Crowds - The thread of Australian whining

Yup, fair enough. Although I think you're probably overestimating the draw of Glasgow v Aberdeen etc but I get your point.

Our record at Westpac after 9 games is actually worse this season than it was the season before.

2012/13 P 9, W 3, D 3, L 3, F 10, A 10

2013/14 P 9, W 2, D 3, L 4, F 10, A 12

Not that 2012/13 got any better in the final 3 games with another draw and 2 losses.

Combined record at Westpac over past two seasons:

P 21, W 5, D 7, L 9, F 25, A 29

When you are winning less than 25% of your home games (and losing nearly half) and scoring barely a goal a game then it's no wonder nobody is turning up. Seriously, 5 wins out of 21 games? It's a wonder even 6.5k are turning up.

This has nothing to do with marketing or travelling circuses or the price of a hot dog. It's all about the product on the pitch, which has been crap (at Westpac Stadium) for a while now.

Agreed. Though as I saw someone said, you can't win all the time. I guess a good question to then ask is how do we increase our current crowds when we aren't winning? That is, we seem to have a core of about 6-7k turning up regardless, how can we grow that figure? Having things like travelling circuses I believe certainly affects this figure negatively in the long term for a short term gain of a quick buck. Getting creative with how you distribute and sell your tickets is just one idea of how you can grow this figure. Changing the consumers behaviour is another way, giving out less free tickets is a way to do this - it is currently very easy to get free tickets if you know where to look, this eventually changes people's long term behaviour to only bother going when they can get a freebie. Why would you pay $28 when the last few times you went without paying a thing? This behaviour holds even if it has been a while since the persons last attended game so it can take a long time to change the behaviour. I think even rugby is starting to be hit by this effect. 

That turned out fairly rambley, but I hope you get the gist of what I mean at least! 

Agree that there are too many freebies handed out and I do know people who tend not to go if there's no free ticket.

Also agree with terminator, and as I said earlier in the thread, the home form is just not good enough over the past 2 years and it's not even just not winning, but most of those games have just been dull full stop. Still maintain I'd rather lose 4-3 than lose in the type of game we saw yesterday.

There are other minor issues too - i.e. Ticketek charging $5.25 to send a ticket to your smartphone, total rip off. Then another issue a friend encountered this weekend - could not buy the warriors / nix double ticket in person, HAD to be online. Who comes up with this stuff?

One good idea yesterday was the beer tent outside, pity it was Tui though. Nix should perhaps listen to us when many of us say we don't want that beer!

And finally, something I've mentioned before, but I think the focus on family has just gone overboard. I'm out watching the football, but the half-time entertainment makes it feel more like I'm at a 5 year old's birthday party! Absolute crap.

I know the days/kickoff times debate has been done to death elsewhere (and probably here), but has anyone looked at, or talked to Australian fans about whether Sundays has any effect on the number of away fans attending? The focus of the attendance debate has been on home fans, but away fans also contribute to the ambience/atmosphere.

Gyeongnam, the team I followed in Korea played away to Jeju (the only K-League team not on the mainland) yesterday. I remember that my fellow fans complained that we always seemed to play away to Jeju on Sunday or midweek evenings, ruling out travel due to work commitments. (I made the trip once in 5 seasons). We were equally bemused when we had home games to Jeju at similar times, for the same reasons affecting their fans.

The trip from Australia is longer, and the likely increase if kickoffs were tailored to attending fans, rather than TV viewers, might be negligible, but has it actually been looked at?

From  the playing perspective, Ernie needs to try and make Westpac a fortress next season. The defensive part of the entire side really needs to step up to be counted, not just the back four.

That for the msot part, we have given up hoofball is a positive, now we need to make some more positives. I am looking forward to David Domes response to an e-mail I sent the club when I read their after match email sent to ST holders yesterday.

Once maybe but don't they do this every game now?

Surely it'd be better having kids playing some mini games of football or something instead of that nonsense.

Warriors had air guitar comp with live music including rock riffs, Phoenix get the birdy song. Kind of sums it up really.

Thought letting the kids on the pitch at the end was great. We had a 12 year old, son of a family friend, with us who loved the kick about and is vowing to take up 'soccer" again at school. He slept in his new signed jersey and his scarf last night apparently.

If only the rest of us were as easily pleased.

. :)

Wasn't Kids Day Out though?

