give a better picture
Click to expand...

Jesus, I'm supposed to be relaxing in the evening :). I'm not sure what % of capacity shows as it doesn't affect the revenue. Very few clubs get stadiums half full

Sheffield Utd 18286, 32,702, 56%
Portsmouth 17703, 20,224, 88%
Coventry City 12621, 32,609, 39%
Preston 10034, 23,408, 43%
Swindon Town 7658, 15,728, 49%
MK Dons 7409, 32,000, 23%
Shrewsbury 6444, 9,875, 65%
Doncaster 6380, 15,231, 42%
Yeovil Town 6006, 9,665, 62%
Crewe 5718, 10,153, 56%
Bournemouth 5407, 10,700, 51%
Brentford 5269, 12,763, 41%
Tranmere 5063, 16,789, 30%
Notts County 4913, 21,388, 23%
Colchester 4335, 10,064, 43%
Walsall 4205, 11,300, 37%
Carlisle 4192, 16,981, 25%
Hartlepool 4132, 8,240, 50%
Leyton Orient 3564, 9,271, 38%
Oldham 3496, 10,638, 33%
Scunthorpe 3215, 9,088, 35%
Crawley Town 3172, 5,996, 53%
Stevenage 2736, 6,722, 41%
Bury 2659, 11,840, 22%
 
Just shows - not that it was in doubt - what fantastically loyal support we have. The fans deserve better.
 
I'd still like to see what it was like in comparison to the first day last season. Pretty sure we only just managed 18k around last year.
 
Interesting that only 5 other teams (Portsmouth, Coventry City, Preston, MK Dons and Notts County) have grounds big enough to hold the crowd we had on Saturday.

You have to say that should be a big financial advantage for us...but it's not, for well documented reasons.
 
SotonBlade said:
only 6 clubs out of 24 breaking 50%.

A sign clubs charge too much? Or is lower league football sinking?
Click to expand...

I think it's a bit of both and add in the Olympic euphoria etc. and it all adds up to a "slow start" to the season.

I think the standard in this division is almost universally poor (maybe one good game in 10?) and some of the teams play horrible football (see pigs last season and possibly Preston this) which will only attract fans if it is very succesful (i.e. no-one wants to see a team playing crap football AND not winning).

As for prices, we are in a recession and peoples disposable income is shrinking with job losses, wage freezes and rent/fuel increases at way above inflation. If this were polo or 3 day eventing then the target audience wouldn't be affected but sadly it isn't. The "working class" roots of the game (for want of a better term) are more prevalent down the leagues than in the PL and football is a very easy thing to cut out if money is tight. Clubs can't do much about this as they still need to pay their bills and so mass ticket price reduction is not a viable option but if people can't afford it then they ain't going to come at this level.
 
Of course prices are too high, entirely the reason why grounds are more than half-empty.

Put it this way, if we won every game playing excellent football, would we get 32000 each week? Sadly, the answer is no. Do we have 32000 fans? Of course we do. Last season we were playing excellent, and promotion was on the cards all season barring the last few games so it should have been close to sell-out each week.

£20+ for League 1 football is a huge rip-off. £15+ for League 1 football is a huge rip-off. £10+ for League 1 football is expensive. £10 for League 1 football is about right.

Do you ever see Ryanair flying planes half full? If they did, what option would they take?

a) charge those on the plane more money and write-off half the plane as generating £0 for the business.
b) try and fill the seats and admit that the half of the plane may not generate full price, at least it does generate something

Coupled with the fact that fans, young ones especially will happily watch Man Utd on Sky every week if their parents stop taking them to BDTBL, it could be a lost (or lesser) generation of fans not coming through.

And, really, why do we need to pay such high ticket prices? To fund the lifestyles of people with far greater wealth than the supporters do. If football was a bank, we'd be up in arms about the price we pay and why we pay it.
 
you're dead right but we're stuck.. it is in your dna i'm afraid..
football is a captive market.. they know that if you get up with brand a you won't go and start using brand b e.g. if you use persil you could switch to ariel but footy isn't like that, you have to bail completely
 
StarBlade said:
£20+ for League 1 football is a huge rip-off. £15+ for League 1 football is a huge rip-off. £10+ for League 1 football is expensive. £10 for League 1 football is about right.
Click to expand...
Attendance and ticket price have a very loose relationship, you can't just make it £10 a pop and expect us to return to 25,000 every week.

Not all fans want to commit every other Saturday and pick and choose their games, plus with how much it costs to travel these days and all the other addons you spend on a match day, it's not just about the ticket price.

For 1 off matches £10 is a good deal, if you made it £10 every match the attendances would reduce to normal levels after 2-3 matches and we'd be set at a lower price level and making less money. Attendance is more down to the performances of the team. If we win, and get back up to the Championship, more people will come.

When you compare United to other teams, we aren't bad value.
 



