Crowds - The thread of Australian whining

I'm sorry i didnt know there was only 11k playing football in Auckland these days. To be fair though, ithought thrre were. Few more than that inqthat stand.

o for awsome, that is a great post and quite level headed. Deloras, it is not intend as Dorkland bashing but football attendees bashing, especially with the recent rumours of a 3rd attempt at getting a franchise there. They cant rely on just the gates a derby against Wellington to see them home. Although, having one would be massive from my own point of view. I am not happy with the club tactic of thinley vailed threats. It wins no friends and has beenus3d down here so often, either stand up with it orshut up Phoenix owners. You should be encouraging, not threatening.

Since when does playing football = die hard fan?

most football players are die hard fans of the game, it is inbred. I wasn't suggesting that they would be die hard fans of the Nix but in football in general.

The only inbred fans are those from Hawkes Bay and Manawatu.

since we are making generalisations - is it a stretch to assume that the real die hard Auckland football fans were both at Eden Park and on this forum so your "complaints" are only falling on our ears and it's annoying because we are the ones there!

I personally brought 25 people with me and some of them wouldn't have gone if i hadn't organised it so it's fine to take pot shots at Aucklander's but just like the Fever were pissed off when Morgan questioned their support we did all we could do.

And like Buffy says just because you play football dosn't mean you will go to Nix games - otherwise every registered Rugby player would go to Blues games and we know that dosn't happen!

Well done but there are a lot of silent fans that read these boards and never post, perhaps they might read the message? I dont take kindly to the Nix owners or management threatening any crowd in New Zealand. On this point I will defend Aucklanders.

fair enough - at the end of the day we both support the Nix and we are both not the people who need to be encouraged and like you I don't think the threatening approach from the owners will work.

And just dumb really ...threats dont work too well , when youve very little to threaten ....

very true guys, very true. It was nice to be drizzled on yesterday and the water was warmish, not like a cold southerly shower. The Fritz sausages up your way are 50 cents more than ours. I enjoyed the crispy apple cider at the two pubs I drank in. I enjoyed the day but for the idiot throwing stuff. I'm just waiting for Hatter to commrnt on my hat?

very poor crowd. Perhaps it needs some marketing via the football federations up there

was my first game in auckland. Had a great time, bumped into many  Wellingtonians who had made the trip.

I took an Auckland friend, who would not normally have gone. He said there had been no advertising at all(possibly not 100%, but that was his impression). I was having lunch  at Galbtaiths (great by the way). local chap comes up and asked if there was a game, as he had not seen it advertised.....

Met a couple of locals after the game, obviously not football supporters, and only went as they had free tickets...

Are we  missing out due to a possible lack of marketing. 

I doubt we'll play up there again, which would be a shame in my opinion

Think it's important to know that the clubs has far fewer resources to splash out on marketing than last season because of Football United underperforming.

Find it hard to believe that marketing is the factor. Was up in Auckland a month ago for a day and saw at lest a half dozen buses with ad on them.

Doesn't help that this is the back page of the paper on game day. And the Phoenix are buried 5 pages in.

They did a local club promotion. tickets for money. 

That does rely on the individual clubs to pass the email onto their members and then remind them - and it was in clubs off season so they may not have had many databases - It's an excuse i know and at my club we pushed it really hard, i'm just theorising about some issues with the timing of this promo, other than that it was a very good idea.

Senn as no reason seems to be acceptable other than "aucklanders are not real fans" I may as well throw out there that the "true football fans" must have just been getting an early night so they could watch auckland city become one of the top 4 teams in the world.

Awful crowd last night guys. I would be very keen to see the games in Wellington only. Maybe share a game or two in Dunedin (when the students are there) but Auckland is not a football city. At least in Dunedin, fans from Chch and the rest of the south island will attend.

11k is really shocking, Auckland.

Is that an excuse for not going to the Nix though? It was a 5pm kickoff!

Not really. Just figured I'd throw it out there and see what happens

Yeah, the crowd was a little disappointing but I don't see Welnix chucking the baby out with the bath water. The AKL market is too large to cut loose. I read in the Herald that they've just started a Football School up in AKL so it still seems to be within their long term thinking. 

I personally I like the 'away' trip to AKL (also Napier wasn't bad either).

As someone who a) loves the Nix, b) lives in Auckland, c) plays football in Auckland d) purchased 4 tickets to get people along only to not be able to attend myself nor give the tickets away I'd offer the following on crowds:

1) Everyone is busy a f*ck. I had committed to a diving course which finished much later than I thought. However when I thought I was free and going I had 3 tickets to get rid of. All of my colleagues, work mates, and others who are sporting inclined had other things on be it Christmas parties, anniversaries, 21sts, weekends away. People are either really busy, or my BO problems are costing me more friendships than I realise.

2) My football club (Ellerslie) went to town promoting the same 'you buy we win' message for the Football United tour. This time around I think I got two emails about it. I'm not sure the clubs got behind it as much, potentially because we're in the thick of the off season so club management are busy (see point 1) with other things.

3) It was a poorly chosen weekend. It was 12 days until Christmas on a weekend booked with highly publicised events at a time of year when there are more things to be at than you can shake a stick at.

4) The weather didn't help. For Wellington 'hard cores' you lot suffer through atrocious weather week after week. You're hard core. You choose to stay in a city whose climate is 'unbeatable on a good day' but only has a few of those. Auckland is full of people who enjoy the sun a lot more often, and put up with intermittent rain to get it. That said they're unlikely to brave the rain for a sports stadium like the Fever hard core are, and last night it looked ready to bucket (which it started to about 2am Sunday).

