Phoenix Ownership - Rob says FTFFA (Part 2)

As I said, there are exceptions.  One off events don't follow the same boundaries; die-hard fans go no matter what (Gunman is the perfect example), but that doesn't mean the point isn't relevant

By that logic wouldn't sydney and melbourne need to get about 10 times higher crowds than we do.  Not really a fair comparison

The only difference is that they have been successful in the League.

You would also need to take into account the crowd increases from derbies.  CCM, Newcastle and City all get a spike in crowds when the intrastate rivals come to town with visiting fans.

Bring on the Hutt Throb i say.

I don't think there is any point dressing up our crowds as anything other than poor.  Crowd numbers have generally followed results downwards and that's really got nothing to do with the FFA

crowds rise and fall with results - no one is denying that - the point being argued is that the nix are being asked to compete on crowd numbers with clubs whose potential customers are almost double ours. Compare our crowds to Perth, almost the same population and not surprisingly similar crowd numbers - and they have had 10 years more than us to build a following.

Perth has a way bigger population than Wellington (Greater Urban Area Perth population at 1.96M in 2016). So in comparison Nix crowds are okay, popn wise. 

Newcastle (434,000 in 2015) & Central Coast (325,000 in 2015) are better markers re crowd sizes and populations.

Yep, the only column missing is the population base on which to derive a potential attendance average on.

The 'metrics'. are a bit of a sad joke really. 

Back when all the 'metrics' stuff really got going, just out of curiosity I did some analysis of relative attendances back in 2015. From that I found that only two clubs in the A-league's history had a better population capture rate  than the Phoenix (=average attendance/season vs available population catchment). They were CCM and North Queensland Fury. The nix got a bigger proportional hit rate than all the rest of the teams. 

Sure the Melbourne and Sydney Clubs get more numbers in basic terms - but their available populations are 10x higher.  If they were performing up at the same kind of capture rate that Wellington has got they'd  be pulling crowds of around 100,000. It annoys me that people accuse Wellington of delivering small crowds etc - that is just crap. Wellington is just a smaller population base. Only CCM and North Queensland were more successful in getting crowds to games (in proportion to their populations).

Its clear that Wellington are being held to deliver crowd attendance levels that nobody else is, and that proportionately at least we're already way above the A-league average for that anyway! Of course that implies fairness is a principle that applies here - far from it I reckon.

Oh and guess what - the worst performers weren't even the Knights! That honour fell to Melbourne City.

Now - this stuff came from an analysis in 2015, and when I look at the average attendance figures just cited by Blew2 I can see very little difference there. I'm sure our average attendances must have dropped a bit though - hardly surprising given recent results and the overwhelmingly negative 'Doom' media). But for what its worth (which doesn't  seem much) we're still performing better than average for crowds in proportional population terms.

Much this. And CCM and Newey get fans from both Sydney teams as they are within easy driving distance (2hrs or less).

That's correct.  It is two hours up the F3 to Newcastle and Gosford is even closer to Sydney.

Ok lets play this "metrics criteria" another way. Firstly I haven't sat down with a calculator to work out any figures so just run with the idea and if anyone with time and a calculator wants to work the following out then great. 

  Lets say that Victory and City attract 2% (it might be 4% or 9%) of the Melbourne and Sydney population to their home games which produces their average crowds. Then depending on what those two cities percentages are to produce their average then what would be the crowd size for the Phoenix based on that same percentage of population of Wellington as to Melbourne and Sydney ?

  If its metrics we have to play at then two can play that game.

can we please change the title of this thread to "Rob won't say anything unless it's behind closed doors over quiche and water"?

M1 not F3.

Get your facts straight ?

All this talk about relative attendances is a bit irrelevant. Our problems would not be over if we relocated to Eketahuna and got all 400 residents to show up each week. 

Are you using 300 cows in that population count?

Seriously though, I hope our metrics are based on the league and not actual numbers because if attendances drop across the league, it would suck if we had to achieve fixed numbers.

But we got a licence with the FFA knowing full well what our population was, and what expected crowds we could reasonably achieve as part of that. So saying we need to lift our crowds is them shifting the goal posts suddenly in an effort to get rid of us. When we are actually performing better than they would’ve expected in that regard when they let us into the league. 

Looks like a pitch the FFS would approve

Just pointing out a few 'metrics' that show the ' Wellington isn't delivering crowds' line isn't quite as simplistic as its painted. In fact Wellington is being more supportive of the A League per capita than a lot of other places hosting clubs.It's just that we're being held to higher standards than everyone else. 

There's not a lot of rationality in this anti-nix movement from FFA and friends. We're a single non-burden club delivering another countries capital city with a direct population link to 400,000 people (and 4 million nationally) from a completely different but highly complementary (but not competing) market. The marketing and sponsorship reach is much greater than from adding a couple of clubs extra in the already crowded Sydney/Melbourne markets. Seems like a pretty good deal for the FFA really. Seems like everyones a winner - what's not to like.....

True, love the way they use the max space at the ends by making the goal lines not parallel. With training from Albany they could learn too paint in the bare patches too.

In 2007 our stated aim as a club was to be getting crowds of 10,000. That was what Wellington Phoenix said we could get before our first ever game. And it was seen as reasonable. Wellington really gets behind its sports teams etc.

Years later, Gareth Morgan has also talked about the 10,000 figure as one we should be able to get to.