ZoneManWilf said:
Attendance and ticket price have a very loose relationship, you can't just make it £10 a pop and expect us to return to 25,000 every week.

Not all fans want to commit every other Saturday and pick and choose their games, plus with how much it costs to travel these days and all the other addons you spend on a match day, it's not just about the ticket price.

For 1 off matches £10 is a good deal, if you made it £10 every match the attendances would reduce to normal levels after 2-3 matches and we'd be set at a lower price level and making less money. Attendance is more down to the performances of the team. If we win, and get back up to the Championship, more people will come.

When you compare United to other teams, we aren't bad value.
Click to expand...

I agree upto a point, but everyone has an upper-limit, for every product/service out there. £25 can feed my family for a few days, or pay the weeks gas/electricity bill. United may not be bad value compared to other teams (although fans aren't likely to shop around for the best value team to support), but football is bad value when compared with the essentials in life.

I think there's a better link between performances and attendances, but then why weren't we averaging over 20000 last season? Why were there on average 14000 empty seats every game despite the way we were playing and the goals we were scoring?
 
StarBlade said:
Of course prices are too high, entirely the reason why grounds are more than half-empty.

Put it this way, if we won every game playing excellent football, would we get 32000 each week? Sadly, the answer is no. Do we have 32000 fans? Of course we do. Last season we were playing excellent, and promotion was on the cards all season barring the last few games so it should have been close to sell-out each week.

£20+ for League 1 football is a huge rip-off. £15+ for League 1 football is a huge rip-off. £10+ for League 1 football is expensive. £10 for League 1 football is about right.

Do you ever see Ryanair flying planes half full? If they did, what option would they take?

a) charge those on the plane more money and write-off half the plane as generating £0 for the business.
b) try and fill the seats and admit that the half of the plane may not generate full price, at least it does generate something

Coupled with the fact that fans, young ones especially will happily watch Man Utd on Sky every week if their parents stop taking them to BDTBL, it could be a lost (or lesser) generation of fans not coming through.

And, really, why do we need to pay such high ticket prices? To fund the lifestyles of people with far greater wealth than the supporters do. If football was a bank, we'd be up in arms about the price we pay and why we pay it.
Click to expand...

It's a generally accepted tenet of air travel that not everyone pays the same price for the same seat. Also the demand for ryanair flights is pretty elastic. You have no idea what the demand for a particular flight is when you book.

I assume you're proposed that the price gets reduced the closer it is we get to match day? In that case you'd have all the pay per game folk, waiting til the last possible minute to purchase to get the cheap tickets as they know that for any given game there'll be 10,000 seats free. The club would lose a huge amount of money from doing something like that.

It's been said before, but the only way to get permanent crowd increases is success on the pitch.
 
Highbury_Blade said:
It's a generally accepted tenet of air travel that not everyone pays the same price for the same seat. Also the demand for ryanair flights is pretty elastic. You have no idea what the demand for a particular flight is when you book.

I assume you're proposed that the price gets reduced the closer it is we get to match day? In that case you'd have all the pay per game folk, waiting til the last possible minute to purchase to get the cheap tickets as they know that for any given game there'll be 10,000 seats free. The club would lose a huge amount of money from doing something like that.

It's been said before, but the only way to get permanent crowd increases is success on the pitch.
Click to expand...

Ryanair was plucked from my imagination of a successful business that knows how to get high occupancy. I don't propose dropping the price nearer to a game. We have a general idea of how many people will attend a game (18000). With that in mind, and with the amount of fans we have it's fairly easy to believe that there are at least 10000 fans who would come more often.

And as I've said before, we had great success last season until the last few games, yet each game there was 14000 empty seats generating £0 for a loss-making business. Fans aren't buying into that product/service, it's too much for what it is.
 
StarBlade said:
Ryanair was plucked from my imagination of a successful business that knows how to get high occupancy. I don't propose dropping the price nearer to a game. We have a general idea of how many people will attend a game (18000). With that in mind, and with the amount of fans we have it's fairly easy to believe that there are at least 10000 fans who would come more often.

And as I've said before, we had great success last season until the last few games, yet each game there was 14000 empty seats generating £0 for a loss-making business. Fans aren't buying into that product/service, it's too much for what it is.
Click to expand...

I think it's easy to belive that there would be 10,000 fans that would come more often if we were playing in the championship/premiership. At this level? Can't see it myself.
 
It's not just the price of the ticket it's all the travel costs that add up to a mountain when you don't live in Sheffield as well as the time wasted on the journey - all for an inferior product. I can get just as miserable listening to it on Blades Player as I can on the drive home - but I feel less guilty about wasting all that dink.
 
Highbury_Blade said:
I think it's easy to belive that there would be 10,000 fans that would come more often if we were playing in the championship/premiership. At this level? Can't see it myself.
Click to expand...