I wonder how dificult it would be to put on a local live band or something.

Dane Rumble?

Mel Blanc did his voice yes?

Crossbar challenge

18-21 year old Nixie chicks?

Maybe I was so down due to the flat performance, but did they even announce the crowd at the game on Sunday? I don't remember hearing it?

Yes they did. 6,400 and some. Yet the PAX no. on my ticket (bought at Railway Station 45 mins before ko) said 9,400 and some. So were the missing 3,000 freebies? Or what?

And should the Nix fold, those very people who couldnt be arsed, will be the ones doing the most moaning. Is this a Wellington attitude or a Kiwi one in general?

I think that illustrates my too many freebies devaluing the product point perfectly. 

That is a very good point. Mind you there's still a mindset out there too and some will go only if they get a free ticket. I wonder if they do the same with other sport's?

A few months ago I talked a couple of mates of mine into coming to a game (I think it was the Sydney game). I asked them if they wanted me to use my season ticket to get them a discount on tickets and they said nope, they knew someone who worked at the Doom Post and they could get free tickets through them. They came to the game, had a good time, but haven't been back because they've shifted up to Kapiti somewhere and don't want to come in. Anyway the point is it's silly that they could just get free tickets to come whenever they wanted but hadn't been to a game before that, and that they weren't even employed by the company that had the free tickets. Even if they were coming back regularly as a result of that one free match they told me they would be able to get free tickets to every home game the same way anyway, so it wouldn't make any difference to Welnix anyway. Which makes me wonder what percentage of the difference between crowds of say 6500 and 7500 are just more people using free tickets, so the bigger crowd doesn't actually equal more cash for the club.

Maybe instead of straight up free tickets lot of these comps should be 2 for 1 vouchers or something. At least that way there is an expectation that some sort of payment should be made in order to attend the game. Because otherwise people just think they shouldn't have to pay anything when there's so many unused free tickets floating around.

This raises the question, with all the free tickets out there, why don't the club just make it $5-$10 G/A and stop the freebies? Cheap tickets get people through the door no? 

And a free scarf, but then they were giving those away to the 2nd 100 people through the gate two games back. The first one hundred were given a fuck around.

 I just get the distinct feeling there is not  lot of communication between all parties that work for or with the Nix. I would stop the freebie tickets period. If you're a  corporate sponsor you should just have to show your work ID to get in. Sadly, it means we'd still have to suffer ZMFM and their shit music but..... 

Last Sunday we have the two guys playing their banjo etc and rit next door to them ZMFM kicked off with their lot. Good grief, no brains. I'd rather have that two piece sometimes three piece playing.  They are good and fun. Shame they are not allowed their instruments in the stands but the fun police would be on them in seconds.

Banjo's don't help pay the bills. ZM do and have paid good money to be a sponsor. Pretty stupid to say that you want ZM gone because you don't like the music. 

Its tricky to stop the free tickets though. Usually the nix have got some benefit through sponsorship and the tickets are an easy way for the nix to pay for that. The dom post would give nix free advertising in exchange for the tickets for example. Stop the free tickets and you have to pay for advertising. 

They should try to limit them where they can though. Reading cinema gets tickets in exchange for players getting free movie tickets (and probably other things, I don't know the ins and outs) but as an example maybe the nix could work into the deal that the tickets must be sold as part of a package deal, rather than just given away as freebies. The cinema can still get their usual allocation of free tickets, but may also request to purchase more at $X if the package deal is popular above the free allocation. That way they keep the sponsorship, they've found another outlet to sell tickets from and it doesn't devalue the nix product in any way. the cinema gets added value of a bargain deal to sell (and maybe take a wee commission from every ticket sold too - as well as actually selling the free tickets instead of having them sitting in an office cupboard doing nothing)

Disclaimer: This is all hypothetical btw. I may work there but I don't know the ins and outs of any sponsorship deals. 

Personally all the fluffery is of minor concern, other than how it impacts on the game itself (announcers and music after kick off).

Might be significant for a casual/bandwagoner, but they don't detract from the game.

I think we do need to consider vuvuzelas for next season.

Kazoo orchestra in the Zone would actually be rather amusing. And they're small enough that security can't complain about them being used as weapons.

But then we'd have a new thing to complain about people being out of tune with.

I hate kazoos. There, I said it.