Crowds - The thread of Australian whining

not sure on usual price but $4.50 for cut up potatoes cooked in fat is not a good price

For this very reasonable price you also get a stylee cardboard box, dainty serviettes (we call them napkinettes) and gourmet tomato ketchup. Junior822012-04-05 12:44:54

In five years of attending games, I have never bought food at the stadium and only bought beer once and that was just to repay a mate who had bought me a beer.

+1.

I didn't give the stadium a cent of my money this season, instead I bought a burger at the Bencher for $7 before the game. Basically a gourmet burger, none of the rubbish they sell at the stadium for almost exactly the same price.

The atmosphere at the games is incredible, especially on Friday. Watching it on TV has nowhere near the same atmosphere, as SKY adjust the volume levels so the Fever come through at the same volume, no matter how loud we are in the stadium. Watching the replays just reminds me how we were in our best form in a long time.

Shouldn't it just be black?

Black and black, black and black, black and black, black and black.  Panini

And to others.

Auckland used dancing girls to get their crowd number up!

...really? Has it really come down to scantly clad women?

Blackout
Valentines Love
Stripey Sunday
Gareth's Guest
Nix Six Summer
Road to the Finals 3 game pack

I may have missed something but are these the family focussed marketing promotions Dave Dome is responsible for?

Ahmad, All good promo's.

Your post implies that marketing was solely family oriented and hence responsible for the smaller crowds. I think the above shows that while families have been targeted by marketing, they certainly aren't the only market that were targeted.

Moreover David Dome didn't set the schedule. He was tasked with promoting a series of weekend afternoon matches.
Naturally it made the most sense to market these games to Families.

The family orientated marketing has both gotten us some decent crowds and generated revenue for the club.

Furthermore in the long term the children of those families will become teenagers and students (hopefully) infatuated with club building a strong base for the future.

If you want facts check out the attendance figures for fixtures at these "better times." We have generally drawn smaller crowds for evening matches throughout the clubs history.

How you could come to the conclusion that the marketing over the season led to the poor crowd turnout over the FFA's distinct absence of any marketing what-so-ever is beyond me.

"This ensured we had poor crowds all season and aliened many of our loyal fans."
I can't see many loyal fans being alienated by families. Are you alienated by families?

"...hence we got a bigger crowd than we would have if it had been played at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon."
FACT: We got a bigger crowd on the previous Sunday afternoon than last friday
asmodeus_822012-04-05 21:19:53

The Dom article nailed it. Even the Canes are drawing poor crowds. Things have changed. Less disposable income. People spent a lot of their budget on RWC. Sky growing more and more convenient for those that don't need a second excuse.

Maybe people have under estimated just how much money the world cup sucked up.

Would also like to see us start the season with some of the promotions that we ended the season with.Just maybe if you can convince people to come at the start some of them might turn up later.Still think prices are to expensive,more seats sold at cheaper price can earn as much as less at a higher price.More seats sold helps create  a better atmosphere and that helps with making people want to become a part of it.

Ballane I believe that is all true - hard though to blame lack of promotion early in the season when clearly they had no budget for that.  I think we'll see a lot more of that stuff next year.

This was definitely a home season of two halves. One half where people seemed to complain there was no marketing (hearsay from here since I don't live in Wellington), and the second half where there was marketing overload.

I know there must have been reasons for this but I don't know exactly what. I heard (here I think) rumours that the Club didn't want to market during RWC because it wouldn't have a good yield. Then of course there was the whole Sack Terry saga which meant it wasn't exactly the best time to market (although I always thought that the creation of Welnix was pretty much the perfect opportunity to "relaunch" the Phoenix with a "it's good to be back!" and "rising from the ashes again" kind of confidence). But who knows the reasons.

I know I sound like a broken record here, but the player apperances in public have been few in far between (the week leading to the play off excluded) this season.  If they go to schools, local football clubs, charity events etc we don't really hear about it.  I see how the other A-League clubs communicate with their fans and I'm quite frankly jealous. 

I'm not sure if I've seen a thanks to the fans who turn up each game (home or away) on their facebook or twitter.   Making your fans/season members feel appreciated would go a long way.

The club came and posted on here after the wet and rubbish game against Perth in Jan, thanking all the people that turned up to the game in shocking conditions.

I do remember that, but it wasn't on twitter or facebook.  There is probably a large percentage of fans who don't frequent YF.

Probabaly just as many who dont bother with either facebook or twitter as well.

I heard indirectly via someone at the Club that Siggy abandoned twitter because it was getting too much. I think the implication was that he tried to reply to every tweet (being the nice guy he is) but that's just never going to work for someone in such a position.

We don't have tweeter players in the Club. In the off-season I'll chat to the Club about whether this is something that can be looked at. I follow quite a few Roar players on twitter, as well as All Blacks, and it is a good way for the teams to get fans to invest in them emotionally.

Obviously it should overload the players like it did Siggy. But it can be done without a huge imposition on the players.

Same old story with those that are familiar with social media and those that undervalue it.

It doesn't have to be the be all and end all but what other platform gives you uncensored access to players and their thoughts?

It's new. It's scary. But it's not the future. It's the present.

Glen Moss is on twitter, he'll be here next season so that may help with more emotional investment in the team.  It is a shame that Siggy got overwhelmed, he's the 3rd most followed kiwi footballer (after Chris Wood and Winston Reid).

DOmpost article says that crowds were up 13% at the stadium this year.  Nightz yours please?

I still don't think the club properly uses Twitter, but definitely using it more recently. And have noticed more posts on Facebook for events also.

The issue of player appearances and marketing of player appearances is a key one. How many people on here knew Phoenix players were at the Adidas shop on Lambton Quay before the home final?

I don't remember that being mentioned much at all, and even the signing session at Ryos was very low-key.

Back in 2009/10 when we made the finals, we had a large crowd at Midland Park for signatures and photos with the event alongside the Hurricanes.

This season we have had a shambolic event run with ZM where people have got bored of the muppet yapping inane rubbish in the microphone for 30 minutes and walked off. He even asked the players how the Phoenix got their name!

The players eventually sauntered out of the coffee shop in the black tracksuits - not even showing off the stripey to make it more visible who they were.
They could have been anybody to the casuals around eating their lunch, looking bemused and annoyed at the noise.

May I suggest you get your facts right as you are wrong.

I suugest you dont believe everything you read in the paper.

Wrong. 131,696 in total at the games this season. 117,435 last season. Then you can take into account the extra games which will put this season even further ahead in terms of average numbers per game. Average was 7,829 last season, 8,780 this season.

Check for youself here. http://www.ultimatealeague.com/records.php?type=att

And don't tell me those figures are wrong, they are 100% accurate.patrick4782012-04-06 21:30:51

 

My maths is not way off. 131696/117435 = 1.1214, which means that this years total was 112% of last year. Last time I checked 12 is VERY CLOSE to 13, not 'nothing like each other'.

The 20k in Auckland this year is cancelled out by the game in Christchurch last year, so we can still compare the crowd figures. Yes, there was a game in Dunedin, but the 4k crowd actually supports your argument about sh*t crowds, so I'm including it for completeness.
Besides, those games away from Welly DO reflect on how Domey marketed them, so if you are goint to criticise him then include ALL of what he has done, not just the stuff that supports your argument.patrick4782012-04-06 22:09:14

What has games in Auckland/ Christchurch or even Dundin got to with with crowds at the staduim? Nothing.

 I bored with you guys now, you're far to easy.

You were having a go at David Dome's promotion of the games causing crowd sizes to be smaller. The Auckland and Christchurch games have everything to do with this, and Domey was one of the people responsible for getting massive crowds at those games.