Attendances

[Deleted]

Not good this season.

With one home game to go, we are averaging only 2,086 league home attendance. 2,201, if you include the two FA Cup games.

But even 2,201 is worse than our last two NS promotion seasons - and only fractionally better than our two NL relegation seasons.

The reason? Bloody Tuesdays!

11 of our 23 home games this season have been played on Tuesdays - and the average Tuesday attendance is 1,780 - 26% less than our average Sat/BH attendance of 2,392. We get over a third more through the gate on Saturdays and Bank Holidays than we do mid-week.


Incidentally, our away attendance is utterly bizarre - it ranges from 126 to 27,273!


Correction - I got our total mid-week attendance wrong (I think I forgot to add in Weymouth!), so I have corrected the figure above - marked in blue.

[Deleted]

My perception, without any statistical evidence, is that attendances have plateaued.

Take out the cup run and play off push, and it’s no better than two years ago, or further back.

But as you say, Tuesdays, cup runs, league positions and other variables have to be accounted for.

All things accounted for, have we grown crowds in recent years?

[Deleted]

I cannot see attendances increasing until the club build terracing, covered or not, along the river side as the Genco is packed or at least the home half is and unless you are 6'6* you cannot see if the perimeter is 2 deep.

[Deleted]

Apr 10, 2024 19:57:22 GMT Benny said:

My perception, without any statistical evidence, is that attendances have plateaued.

Take out the cup run and play off push, and it’s no better than two years ago, or further back.

But as you say, Tuesdays, cup runs, league positions and other variables have to be accounted for.

All things accounted for, have we grown crowds in recent years?

It's complicated....

I can't find our attendance for 2012-13* (FWP doesn't think the IS ever existed...), but in our IP seasons we averaged 1,820 and 1,846.
And in our first NS season, this rose to 2,222. (Our capacity expanded quite a bit during those years.)

Our peak was in the first two NL seasons: 2,385 and 2,412. But in our relegation season the average dropped to 2,178.

Then came Covid - and our NS Championship season, where we outdid even our NL seasons, with an average gate of 2,424. But then in our second NL relegation season, we dropped even lower than our first - 2,142.

2012-13 1698
2013-14 1820
2014-15 1846
2015-16 2222
2016-17 2385
2017-18 2412
2018-19 2178
2019-20 -
2020-21 -
2021-22 2424
2022-23 2142
2023-24 2201 (so far)

* missing IS attendance figure supplied by Geoffrey - many thanks.


What patterns there are, are obvious - rapid rise through the leagues and capacity increase in the early years. Good crowds in our more successful NL seasons, big gates in our NS Championship season (really our best season, as we didn't have the larger NL away attendances to boost our gates). But no there's no real continuous improvement (this season, for instance, looks almost like we're going backwards).

Generally, the better we do, the better our gates, but we're not growing the attendance in the way you might have expected after the early years' progress. But then, our 'progress' in recent years has been very stop-start.

The stats don't really prove anything - beyond that you get better gates in the NL (as long as you're not relegated by Christmas...) and when you're playing well. But no one needed stats to tell them that.

Overall, we've got to the stage where we expect 2,000+ on most Saturdays and can draw crowds of 3,000 or even 4,000 on special occasions. And the FA Cup exploits have shown that there are maybe 5,000+ fans out there, prepared to turn out for the big occasions. So, my conclusion is that we could get much better average gates (maybe 3,000+ regularly?), and perhaps fill a 5,000+ capacity stadium in the future.

But, to get there, we need, a) to play a consistently better standard of football (preferably with success in the NL), and b) we need JWW to be able to comfortably hold 4k+ crowds - with decent sight lines and facilities. Given those caveats and a few years, we could potentially be approaching Gillingham's lower level of support. But it's not going to happen until the football is more entertaining and the facilities are much better.