We've been getting well below that. 

Maybe it was naive to state that target, but it was actually Phoenix who set the expectation for crowds that high. If we are now saying that much lower amounts are really good because we're only small, that's us shifting the goalposts. Also, the A-League has moved on a lot over the last decade, and expectations can change.

When we started in 2007 most people were well aware that the clubs survival wasn't a case of 'being quite good on a per capita basis compared to how Australian cities are doing', it was always important to be getting good crowds. Better than we have been. Let's not pretend we are 'over performing' or try to make excuses & make ourselves feel better with stupid 'relative attendances' arguments. 

Despite that, the FFA should stop their attempts to turf us out. Phoenix are awesome, and good for the league. Will rise again!

Interesting that Miron Bleiberg (okay can be a nutter), made a statement that A League should look to expand by 6 teams now. 

And that league should be happy if these teams are only averaging crowds of 5,000-10,000 as long as they are financially stable.

In order to be financially stable, thaht would mean those clubs being funded by TV money which would need to increase significantly, so this is not credible 

Might be with an Independent A League, and more equitable revenue sharing model for the clubs.

Don't FFA currently take about 60% of A League's revenue?  In comparison English FA only get 10% of the EPL revenues?

May have those percentages wrong, but certainly is room for clubs to have higher share of revenue. Plus in an expanded A League, more games, so more 'product', so increased TV revenue you would expect.

Not saying Bleiberg's views are right - just don't think they can be dismissed out of hand. And if some people in Australia are thinking like that, then is a bit of nonsense to kick Nix out of the league just because they fail to average crowds of 10K.

Have never been able to understand why the target was set at 10000.Okay i get that might be the break even point.But what about a football team in NZ makes anybody think that 10000 is an achievable target without building up to it with could results and a decent marketing campaign. Nothing about a NZ team in the A league has ever suggested that is a figure that could be expected.

When we started both the Hurricanes and Lions were not attracting crowds and its only due to recent results that they have managed to improve. Even the Warriors who are going pretty well at the moment only got about 9600 at their last home game.

Yet we constantly get 10000 shoved down our throats even after they have taken the team away for weeks and on the back of bad results.

the crowd is shark cos the team is shark. Until they fix that..

This pretty much sums everything up.  Fix the team, win some games, people turn up.  

Do that = Everyone Happy

10k is the breakeven point for Westpac Stadium.

Thats fine, nobody can argue with that. But the question is how many people have to show up before everyone is happy? Thats the guts of the metrics hoop we're being required to jump through, while nobody else has been given the same requirement.

Just for some context around that - so lets say we achieve a 10,000 average - fantastic. Metrics box well and truly ticked! 

So getting the same capture rate should be possible elsewhere then eh? If we can surely everyone can? So at the same capture rate that would get Wellington 10,000 - well for Perth lets say, that would work out at them getting average crowds over 50,000, and for Melbourne over 110,000. So probably requiring sellouts for them every time. Should be easy eh? Just win some more games...? And in Wellington we don't even need to get sellouts.

The key is everyone would have to be generating a baseline level of population interest in football that is far above what they currently have now. With the possible exception of Gosford and CCM, the level of interest required is far above what has been demonstrated to date across most A-League host cities. Wellington is no exception. Sure we can do better and I reckon everyone's been trying hard over the years - but lets not be too unrealistic about the baseline popularity of football and for attending live games (of any sport actually). Its going to take more than just winning more games. That's not saying we can't try to do better on the field and off it - I think everyone agrees there - but lets not go chasing rainbows on unicorns.

Let's be honest; the metrics targets are bullshark and almost unreachable for a club like us. We know that, FFA knows that, everyone knows that.

Miron is of course a major player in the Brisbane Strikers bid

Current A-League clubs don't want expansion

Repeating my comment from the pod thread:

The only way the club succeeds in the long-term is by building the fanbase in Wellington. I think Greenie makes a fair point about what has not been discussed - what is the long-term strategy in taking more games to Aussie.

It clearly has an impact on home interest because it breaks up the season, it has a sporting impact because it's more games being taken away and are we really going to have no games in Auckland (when we have always been told that we need games in Auckland because the sponsors demand it). 

Again, this is being floated as something that the club "has to explore". Well does it? The WELLINGTON PHOENIX playing HOME games in SYDNEY sounds absolutely fudgeing mickey mouse to me.

What about appointing a coach, giving them control over signing players, backing young kiwis, making players and management available to the media so fans (not just hardcore) know what's going on, recruiting a CEO who has some idea about football and giving it a proper go in Wellington rather than trying to deals around the country (and now in Australia) a strategy which to date HAS PATENTLY NOT WORKED!

Crowd Attendance averages for 2017/18

https://www.worldfootball.net/attendance/aus-a-leag...

Please note that the Newcastle Jest only averaged a little over 11k when they were sitting 2nd on the ladder for most of the season. Also their first home match against Perth had 16k+ attendees which would skew the average somewhat meaning that it was only home matches involving NSW based sides that have aided that average. Also I know they had several promotions involving reduced price ticketing throughout the year aimed at increasing crowd numbers.

Our biggest problem here is that it is extremely unlikely that we will ever see 500-2000 away fans at a home match meaning that we have to attract more locals to matches to achieve our "Metric".

It's quite easy to say "Win and people will come" but there needs to be more done to attract those people and keep them coming back for more.