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How many fans do Charlton have?

DRF said:

LoOkOuT said:

I hear this a lot, but there's 5,000+ uniques that check in here throughout the day, everyday, even allowing for people checking from different devices. What's that, a third of the hardcore support? Those 5,000 create over 2million impressions per month, which suggests there is interest beyond match day, even if the "active" percentage is much lower (one would expect that).

But supposing that the average Charlton fan has no interest beyond the first team and the major figures of the Club, how does that affect the situation? If I'm on a cruise ship that's sprung a leak and the crew are able to keep that knowledge away from me, it doesn't make that leak any less dangerous. I either go down with the ship having never seen it coming, or I begin to see the signs and start to think about what I'm going to do.

As for the numbers. You are comparing the number of website users to the numbers at a game or 'hardcore support'. What about the wider support who neither go to the game or read this website. I predict we probably have at least 60,000 plus fans across the globe, so that is the number you need to compare to if you are talking about clicks and how representative this site is. I suspect a large number on this site aren't 'hard core support' in that they can't get to games so need to get their fixes another way.
Perhaps this has been discussed before but I would be interested to know how many fans people think Charlton have and how would you classify them?

We know the number of adult season ticket holders has stabilised at around 10,000 with c. 1,000 junior ST holders

And that the average home part of the gate is c. 16,000

So that means there are 6,000 places taken up by occasional fans and regular walk up fans

Is it reasonable to suggest that we therefore have 8,000 fans who walk up regularly and another 16,000 who turn up for special offers or blag a freebie off a friend or the club?

So that makes 35,000

Perhaps the overall figure is 50,000, 60,000 or even 75,000 - how would this be estimated and does it matter

I am asking because I am interested and to me it is vital to the future of the club - for there are 8,000 empty seats at the average home game and we need to work out how to fill some of them... more later on this but it is possible that the Trust may work to deliver some value...
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Comments

  • Get better at Football. Get promoted. Bob's your uncle, you have a sold out ground week in week out.
  • 200,000
  • So my answer is i don't know.
  • Interesting - but I think @seriously_red meant this to be a serious question and discussion around ideas for increasing the numbers coming through the turnstiles. Obviously we (the fanbase) can't really influence what happens on the pitch (except for making lots of good noises!) unless we can somehow fund a couple of decent strikers. But we can possibly come up with ideas for attracting more people in and keeping them coming back?
  • Thank you - I see Off_it has raised his estimate from 817 to 200,000!
  • cafc-west said:

    Interesting - but I think @seriously_red meant this to be a serious question and discussion around ideas for increasing the numbers coming through the turnstiles. Obviously we (the fanbase) can't really influence what happens on the pitch (except for making lots of good noises!) unless we can somehow fund a couple of decent strikers. But we can possibly come up with ideas for attracting more people in and keeping them coming back?
    Precisely!

    Unless we copy the Ronnie Moore campaign and offer to raise funds to buy a striker then it's safe to say that it's probably best to lay off "championship manager" and look to where we can have an impact... some will not be interested at all and some might be cynical of any efforts but so what!

    There are a lot of empty seats and there are probably some quick wins to make first time and occasional fans want to come back. So the basic question is how many fans are in that target group...

    And are there any marketeers, graphic artists, data analysts etc who are interested in helping out put a proposal together... because something tells me the club will listen to this one
  • The football for a fiver campaign certainly helps. We get extra revenue for that game from ticket sales, programme sales and kiosk sales, plus perhaps club shop sales. As SCP then said, if we entice only one of them back to another game then we've done our job. However, just enticing one back isn't enough. So we need to be putting in the work on the pitch to get people coming back. Whether that's one or two extra games a season or a new season ticket holder. Our normal ticket prices aren't even that high, so it's not as if we're asking them to pay £5 one match, and then £60 another.
  • 46
  • 7 -------------i counted them all out and i counted them all back
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  • SR If it helps let me explain the thought process I went through.

    We get max about 20,000 to games these days, however in our peak in the premiership we were getting more and there was (or at least it was talked about there being) a Target 40,000 campaign. I thought that the people who had come up with this must have known that it was in some small way achieveable - and that was targeting 40,000 going to games. I think there are probably at least this many who would define themselves as fan in the UK . Therefore I did not think it unreasonable that there would be at least another 20,000 fans who are not in the UK and have no hope of every really going to matches.

