A Brief Look at Attendances
By Tom Bason
June 13 2012
With the new North Bank almost completed, I decided to take a look at last season's attendance figures.
I thought I’d start with a look at how our attendances have progressed over the season. At first, I was impressed that attendances have remained reasonably consistent over the course of the season, starting with 22,657 at home to Fulham, and finishing with 25,466 in the final home game against Everton. Then, I was a little bored so decided to compare these attendances to the previous couple of seasons. This is where our awful season became more noticeable. In terms of attendance, it was clearly the worse season since we’ve returned to the Premier League (see below for the graph). We have not had a worse average attendance since the promotion season of 2008/09:
Season | Average Attendance |
2011/12 | 25,682 |
2010/11 | 27,696 |
2009/10 | 28,366 |
2008/09 | 23,727 |
So, with this in mind, I thought I’d have a quick look at how our attendance compares to the rest of the league, firstly in relation to final league position, and secondly compared to season ticket price. There seemed to be a far higher link between league position and attendance than cost and attendance (see graphs below). In fact, considering we finished bottom of the league, our attendance figures were actually higher than you’d expect them to be, even if our attendance compared to the capacity of the stadium was the seventh worst in the league at 93%.
I then had a look at attendances compared to the cheapest season ticket price available (all data taken from SportingIntelligence). There seems to be less of a correlation here, but it appears that our attendances are about where they’d expect them to be.
So, what does this mean? Have I just wasted the last hour of my life? Almost certainly, but it does explain the club’s decision to extend the Early Bird prices to new buyers. Attendances will almost certainly fall in this coming season, and so the club will be desperate not to have an empty stadium
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012:07:27:22:17:50 by toomb.
Management has to learn that, above all, fans want a successful team, not one that falters through lack of investment in specific positions. If we don't turn up maybe they'll get the message. I invested my money in supporting them - I expect better from them. After all, they've all still picked up their salaries regardless of how they performed. Wished I could!
Well I was interested enough to have a look, but noticed it a bit late.
Maybe you could start a thread you do give a @#$%& about?
I have been contacted by letter and phone call from the club to invite me take part in the same scheme this season, but I have to say I really don't expect it to be too difficult to get a ticket, whereas of course it may have been for PL matches, so I cannot see the value of paying an extra £50.
I suppose I'm disappointed really as I like to contribute to the club, but I would rather select the home and away matches I wish to attend without unnecessary expense.
I can see why they charge £50 though, if they didn't and people just signed up for 7 games they may send a couple of them back if they didn't fancy going but I guess when you've paid £50 you will think twice about sending them back as you want value for money.
I would like to see some promotional offers this season to try and fill the extra seats, I'm not sure what but something that rewards people for their loyalty and spending their hard earned money, not charge them for it.
Quote:Arthur Tannen
I've never liked the TPS, I think it's just another way to play on fans loyalty and squeeze an extra £50 out. In the Premiership you are effectively committing yourself to 40% of the games, at full price, you would have thought that kind of loyalty would be rewarded with say a 10% discount off the 7 games not a £50 charge.
I can see why they charge £50 though, if they didn't and people just signed up for 7 games they may send a couple of them back if they didn't fancy going but I guess when you've paid £50 you will think twice about sending them back as you want value for money.
I would like to see some promotional offers this season to try and fill the extra seats, I'm not sure what but something that rewards people for their loyalty and spending their hard earned money, not charge them for it.
I think the Family Football days are quite good - I think they're £40 for 2 adult and 2 kids tickets. The BW Lower always seems to be packed with kids for those games. I'd like to see a few more of those.
Although, I think the problem with promotional offers is that it devalues the season ticket, which is the primiary source of ticket revenue. Too many offers will @#$%& season ticket holders off. It's a fine balance
toomb's twitter
Quote:Arthur Tannen
I've never liked the TPS, I think it's just another way to play on fans loyalty and squeeze an extra £50 out. In the Premiership you are effectively committing yourself to 40% of the games, at full price, you would have thought that kind of loyalty would be rewarded with say a 10% discount off the 7 games not a £50 charge.
I can see why they charge £50 though, if they didn't and people just signed up for 7 games they may send a couple of them back if they didn't fancy going but I guess when you've paid £50 you will think twice about sending them back as you want value for money.
I would like to see some promotional offers this season to try and fill the extra seats, I'm not sure what but something that rewards people for their loyalty and spending their hard earned money, not charge them for it.
I agree AT. My particular issue with the TPS offer is that it's one thing to pay £50 to ensure one is able to attend Prem games, but to pay the same amount to attend a very limited - there are only 7 identified home games - number in the Championship is an unreasonable demand, and in no way rewards the expense of previous seasons.
Some people can't commit to a full season so will pick and choose when they go and may end up going to over half the games, I think they should be rewarded just like the people who sign up for 7 games on the TPS.
I would totally re-do the TPS, get rid of the £50 signing up charge and actually start rewarding loyalty instead of ripping people off. Keep the basic system of the 7 games, but charge them say £20 per ticket but if for whatever reason they have to send a ticket back, you have to pay full price for your next ticket as a penalty but then after that you get your discount back.
I think fans are much more likely to sign up for something like that than the current system and if we are serious about completing the redevelopment we need to attract another 10000 fans. I think they are out there but there's only two ways they will come, if we offer value for money ( which we don't ) or if we are successful on the pitch.
We will have plenty of seats available next season so it will be a good time to try out a few promotional offers. Another one I think would be good is a rolling discount, so if you buy a ticket and then buy another one within a certain amount of time you get say a £5 discount.