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Slightly deflating this morning...
AFKABartram
Posts: 58,122
Watching the highlights and realising just how empty the West Upper West Lower, East and North Lower are.
I think a few of us suspected that the good start to the season won't have the responsive pick up that I reckon a few at the club thought would happen.
Without closing either the North Upper or relocating the Family Quad, its gonna take a hell of a lot of hard work to fill the lower aspects of the ground without freebies.
I think a few of us suspected that the good start to the season won't have the responsive pick up that I reckon a few at the club thought would happen.
Without closing either the North Upper or relocating the Family Quad, its gonna take a hell of a lot of hard work to fill the lower aspects of the ground without freebies.
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A few more wins, igor banging in goals to grab peoples attention and some sensible match day pricing will do the trick0
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Honestly think the NU needs to relocate down into the original covered end, it looks so weird having the upper tier fuller than the lower2
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Agree it just isn't gonna happen without proper creative thinking and even then I think its gonna require actual promotion to see a significant rise in crowds
And only if we're in the top 6 with a few games left will there be over 2k more home fans turning up if we're lucky0 -
It did look bad on the stream that i watched yesterday, hopefully our home form helps, if they believe they will come and see a regular home win, a rare thing in the last two seasons.0
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It's a shame but the damage has been done by previous owners. Lack of investment and vision meant the football,pitch and admin of the club was a shambles.
Unfortunately many people just had enough,it will take a while or maybe promotion to get the crowds back.1 -
It looked bad being there, very disappointing crowd. Results will help as people get over the "it won't last" syndrom, but there needs to be a concerted marketing effort.GretnaGreenAddick said:It did look bad on the stream that i watched yesterday, hopefully our home form helps, if they believe they will come and see a regular home win, a rare thing in the last two seasons.
I took my mother in law, brother in law and nephew yesterday, because I belatedly found out how cheap tickets were. Brother In Law and nephew were £20 for the two and MIL £11, and we had good seats in the Upper West.
If I only found out about the cheap pricing by accident I bet that there are a lot of absent fans who perceive the cost of tickets to be much higher. I do think the club could do well to advertise quality football alongside good value for money pricing.
Its all very well telling those that listen to Charlton Live, go to the Valley etc, but it may be time to promote in Kent in local media on a regular basis so that the message overcomes existing perceptions.4 -
I've not looked at the crowd figures in detail but I expect we are up a little on last season but way down on two years back - before price rises and two years of mainly dire football.
So prices are back down and we are top six...the missing ingredient is promotion. Not looked beyond Wolves and Boro at home but we need something big around home games in a month or two.
There's a very clear statement in the standard, almost a challenge - "if we are chasing promotion AND there's a good vibe then we will strengthen the squad"
Perhaps fan organisations with thousands of contacts should work with the club to fill some of those 8,000 empty seats?0 -
It saddens me also to see so many empty seats. How we go about filling those seats I have no idea, but if we keep on winning it will help, but not to any great degree. You say 8000 empty seats, it looked more like 10000.0
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As you know perfectly well, that is exactly one of the things the Trust would like to do. However it takes two sides to work together and we are slowly building confidence in us within the Club after a first year in which Club people had the perception that the Trust was telling them how to do their jobs. That never works. Now that Steve Clarke, a former supporters director, has joined the Trust team, we have someone who is trusted both in the Club boardroom , and among those fans who carried off with them a great deal of knowledge when the Club let them go as employees. We had a good AGM and a lot of bridge building took place. Trusts are never a surrogate commercial management team.seriously_red said:I've not looked at the crowd figures in detail but I expect we are up a little on last season but way down on two years back - before price rises and two years of mainly dire football.
So prices are back down and we are top six...the missing ingredient is promotion. Not looked beyond Wolves and Boro at home but we need something big around home games in a month or two.
There's a very clear statement in the standard, almost a challenge - "if we are chasing promotion AND there's a good vibe then we will strengthen the squad"
Perhaps fan organisations with thousands of contacts should work with the club to fill some of those 8,000 empty seats?