    I think the key thing to agree on is how you count them. Does anyone who has ever been to a game to support Chalrton (as oppsed to coming to wwatch the opposition) count as a fan. But what if you never go and support them for obscure reason from afar.

    Personally I think it has to be self-defining. If you call yourself a fan you are one. But what if you are a Charlton fan and a fan of another team - does that count? Does it count if your other team are not in the same league, or the same country etc.
  • edited July 2013
    There is probably a semi robust way of measuring this. If everyone on this thread gives two figures. The number of people they know (on a relatively close level) who support CAFC, and the number of people they know who go to the games. Add the numbers up, and get an overall conversion index that you apply to an average home crowd (say 17k). That's our figure.

    So for me - I would say I know 13 CAFC fans well. 3 go to games regularly. So my number alone would give 73,661 fans. If everyone updates our figure as you go through the thread, the overall number should become more accurate the longer you go on and more variables are taken in to account.

    God I sound like a geek.

  • I know at least a dozen of us in Sheffield, but rarely seen at the Valley. Suspect there are a good few more. No reason why it wouldn't be the same in any other city.

    There are a lot of people out there who consider themselves Addicks but don't often (or at all) go. Which is just as well or we'd need a bigger ground and then we'd all be wringing our hands over a move away from the Valley!
  • As a starting point I suppose it would be valid to see if all the free match vouchers from the S/T books get used. If you can't get people to go to a free game I don't think they can really be called fans.
  • cafcfan said:

    As a starting point I suppose it would be valid to see if all the free match vouchers from the S/T books get used. If you can't get people to go to a free game I don't think they can really be called fans.

    The issue with that is getting them to sit with you. There may be no free seats next to people due to season tickets, and people may not be willing to move to accomodate this.
  • There is probably a semi robust way of measuring this. If everyone on this thread gives two figures. The number of people they know (on a relatively close level) who support CAFC, and the number of people they know who go to the games. Add the numbers up, and get an overall conversion index that you apply to an average home crowd (say 17k). That's our figure.

    So for me - I would say I know 13 CAFC fans well. 3 go to games regularly. So my number alone would give 73,661 fans. If everyone updates our figure as you go through the thread, the overall number should become more accurate the longer you go on and more variables are taken in to account.

    God I sound like a geek.


    Damo you might enjoy watching the Big Bang Theory, you sound very much like Sheldon Cooper. :-0

  • another tid bit of info, 16.6k fans on Facebook.
  • another tid bit of info, 16.6k fans on Facebook.

    That means nothing as even I have a facebook friend.

  • Saw a lad sporting the new away shirt on sittingbourne high street today few on sheppy so in the swale area there must be a few unless the poor sods are on holiday in leysdown or sherness.
  • another tid bit of info, 16.6k fans on Facebook.

    Palace have 28k...
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  • Thanks to Zheng Zhi I predict that we have atleast 1.1 billion fans.
  • 402.
  • However many there are, every single one of them is better than every other fooker on this planet.
  • 357,421 FACT
  • I think it all depends on how you define "fan". I don't know but here's my best guess:

    image
  • Stig , thats a cracking graph , but i think you'll find it was over 700 games, sorry to be pedantic.
  • Would be a lot more if the bandwagon wasn't being used by smallwall recently.
  • Seb isdn a legend!
  • Stig - Thats exactly what I was trying to sketch out... every survey we do we ask how often people go to the Valley and on the last one we did ask for the first two digits of people's post code so the Trust is starting to get a picture and it will be possible to improve that over time - particularly if we can work with the club.

    The power of the internet is that wherever people are in the world, they can follow the club and perhaps the Trust could run something on the site for people from different parts of the country or even an international section... but the original question is really quite commercial for there are really only a few markets for CAFC:
    Lapse fans who used to go but have fallen out of the habit; brand new fans in the area - schools, universities, community groups etc. and friends & family...
    Lets see if this takes off?
  • Thank you - I see Off_it has raised his estimate from 817 to 200,000!

    I had a recount of the people I knew.
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