Agree entirely. At this level, we resigned to the fact that 14000 seats will generate £0 between now and the end of the season, or we encourage people out to BDTBL as an alternative to the pub/meadowhall/sky sports. Allowing so many empty seats is a bad business model and doesn't help fund our first team efforts, so every effort should be made to get them filled up. Getting £1 for half of seats each game gets us the price of a new player, or pays the wages of a couple of players.
 
StarBlade said:
Agree entirely. At this level, we resigned to the fact that 14000 seats will generate £0 between now and the end of the season, or we encourage people out to BDTBL as an alternative to the pub/meadowhall/sky sports. Allowing so many empty seats is a bad business model and doesn't help fund our first team efforts, so every effort should be made to get them filled up. Getting £1 for half of seats each game gets us the price of a new player, or pays the wages of a couple of players.
Click to expand...

Wish I had known about this, it's brillaint. Instead of paying nearly £400 for my season ticket I could wait and pay a couple of quid each week. sshhh don't tell the others!

My personal opinion is that I don't mind single game tickets being the same price as the average of my season ticket. (£16.91) as I get my same seat which I chose without the hassle. If you start letting people in for less than that every week then I do have a problem.
 
I have to support the view that success on the pitch is the only way to increase attendances, price in my view does not make a great deal of difference to the majority of football fans. Take the scum up the M1 for example since Bates took over their prices went through the roof but the attendances still increased because after years of being crap they had a bit of on field success in getting out of league one. Exactly the same for the swine from S6 for years we have pissed all over their attendance figures (unless you listen to the shite their fans spout), only a year ago they were getting gates around 15k a bit of success and being top dogs in the city put the gate up to 25k for them on Saturday. Opposition also can play a part, who would you rather see us play Tranmere or Tottenham ?
Take a look at our history over the last decade or so, 11k hard core supporters turned out to see Adrian Heaths team get mullered by Port Vale, after that year on year the team got better until we got promoted to the Premiership and attendances followed ................. 30k+ every week to the point where only stadium size was holding us back. Since relegation from the Premiership each year we lose a few thousand regulars despite our prices being competitive, the fact that 18,000 turned out to see us versus Shrewsbury is in my view brilliant support in the present circumstances and the club should be very grateful. When you look around at the other clubs in league one most of whom have gates less than a half of ours (so I would presume a turn over to match) you have to laugh or you'd cry when we can't afford to bring in players and miss out to the likes of Preston & Notts fookin County.
 
sheffielder said:
Wish I had known about this, it's brillaint. Instead of paying nearly £400 for my season ticket I could wait and pay a couple of quid each week. sshhh don't tell the others!

My personal opinion is that I don't mind single game tickets being the same price as the average of my season ticket. (£16.91) as I get my same seat which I chose without the hassle. If you start letting people in for less than that every week then I do have a problem.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't you prefer to pay, say £250 instead of £400?

The evidence of half empty stadiums is there for all to see, yet people have problems with fans being charged less. It's almost a taboo subject.
 
metalblade said:
you have to laugh or you'd cry when we can't afford to bring in players and miss out to the likes of Preston & Notts fookin County.
Click to expand...

20k (Cresswell and Monty) is more than any of those teams have spent on new signings per week. You can't dismiss this yet I think we have made some great signings from what I have seen.
 
StarBlade said:
Wouldn't you prefer to pay, say £250 instead of £400?

The evidence of half empty stadiums is there for all to see, yet people have problems with fans being charged less. It's almost a taboo subject.
Click to expand...
Yeah but I think what Sheffielder is trying to get across is why should they have to pay more for a season ticket than someone paying on the day?
it is overpriced simple as that. I have always said that its better to get 20000 fans at £15 than 15000 at £20 even though you make the same ticket money. You get more related sales (food, drink etc)
 
stannyblade said:
Yeah but I think what Sheffielder is trying to get across is why should they have to pay more for a season ticket than someone paying on the day?
it is overpriced simple as that. I have always said that its better to get 20000 fans at £15 than 15000 at £20 even though you make the same ticket money. You get more related sales (food, drink etc)
Click to expand...

I can't prove it but I bet the theoretical drop of £5 wouldn't bring in another 5000 punters. It's something Strapon learned in his time at Wendy.
 
stannyblade said:
Yeah but I think what Sheffielder is trying to get across is why should they have to pay more for a season ticket than someone paying on the day?
it is overpriced simple as that. I have always said that its better to get 20000 fans at £15 than 15000 at £20 even though you make the same ticket money. You get more related sales (food, drink etc)
Click to expand...

More chances to rip off punters with kit kats at £1.50 or crisps £1 a bag :D
 



It's also the peripherals one pays to go to the match
On Tuesday, Ticket£18-00, Petrol £35-00, Pie & Beer in ground £5-50, Parking £7-00,
Curry/Drink After Match £ 20-00 - Total Cost £ 85-50 Not a cheap night out!
 
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