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Such is the problem is having a Premier League quality ground is that outside the Premier League we'll never get close to filling it. Out of the grounds around our size or larger in this division, we probably have the worst conditions in attempting to fill the ground as well, as out of the grounds that are larger than ours in the Championship:
- One is a historically large ground which barely gets half filled anymore (The Massives)
- 11 are the only major team in the city/town/region
- The other one, Birmingham, only has 2 others teams to compete with for fans and their attendances are worse than ours
Meanwhile, not only do we have several Premiership and Championship teams in London, we're in the most expensive city in the UK and one of the most expensive in the world so we face added overheads for running the clubs, meaning we can't lower ticket prices lightly. A lot of people genuinely don't know what division we're in any more, and we've been out of the Premiership for too long for anyone to really care. The next largest stadium, Fulham, have had pretty poor attendances this season already and they've only just dropped out of the Premiership. I'd rather have a great ground like ours and have regularly large sections of empty seats than grounds like the toolbox.
Hopefully we can continue initiatives like Football for a Fiver or start giving free tickets to outlets/charities in the community, or offer free tickets to those in the services? An empty seat won't generate money, but a free ticket will mean programme sales, food and drink sales, maybe 1 in 20 people who get a free ticket will get a season ticket?
When I was at Sheffield University the Massives kept throwing free tickets at students, surely we could do the same? Especially with our UoG sponsorship deal.5 -
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Any coincidence crowds have dwindled since Rick Everritt left the club?11
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I noticed some of the Premier League attendances were pretty low yesterday. Maybe people just aren't into football as much/skint/fed up of prima doña players and sky high ticket prices10
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I think there's still a lot of uncertainty around Duchatatelet as well, which can't help.1
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Weirdly, yesterday's game was a 1-0 win with us scoring early and defending, like mad, for most of the second half and a tense last ten minutes of the first.
That said I would list the game as of the best I remember for ages. We played some great football, we defended with our lives, the opposition were diving, niggling and, frankly, being total ar$ehole$.
By the hour mark I wanted to win this game more than I can remember wanting to win a game (ignoring the mist wins of last season) for a long time.
Anyone who was there must have felt something like it. The TV coverage and the descriptions of the game should help - beating three teams expected to be in the promotion shake up should help, being unbeaten after six games should help but we are still a second division team and we have had a torrid six years.
I think we are on the right track, I think attendances will improve, having an international break before the season has really got going is hardly helpful.
I agree with both SR and PA but I am, I think, much more optimistic that we will get closer to our realistic ceiling this season.1 -
I think its great that Steve has joined and I hope and believe from speaking to him he will make an excellent contribution, not forgetting Rich Pemberton who's insight I have valued for a good few months now, as well as Chris Knott who has taken on the unenviable task of Membership officer recently - but some reading your post @PragueAddick might misunderstand at as a criticism of the previous CAS Trust Board which I am sure it wasnt meant to be.
My view is that the previous two years could have gone better if the Club were fully committed to a genuine collaboration. They made noises they were but it never seemed to happen despite a very promising start when TNT was distributed by programme sellers and we did a joint survey.
Unfortunately the new senior management didnt seem too interested in our last genuine bit of collaboration around the matchday experience survey. Hopefully there is some explanation for that.
I have however been talking to the new Catering company who seem genuinely keen, about sharing research and ideas and am hoping for progress there; As well as being able to participate in Club development. See FF minutes when they are released.0 -
17,000 with aprox 3000 Watford disappointing weird as well lots of old faces coming back0
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Has nothing to do with attendances.The Red Robin said:I think there's still a lot of uncertainty around Duchatatelet as well, which can't help.
I'm sure a minority on here would love it to be his fault .2 -
It's one of many factors. Not for me but certainly for some fans it still is.Charltonparklane said:
Has nothing to do with attendances.The Red Robin said:I think there's still a lot of uncertainty around Duchatatelet as well, which can't help.
I'm sure a minority on here would love it to be his fault .0 -
17.628 crowd yesterday. 4th highest out of 11 matches in championship.
About 3000 watford.
we have lost fans over the last year but so have everyone else.
a couple near me who have been season ticket holders for 50 years, did not renew this season because
big Powell, Yann, and Hamer fans who thought we had sold out.
I tried to convince them that things would improve as better players would be coming to the club in the summer,
which happened, but they called it a day.
