The Travelling Circus - playing home games around NZ

You bastards. How much is Gareth Morgan paying you to disagree with a drunk guy on a forum?!?

I'd like to lock in: "C) Not Enough" thanks Doloras

I'm not toeing anything. I'm just not willfully ignoring the rationale. I've always said I'd prefer all games here. 

I think the bummer about this season is losing 4 games instead of just 2. 12 Games at Westpac would have been better for ST holders to justify the $169.00.

That numbers at "away" home games are around only the 5k mark is a true reflection that the novelty is over. Gone are the 19k games in Auckland and CHCH. Time for the club to re-assess things. I appreciate the Sponsors wanted two games in Auckland. I hope they are satisfied with the attendance up there for the first game.

is it? I don't even know what I paid (and compared to previous years) but you would hope so

It has definitely gone up and down depending on how many games have been in Wellington. The price per game has remained pretty static. think there was a slight increase this year for some types of tickets, after been flat for a number of seasons. 

More cutting edge comments from the world expert on everything!

Excellent contribution to the topic............... oh, that's right the last game wasn't in Auckland so it wouldn't have concerned you. I did meet some nice people from Auckland who drove down for the game, they were surprised that there weren't more people coming down for it! 

Taranaki is part of the Waikato now in rugby terms which is why the Hurricanes don't play there.

Anyway, we know that Huawei want's games in Auckland, we also know that there are clashes with other events using Westpac, and we also know that they loose money on games played in Wellington.

Does the Auckland city council underwrite games played in Auckland? Will councils continue underwriting events when only 5k people turn up? Even in Hamilton and New Plymouth that has to be a loss.

$169 this year to renew in the YF, same as last year, but with less games at Westpac. 

But you could have paid $25 for a Yellow Fever January Hatrick, $50 for the remaining three games, picked up two tickets for the price of one using the entertainment book voucher & paid full price for the remaining ticket. Including the booking fee it would be under $150 & you don't have to pay for them all in advance. The members scarf is a benefit that you miss out on. 

I ordered three January Hatrick passes in December (extra to the three season tickets I have) they turned up yesterday (Feb 8) with the same letter that came with my season tickets in September, saying how the attached passes get you into all of the games at Westpac for the rest of the season. It will interesting to see if they work when I next attend a Phoenix game at the stadium!

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Been $169 for several years, although I am sure there were a couple of years where they were $181 but I stand to be corrected which will no doubt happen from your expert eh Hatter?

That;s what I thought.

I'm pretty sure when I bought my season pass it made it super clear only 10 were in Wellington, so I knew I was paying 17ish bucks a game, plus the ability to go to the other 4 if I was in the area (which I was not).

The value proposition for everyone's season pass fees is up to everyone to determine.  180 may be too much for hatter, but cheap as chips for others, we all have limited funds etc.

But hatter - I'm pretty sure this exact discussion happened last year about how using specials you could save money not getting a season pass, why did you choose to with all of the information available to you?

Because having a season ticket card means something special in that you are fully supporting the club by buying one??

From google this is what I could find for the last five years. Yes, it's the same price, but as I alluded to, with inflation you can't keep holding the costs the same. Still paying what you did 5 years ago. 

percentage per game increase v inflation please

2012 Q2 as the base

Could you put that into a Pivot table & enter the percentage of matches/season that are played away from Wellington, multiplied by the approximate cost of travel to each game outside of wellington (based on the AA's average running costs for a 4 door mid range sedan)  with the additional cost of 1 nights accomodation, two pies & a can of Monster Ultra ?

We are to and froing with arguments about stats and costs but all agree that we'd prefer more games at Westpac. Its been touched on before but lost a little bit over the last few days - what are the Nix doing to increase crowd numbers?

Are some saying that taking games on the road is one such strategy?

Are the Nix spending enough money to improve the on field performance of the team and therefore attract more fans?

Exactly what marketing goes on when the teams go on the road within NZ?

My uninformed view is that the club aren't doing nearly enough to increase crowds. Someone else said before that in their other businesses the owners would not be happy with the results they are having with the club [not game results btw]. So is here another reason than charity for them to own the club? are they hoping they might be able to sell it to someone else and make their money there? The longer this shark goes on, the less the value the club will be to anyone surely.