[Deleted]

Slightly disagree with JDL’s figures for this season.
To date, aggregate attendance (league games only) is 45,896, an average of 2,086, compared to an average of 2,142 for last season.
JDL is correct to mention the number of Tuesday games which has been unusually high, partly because of the number of games rearranged because of our Cup run.
The split of the above figure is:
Saturday/Bank Holidays (ie 3pm kick-offs) 11 games @ 2,392 (last season 15 games @ 2,283)
Midweek (ie 7:45pm kick-offs) 11 games @ 1,780 (last season 8 games @ 1,877).
So, a slight increase on Saturday/Bank Holidays offset by lower attendances for Midweek games AND a higher proportion of Midweek games.
There would need to be an attendance of 3,375 at the Hampton & Richmond game to close the gap to last season’s average which seems unlikely.

[Deleted]

Is it that unlikely? Hampton and Richmond have everything to play for and could bring a couple of hundred. If we can’t get a big crowd for the last crucial game of an amazing season, then that’s disappointing. Although with segregation taking up 800 spaces, it could be a very tight squeeze around the rest of the ground.

[Deleted]

Apr 11, 2024 11:09:34 GMT Benny said:

Is it that unlikely? Hampton and Richmond have everything to play for and could bring a couple of hundred. If we can’t get a big crowd for the last crucial game of an amazing season, then that’s disappointing. Although with segregation taking up 800 spaces, it could be a very tight squeeze around the rest of the ground.

Could ge a much bigger (in both senses) game than we might have expected a few weeks ago. Hopefully an excellent end of season celebration (of which we've had a few!).

[Deleted]

We have a great community side of the club but i reckon they should get the players around to local schools more than they do. that drums up the kids wanting their parents to take them. Kids for free days too (kids under 12)

[Deleted]

A number of things are required to boost a crowd and we all know that they include a decent product on the pitch, a decent view of that decent product, and people having the money to pay a decent price to get in in order to finance development going forward.

Stones used to survive on average crowds of 1500 or so at London Road with an official capacity (pre Valley Parade and Hillsbrough) of around 10,000, but anything more than 2,500 and you were struggling to see what was on the pitch due to hardly any terracing being available as well as the greyhound track forcing the crowdline into those (old) Wembleyesque curves.

The club needs to prioritise it's strategy and then commit to it, but it's whether to plough everything into the playing staff and be competitive in a user un-friendly environment as is, or change things up so that for example the Genco is 100% home fans with a committment to redeveloping the TE to a similar standard and size and then they can justify slightly easier the space lost to segregation. For me a quick win is simple open terracing down the riverside with the potential to cover it further down the line.

None of this is likely to happen in the short term if Oliver and Terry are looking to sell the club, so I guess until the medium to long term ownership is decided, there's going to be little happening to improve the stadium infrastructure from a supporter viewpoint - pun intended.

[Deleted]

Surely the 5000 we took to Coventry will return next season after all none of them had missed a game for 30 years even the 16 year olds.

[scooby]

Gotta agree with most on here, still waiting he who is never wrong and his opinion.
Do worry for next season if, IF we get promoted. Why build the elvis end then loose 8oo supporters who could have viewed the game but make them go elsewhere eg the sidelines. Agree the quality of football has not been at its best but if you combine that will lack of facilities why would supporters want to return. Yes 5000 at Coventry but are there facilities slightly better than ours.
It's a catch 22 nothing will be done until Terry and Co find a buyer. That's not discrediting them as they saved our club but how long can we continue like this.
As a footnote scum v Rotherham had violence because the chairman didn't want police inside the ground

[Deleted]

Apr 11, 2024 11:39:41 GMT pwoodstone said:

We have a great community side of the club but i reckon they should get the players around to local schools more than they do. that drums up the kids wanting their parents to take them. Kids for free days too (kids under 12)

Blimey. It's like reading my posts from 10 years ago🤣

They used to do this at Carlisle. Me and some parents once took 20+ to a Christmas game. I had to dress as Father Christmas!

[Deleted]

Apr 11, 2024 13:07:52 GMT scooby said:

Gotta agree with most on here, still waiting he who is never wrong and his opinion.
Do worry for next season if, IF we get promoted. Why build the elvis end then loose 8oo supporters who could have viewed the game but make them go elsewhere eg the sidelines. Agree the quality of football has not been at its best but if you combine that will lack of facilities why would supporters want to return. Yes 5000 at Coventry but are there facilities slightly better than ours.
It's a catch 22 nothing will be done until Terry and Co find a buyer. That's not discrediting them as they saved our club but how long can we continue like this.
As a footnote scum v Rotherham had violence because the chairman didn't want police inside the ground

Nice to see you Scooby, I was fearing the worst with you not predicting lately!