Don't think it's helps with BT and Sky both showing 12.45 matches, even thou a lot of us watch the game in pubs or the club bars before the game.
we have a range of prices so that shoudn't be the issue.0 -
Yet people turned up in bigger numbers under jiminez and slater as they moved the club forward.....The Red Robin said:
It's one of many factors. Not for me but certainly for some fans it still is.Charltonparklane said:
Has nothing to do with attendances.The Red Robin said:I think there's still a lot of uncertainty around Duchatatelet as well, which can't help.
I'm sure a minority on here would love it to be his fault .
Numbers will improve, it's marketing, cost, and shit home football the past two seasons which prob people got fed up with and maybe not so many freebies which where handed out over the last few years.
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Opening another match day ticket office would go a little distance, the queues even 5-10mins before KO are huge, I can imagine there would be a higher walk up crowd if they were confident of grabbing a quick ticket and walking in .
A good first 6 games isn't all people look for in going to football, it's going to take some out of the box thinking to get us anywhere near 20k let alone full.1 -
@razil
Since I was on the board already, I am freely admitting collective responsibility. We know that certain members of the management team were neither competent nor helpful to us - and they have departed - but nobody likes to be lectured on their job by outsiders. That was my point to SR.1 -
That all said, I laughed out loud when I heard our "three stands" response to "your ground's too big for you".5
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It`s not just us who have this problem. Look at all of the clubs in the Championship and it`s obvious there is a bigger issue involved. Only a few clubs are doing well with attendances, Norwich, Derby, Wolves, Forest to name some but look at clubs like Birmingham, Wigan, Fulham, Millwall, Blackburn, Middlesbrough, Reading, Bolton, etc. Their stadiums are empty these days compared to a few years ago. Even Leeds and Sheff Weds crowds have dropped off in a big way. Ipswich are another who have seen a massive drop in crowds at home.
Our problem began in 2006 with relegation from the Premier League and although our crowds held up well until we went down again they were always on a steady decline. It can and will improve but won`t happen overnight!2 -
I think some people want to be really sure that there is plenty of substance on a playing level before they jump back in.
There have been too many false dawns in the past and plenty of times when you buy a ticket full of optimism only for that balloon to be burst at about ten past three on a Saturday.
Sounds fickle I know,but that's modern day football for you.1 -
I think that the crowds will start to build gradually again this season. Although we have some of the cheapest prices around, it's still an expensive day out for the casual supporter. I took my sons friend from school yesterday. West Ham supporter and he wants to go again so I'm trying to do my bit ...2
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Unfortunately - family reasons, I dont have a season ticket any more. Was chatting to the missus last night about getting the train up for Tuesdays game with my (2) teenagers - think I am looking at £100ish0
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that has to be one of the all time classic responses...standl up and take a bow that man or woman who started thatJiMMy 85 said:That all said, I laughed out loud when I heard our "three stands" response to "your ground's too big for you".
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Biggest home gate this season. 17628 (Helped by a full house from Watford) and the best attendance at home since the once season "Fiver a ticket" against Wigan last October.
The average home attendance last season was 16134 and that will probably be near the same mark this season. To me the £150 season ticket has seen probably 75% of people moving from other parts of the ground to save money. The club are using a fair match day ticket price at present, but we will always be around the 16000 mark unless one day we go back to playing Premier League football.1 -
Agree with those who have pointed out that declining attendances are a general trend in football, but that doesn't stop us being proactive. There are definitely some long-term fans who got disillusioned last season with the departures of old favourites - I was one of them, and stopped attending after Sheffield U. However, after getting to the Wigan match at start of this season, and watching a couple of live streams, I have got my mojo back, and can't wait for my next trip to The Valley.
It needs a fairly classic marketing approach IMO - retain the regulars (lots done on this around season tickets), get the occasional fans to become regulars, get lapsed to become occasional fans again, and get new/ prospects to start coming along. I'm sure the Club are aware of a lot of this, but when I interviewed KM for Trust News (get your copy on Tues if you haven't already) she gave a heartfelt plea for fans to help with this, admitting that she doesn't really understand what the Club needs to do to build the attendance. She too finds it a bit upsetting to see a half empty stadium.
Definitely a role for FF, Trust, individual fans etc to help out with ideas, and they are willing to listen it seems. But in the end, it is the employees of the club who need to assess feasibility/ practicality and then implement the ideas, including finding budget for them - it has to be a partnership.
Recognising there is a problem is maybe the first step in building it back up again.7
