Crowds - The thread of Australian whining

Oh yes and at the end of this we should have a gant chart.

A big, colourful muthaf*cking gant chart.

With lots of arrows.

Lack of 7:30pm saturday night games probably haven't helped either.

Needs more songsheets.

Needs more flares.

Thunder sticks?

Capos and loudhailers too...

We were still chanting at Newcastle even when we were 5-0 down.

I believe the missing ingredient to get the atmosphere back in the FeverZone is James Squire Cider!

Chanting pfffft.

Needs a good full on riot.

One thing I would say is that our away support is amazing. Sometimes we have what seems like 50 people atan away game and you can still hear "oh Wellington."

Away support is generally better everywhere in football.

Isn't it better for the TV deal if more people stay at home and watch it rather than attend in person.

The one year we had a similar season to what CCM has been enjoying lately, wiki says our average was 11500ish, including crowds of 19k and 15k. Not bad without any derbys to prop us up. Especially when you compare it to CCMs 9k average when you're consistently having seasons like that of late. 

Spare us your lectures. We're in the A league, deal with it. 

You can talk about other factors all you want but at the end of the day the football served up at Westpac this year has been crap.

- We've won 2 out of 9 games at Westpac this season.

- Our first win at Westpac didn't come until 22 Dec in Rnd 11 (but only our 4th game at Westpac).

- We've scored 10 goals in total at Westpac this season, and 5 of those came in one game. So that's 5 Phoenix goals spread over the remaining 8 home games.

- We have the worst home record in the league.

That's simply not good enough entertainment to get people through the door.

We are the anti-phoenix. Can't win at home.

So we all agree that crowds are lower than we want them to be. What next?

Well going on the 12.5 number we'd be down to 5 clubs.

Who will play each other 8 times to ensure there are 300 games*.

*Warning numbers may be grossly exaggerated 

[/quote]

Well going on the 12.5 number we'd be down to 5 clubs.

Last for a while again ... now take off your shoes and start counting...

A-League ... 6 games per round [assume 12 teams] 33 rounds is 198 games plus finals is 206..

ACL matches at least 24..

Australia Cup matches 32

Senior national games, Socceroo's 9, Matilda's 10, Under 23 side 4 ... 23

 W-League 12 matches..

So lets summarise ..

A-League  206, ACL 24, Australia Cup 32, National teams 23, W-League 12 ... about 300 give or take ... 

Remember the ACL and AC matches could be increased as could the W-League... 

It's great when reason, logic and facts are used other than gut feel rants attempting to have a go at someone...""warning writing may be greatly exaggerated""" ... BTW corrected your spelling on exaggerated ... 

Core crowd is around 6 - 7K. The first thing the Club should do is start pouring some resources into looking after season members, because they're the ones who are gonna be there when Johnny Casual can't be bothered. Trying to grow crowds at the expense of your most loyal supporters is a dangerous thing to do, in my humble opinion.

As for the rest of it? At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, winning is the biggest single factor which will boost numbers through the gate, success equals bigger crowds. Actually playing at home every couple of weeks might also help! There are hordes of other options that the Club should be looking at: cheaper season tickets, greater engagement with local clubs, more and better promotion (the shambles around when the actual  KO time for yesterday's game was embarrassing), having game ticket plus....... deals (e.g. Game ticket plus cheap entry to movies, game ticket plus x% off a meal at a local eatery, for example) which would involve greater links with local businesses. Give people an incentive to buy a ticket. Not my ideas, just some of the things I've seen floating around, and I'm sure there's loads more.

As for the "I won't go to the game, or I won't get involved, cos YF are elitist" type stuff? Load of old shite. YF might, and might not, be a lot of things but it isn't elitist. It's like any other group, you have to actually make the effort to "join in". Standing in the shadows complaining about elitism is a cop out, in my opinion.

There you go, I've solved nowt and haven't said anything new. Move along now please.

Take all the active supporters and spread them evenly (in 10/20m grids, i.e. not more than 10/20m away from each) amongst the crowd. Then when they are chanting it may force non active fans around them to participate more.

Otherwise we go full Ultra (flares, capos, loudhailers, drums, the works). Only capos though can have their shirts off before 80min. 

One more time ..

Just to show how far the game is moving in Australia .. this article is from an AFL journalist ... the A-League on the weekend drew a larger crowd than the AFL in Melbourne.. 

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/time-for-afl-to-heed-fans-anger-over-ticket-prices-20140330-zqopr.html#ixzz2xUtpKK00

Support the idea of Auckland having a rival A-League team.

Which helps crowds in Wellington on a weekly basis, how?

You should know from yr Scottish experience.

Now I'm confused. So, if I get that right, you're saying having two rival teams in different cities with no real connection, positive or negative, apart from being in the same country, is similar to having two rival teams, in the same city, who have been hating each other for over a hundred years for reasons which are bugger all to do with football, and who still get big crowds every week even when they are in different leagues? Two NZ A League teams would only boost each other's crowds when they were playing each other. In my opinion, it would make no difference to the crowd at a Nix v Perth game, for example.

Apologies, sincere ones, if I've missed the point.

This I probably agree with.

And I did (see above). I wasn't thinking one city: Rangers v Celtic; more Edinburgh v Glasgow or Aberdeen v Glasgow, (repeat in England throughout the leagues).

Ha Jag bringing my twitter conversation to the forum. 

On thinking about it further, the only problem I can see with using local business effectively as sellers of tickets via "meal and Phoenix ticket" type packages is that ticketek wouldn't be too pleased with not getting their cut. 

Otherwise its a good idea because: 

a) more reach for potential ticket sales, more advertising for upcoming games . 

b) mutually beneficial partnerships are formed, without the need to give out free tickets - too many of which devalue the Phoenix as a product. 

And a few other reasons that I cannot recall right now. Will add as I remember/think of them.