Leeds Utd won a test case with the odious Ken Bates successfully winning a court case whereby the club is only liable to pay for police officers on duty inside the stadium. Outside of the stadium - historically swarming with vans and horses for every game - now has about a quarter of the numbers and horses are only deployed for certain games because the Police themselves have to fund it and not the club. Interestingly there is very little violence in the ground nowadays, I think Birmingham before lockdown was the last.

That's just about the only worthwhile thing Bates accomplished during his tenure - even his buggering off was bad as he left us in the hands of the only penniless Middle-Eastern investment group on the planet.

[Deleted]

Apr 11, 2024 13:41:17 GMT yorkshirestone said:

Apr 11, 2024 13:07:52 GMT scooby said:

Gotta agree with most on here, still waiting he who is never wrong and his opinion.
Do worry for next season if, IF we get promoted. Why build the elvis end then loose 8oo supporters who could have viewed the game but make them go elsewhere eg the sidelines. Agree the quality of football has not been at its best but if you combine that will lack of facilities why would supporters want to return. Yes 5000 at Coventry but are there facilities slightly better than ours.
It's a catch 22 nothing will be done until Terry and Co find a buyer. That's not discrediting them as they saved our club but how long can we continue like this.
As a footnote scum v Rotherham had violence because the chairman didn't want police inside the ground

Nice to see you Scooby, I was fearing the worst with you not predicting lately!

Leeds Utd won a test case with the odious Ken Bates successfully winning a court case whereby the club is only liable to pay for police officers on duty inside the stadium. Outside of the stadium - historically swarming with vans and horses for every game - now has about a quarter of the numbers and horses are only deployed for certain games because the Police themselves have to fund it and not the club. Interestingly there is very little violence in the ground nowadays, I think Birmingham before lockdown was the last.

That's just about the only worthwhile thing Bates accomplished during his tenure - even his buggering off was bad as he left us in the hands of the only penniless Middle-Eastern investment group on the planet.

After Leeds incredibly piss poor performance against Sunderland the police should have arrested the players.

[Deleted]

Apr 11, 2024 11:48:36 GMT yorkshirestone said:

A number of things are required to boost a crowd and we all know that they include a decent product on the pitch, a decent view of that decent product, and people having the money to pay a decent price to get in in order to finance development going forward.

Stones used to survive on average crowds of 1500 or so at London Road with an official capacity (pre Valley Parade and Hillsbrough) of around 10,000, but anything more than 2,500 and you were struggling to see what was on the pitch due to hardly any terracing being available as well as the greyhound track forcing the crowdline into those (old) Wembleyesque curves.

The club needs to prioritise it's strategy and then commit to it, but it's whether to plough everything into the playing staff and be competitive in a user un-friendly environment as is, or change things up so that for example the Genco is 100% home fans with a committment to redeveloping the TE to a similar standard and size and then they can justify slightly easier the space lost to segregation. For me a quick win is simple open terracing down the riverside with the potential to cover it further down the line.

None of this is likely to happen in the short term if Oliver and Terry are looking to sell the club, so I guess until the medium to long term ownership is decided, there's going to be little happening to improve the stadium infrastructure from a supporter viewpoint - pun intended.

Certainly agree with the problems caused by the running track (personally, I hate football being played in 'multi-purpose' stadiums for that very reason), and the lights were pretty crap too. But you can't complain about the terracing - I can't remember any other non-league ground with more than we had at the Athletic Ground! Not only was the London Road end effectively half a bowl, with a huge terrace, but the bowling club end also had a large bank of terracing - and I'm pretty sure the Scotsman side was a 7 or 8 step terrace too. I've been to multi-thousand gate games there where everyone had a decent view (albeit of poorly lit players, miles away), and with space to spare.