5) The Phoenix are not a known brand in Auckland. It's all good for 2B to recognise ads when he's up here, but if you don't know who the Phoenix are & why we should care about them coming to Auckland it's a much harder sell.

6) Launching an Auckland training school the day after a game is just dumb. This is a great opportunity for some PR coverage on the Friday before the game & to help raise awareness of the Nix brand the day before the game.

Am I disappointed at the 11k number? Absolutely, a city of this size should do better. Am I surprised? Not at all. Hopefully the Welnix learn from the scenario and get their timing and marketing combo a bit better next season.

Also I'm not writing to bag the club, I think they do a great job with the limited resources at hand, but to offer an alternative perspective not found in the 6 posts I read on the topic =)

Sounds like I need to send some more emails....  I had thought I had done about 4 plus twitter and facebook but may not have got the message across as much as I had hoped.

In fairness I may have been blind to it having acquired tickets already!

Was at Sylvia Park today, saw four separate kids wearing Nix shirts at the mall. I think young footballers do definitely identify with the Nix.

Yeah ....just as well I cant recall the Knights death throes at NHS ,....that was shocking ...11k is heaps more than the Blues were getting , but the novelty is def  wearing thin ...

The other issue to be considered is the cost in relation to how close we are to Christmas. People obviously spend a lot more this time of year and having to shell out even more for a football match might be out of reach for some people, especially families. Perhaps the marketing should have been geared towards promoting this as an early gift idea for Christmas?

I would also be much more likely to ignore emails that advertise these types of events than big billboards around the city or TV/radio ads. Most websites send weekly/daily advertising newsletters so people tend to just stop paying attention to them. 

How successful would a stall be in selling tickets if it were positioned on Queen St or in one of the major malls in Auckland? Personally, I would rather buy tickets in person than online (especially if it means I get to avoid the shambles that is Ticketmaster), I'd be able to get some advice on where the tickets actually are and which would be better, the price would be cheaper because there wouldn't be 200 hundred different processing fees applied, and it could also be an opportunity to sell some merchandise at the same time. I haven't had an opportunity to buy any Phoenix gear in years (apart from at the games when I don't have as much time and it's usually more expensive) so having temporary stalls dotted around the place for an upcoming game would be an ideal one-stop shop.

This could be key for the future. When I was younger people usually found an EPL club or other European club to support and turned into the sort of European football fans who turn their noses up at the A League. Loyalty to a team from a young age is more powerful than the level of football the team plays, 

I should also say that the previous 3 crowds have gone 20K, 11K, 18K. So while low, we've been there before.

You can do alll the advertising you like, but editorial seems to trump advertising most times. The Nix PR machine (if they didn't) should've looked at getting articles in the NZ Herald in the lead up, community papers and even the fancy mags. 

Also, maybe they should stop threatening fans with taking games away if they don't show up and replace it with something positive instead. An interview with Roy and other former Auckland players. Heaps of angles.

There was a story on Burns. It was just on the 5th page. Not much you can do about that.

I think there is, but I guess you need to get buy in from the paper and someone pushing hard at the Nix end for the editorial space.

Some of you guys really should send your CVs to David Dome. You seem to be marketing geniuses who have seen all the obvious things that Welnix staff are missing, perhaps because they're blind and deaf.

I would, but no longer in Wellington. 

Organisations do actually sometimes get stuck in certain patterns of operating that aren't necessarily the best way of doing something but for a variety of reasons don't change. Maybe they subconsciously don't want to admit they were wrong before. Or maybe they've developed a groupthink mentality where no new ideas are coming out. Or maybe they are afraid of failing badly if they try something different. Maybe a member of the board has really pushed one approach and no one wants to tell him it's not a good idea. 

Here's my 2 cents ... The more we win the more we will get bums on seats. forget taking games around NZ. we need to focus on our own back yard and build our fan base at the cake tin. The more we win the more people will come. that's it. 

Interesting interview with David Dome on the NIx on the radio forum. He basically said that they could only schedule the game in December because:

A) If they do earlier in the season they get a bollocking from the Wellington fan base

B) They can't do January because the cities in NZ are empty

C) They couldn't do Feb because of the cricket world cup.

He also said that Eden Park are cods. And that even though the nix have been there three times this year (18k end of last season, 20k football united, and 11k on Saturday) that they don't treat the Nix particularly well, and that he doubts they have any real strategy when it comes to anything outside of crugby, was actually scaving of eden park.

Anyway I reckon a game in Hamilton could be good next season. You'd still get the core Auckland fans come down, and the stadium is far superior. 

Welnix could charter a train as part of the ticket price for Auckland fans and run a special service from Britomart with Nixie as the conductor for the kids, and the bar open for guys in Hammers and Spurs shirts.

The Nix marketing has always been a bit average. There's too much negative press around getting punters in to the stadium. Even David Dome was talking about it, making threats about not bringing games back to Auckland if people didn't show up.

This isn't new, it seems to have be a hallmark of the current administration. But threatening potential supporters isn't going to help build the club.

To me they've lacked some sort of direction/plan when it comes to media/marketing for a while. Disjointed, can do better.

We lost a marketing genius when we let Tony Pignata go. I can appreciate he wanted to go back to be with his wife and family but the man was a PR genius with an excellent repore with the management, the pkayers, the fans and the media. We REALLY miss him.

Dome was the marketing manager back then.

We are missing his fake money. You know, the time where we were losing $1m + a season.

Pignata was the owner?