They have already sold $10 tickets at Westpac at our last 2 games there for the "Next One".

This deviation from the Traveling Circus is still related to the TC. And if you read the thread you will see that 2nd Best & yourself were the ones discussing it ! 

Ban Yourselves!!!! ;)

(And the deviation from the Sydney match thread by Patricks "Dancing Dale" tribute, is magnificent!!!! 

They are kinda related too as the "away" games contribute to our average "home" gate totals. Hence when we once got 19k in Auckland everyone from outside of Westpac said it was Auckland making us survive. Now that the Auckland gates are matching our own the story is different.

I don't think you're stupid at all. I think you don't like awayhome games. Which is totally your right. And I understand why you don't like them. 

I'm not trying to convince you to like them either. I'm just saying that I quite like them myself.

By the way I think it is completely wrong to attack the Welnix like that. Think what you like about their running of the club, they have tried and tried, and sunk a tonne of money in, and without them the club would have died in the GFC (the Greek Financial Crisis).

And in fairness you can put the two Auckland games down to the club sponsors I believe whom may have insisted on them or not.

Just Hatter:

Here: http://yellowfever.co.nz/posts/1172270

Here: http://yellowfever.co.nz/posts/1172282 aaaaaaaaaaaaaand

Here: http://yellowfever.co.nz/posts/1172347

Oh and LG here: http://yellowfever.co.nz/posts/1172331

Nope. Some of us don't mind a bit of travelling circus. 

Sorry smithy if you feel that was an attack  on Welnix then not much I can do about. I said something they they themselves had said.  Fine if things have changed that's fine tell us don't try and dress it as something it's not.

Pretty sure you could go through any thread and find something from most of us that went against what someone else said.

Actually thought some of the discussions in a couple of these threads had been pretty good and what's so wrong in being critical of Welnix or are they that sensitive.

Sorry, I obviously wasn't clear what I meant.

Attack Welnix all you like about how they run the club, but you can't attack their motivation for doing it. Or I can't see how anyone can anyway. 

I loved travelling circus when the crowds were half decent. Now the crowd size is an embarrassment and it is not as much fun - so I'm a bit more meh.

Maybe you should go & tell the FFA that we don't have a problem with falling crowds, because you seem to be of the opinion that getting less than 6000 for three one off games is fine!

Personally, I think that it's woeful, but as long as it's a good laugh traveling to the games, who cares how many turn up?

This is true in Wellington too though, no?

We have a massive crowd problem. I just don't think the travelling circus is to blame for it. Mostly I think team performance is.

So you agree that we have a crowd problem, caused by poor performances & poor marketing. Surely Welnix are responsible for both of those, as they hold the purse strings & they ultimately call the shots. If they haven't got the right people in the business side of things looking after marketing, they need to make some changes. But if they don't want to invest more money into the club, sadly the demise will be swift!

I don't know if throwing more money at marketing is going to be a magic fix. It really comes back to performance of the team, no amount of postering, tv ads are gonna draw in casual fans if we're sitting at the bottom of the table.

If they want to increase profile, Welnix should be pushing to get more articles on the nightly news, cos there is fudge all. Duco and Joseph Parker seem to have fluff pieces a couple of times a week, why can't the Nix?

I think the travelling circus is in part trying to broaden fanbase so more people watch on the telly too. 

I don't think being based in Wellington when all the networks are in Auckland helps us much. 

And the Herald don't cover us much either. On match day for the Mt Smart game, the preview article was buried 4 pages deep in the sport section. I went looking for it and missed it first time around because it was squeezed down the margin next to a story and massive photo of some guy leaving an F1 team.  

Win and they will come.

A small example I was at meeting earlier this season where Rob said something along the lines of there wasnt much to celebrate in the fact that it was 10th year as we hadnt won anything. Yep might be true but would like to have seen some acknowledgement of those that have supported the club along the way and the mere fact that we still here  despite the best efforts of some. For me that says as much about the efforts of the Welnix guys as it does about all those others wherever they are from who support the club.That to me showed that Rob still dosnt get football fans.

End of the day what some of these threads have shown that we cant be accused about not caring about what happens to the club and we might all come at from different perspectives but really we all want the same thing. A successful and winning team.