Actually, I think if those things make someone who goes to all games lose interest (or that they hate it) then it's probably put a casual fan off more.
During the 6 weeks with no games in wellington, even I lost interest. So I can only imagine how much interest a more casual fan would have lost.
Now that we've had a fair few games in a row, I'm right back into it again. But then I looked at the schedule and there isn't another game for a month again, so that disappointed me again. Had a conversation with someone at work who had heard about a lot of nix games in welington, and the buzz of us winning. She asked when the next game was, I said a month and she said "damn, oh well" and lost interest immediately.
I agree with this, I think the sporadic home games make people in Wellington feel disconnected from the team. Plus it seems to me that there's been no marketing for games in Wellington at all really. I saw a thread on the Nix's Facebook page asking why people aren't coming and a bunch of people said "it's too expensive" and the official Nix FB response was "but we had $10 tickets in the Huawei Bay last game and we still got a low crowd" and a bunch of people said "really? I never heard about that". I only saw it mentioned once on the Nix page and on here I think.
If I wasn't a season member and/or on here all the time I don't think I'd even know when home games were because there's f-all pregame media coverage and f-all advertising. And that's probably the people who aren't coming - people who would have an interest in coming to games but aren't going to seek out when and where games are.
I get the feeling that the club have given up getting the crowds up in Wellington and are just trying to push the Eden Park game to make up the money.
I sort of had a Tegal conversation in reverse. A colleague asked me about the last win and he knows a little about football. I said 'well nobody expected that, although we thought we could win it" and he said "I didn't even know they were playing".
There's advertising in the form of posters at bus stops or on buses but that's about it. If you live outside of Wellington then there is even less exposure. You rarely see advertising on the TV outside of Sky which I find strange as the amount of obscure lighting, furniture, etc companies that advertise on the terrestrial TV suggests it can't be that much.
Looking at TVNZ they charge about a grand and a half for advertising around 17:00 - that rises to eight thousand during the news.
Fundamentally though it's getting the media on board and by the media I think the biggest influence is 18:00 news. A segment a day before a match or Friday for weekend games would draw in crowds no question. When do they ever talk about the Phoenix before a match?
The Nix have always looked very polished but have never cracked the media in a way that influences attendance. I have no faith in Welnix though changing this, particularly in light of the traveling home matches circus that has bogged down much of our season.
Even after all this time the Phoenix have just not gelled within the community. Which is surprising when you look at the obvious EPL snobs that attended the All Whites. There are footy fans out there they just would rather just watch it at home.
I know one guy who every time I see him talks about Spurs and yet I've only managed to get him to attend one match and it's known that I can get a borrowed season ticket now and again for free. Another guy maybe attends one match a season, maybe more if the Nix makes the play offs but will go on and on about Leeds.