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[Stewart]

Feb 4, 2013 19:28:13 GMT Del said:

It was a very cold day and there was rugby on the TV.Eastleigh brought very few.Our home record has been awful. All these factors have a large bearing but lets see how many turn up for Welling.

True the team with the poorest home form v the team with the poorest away form is not a crowd puller.

[garethl]

It's hardly just Sat though is it. There hasn't been a decent league attendance this year. Even Dover where you'd expect a few travellers on a Sat and at least 700 got nowhere near that.

[Juan]

It was London Broncos Vs Widnes...Superleague! So yeah top flight rugby!! Broncos got smashed @ home not good for those potential/possible returners...like me !
Broncos rent the stoop from the Quins, they used to hold a partnership with Quins, but since Quins recent success...they are getting the elbow from the stoop and looking for a home elsewhere! The price for watching a quins match might be higher, I'm not sure! But in fairness the stoop is a nice ground! The quins have a massive catchment area of fans unlike footie, where we have kingstonian, the bobbins, and of course Palace and AFC Wombles to compete with!

Perhaps a daft idea...but maybe a 2-1 type entrance voucher or something, get it online, or in the local Guardian or something like that, at least it might get the numbers up, and get people in the club shop, and spending there monies on food, and maybe even a few jars in the bar!

[DaveF]

Stewart,
as mentioned above we have a Disability Awareness Day scheduled for 6th April (I might need that after my planned walk to the game from Horsham) and this will include a "sport for all" event similar to the one we staged earlier in the season to build on the Olympic legacy. The Community Fun Day is now inked in for 16th March and we have a Legends' Day the following week. 1st April will see our Ladies' Day, which worked very well last season.

[garethl]

Problem is it is a vicious circle. We need to be supported by the local population to afford better players that play better football. The state of the pitch doesn't help. Put these guys on a 3g and they can play ...

To be fair Dos' teams have played better football than some of our past teams who enjoyed better crowds than we currently get.

[DaveF]

The gates have been increasing steadily since Dos came in as manager, the general state of the economy has to be a factor this season as gates are down in general across the league and the weather has not helped. A winning run will do no harm.

[ab]

Welling have just won 11 games in a row and pulled in just 514 for their home match on Saturday. It is tough out there at the moment.

We need everyone to pull together to do everything we can to increase attendances whether it be displaying posters, e mailing databases, bringing a friend or getting involved and helping with the various initiatives the club implements to increase crowds. It's our lifeblood.

[manchesteru]

There are several factors which are contributing to our relatively poor attendances IMO.

Firstly, lack of information. Does the average resident of the LBS/Northern Surrey check suttonunited.net, this forum or Twitter (all of whom do a fantastic job of keeping people informed, it's just that most of the people who access these are already committed SUFC fans). With the weather it's easy to assume a game is off and thus not make the effort to go, so unless people know a game has been passed playable they won't know.

Secondly, the price may people off going, especially when the team is perceived not to be playing well. If you're guaranteed to see a good game then it's easier to pay £12 to go to the game. However it's hard to motivate the average punter when they think they're likely to see a poor game. Especially when the weather looks dodgy and you can watch Chelsea/Arsenal/Man Utd in a nice dry pub on a foreign feed for free.

We need to be honest our hardcore is roughly about 400, and even in our promotion season home gates rarely rose above 550 until the league was virtually won. Saying that if games are well advertised and if we see one or two decent home performances than attendances will improve. How posters for the Notts County game were spread across the Borough (and outside)? Same with promotion push posters......

[ab]

Need bodies to help distribute posters Nomadic U. Notts Co and promotion push posters were displayed all over the Borough but you need people to help with the footslog on an ongoing basis to keep the profile constantly high.

[ab]

We even had a stall in Sutton High Street on the eve of the Notts Co match which was manned by the same people for 10 hours who also distributed many of the posters. We sold 200 tickets to the match that day. Keeping the message really high on a regular basis requires hard work ...and what makes hard work light? Many hands that's what.

[Amber Aleman]

Others have identified the likely reasons for the disappointing attendance on Saturday. I'd add that the departures of well-supported Dartford and Woking from our division last year have seen average crowds fall at most of the remaining clubs.

But we shouldn't be too downhearted. In the Conference South attendances table Sutton are a fairly respectable tenth, with an average of 537. Only five clubs are averaging over 600, with the best supported of those, Chelmsford, pulling in a little over 800.

[Andy K]

Remember that some of the crowd is made up of away fans - and if the tightening of the purse strings means that some fans won't travel then it's going to have a knock on effect.

We're currently down 22% on last year. But as ab said, it's actually worse for Welling - their gates are down 23%. Even Chelmsford, who top the table, are down 11% on last year.

Our numbers are not going to be helped by many midweek league games, including Truro and Weston - I can't imagine them bringing more fans than fingers on one hand. And the Aleman is very right too - losing both Dartford and Woking was a blow to the league, as will losing Chelmsford for say Nuneaton or Braintree.

Only 3 teams are up on last season - the two promoted teams, plus oddly enough, Bromley.

We do have to make the most of what we have and I know that people work furiously behind the scenes to make that happen. But we've not had our share of luck too, lost 2 xmas games, and plenty of other home ones due to weather.

It's going to be a tough season.

[doublebarrel]

There are many factors leading to lower attendances this season. We need to work even harder to attract crowds. The more people working to this end hopefully the bigger the crowds will be. The alternative is to accept the situation, shrug your shoulders and say well that's just the way it is. If everybody puts in a big effort to assist with the various initiatives then we can at least say we have done our best. I would rather be associated with a club that fights than one that just accepts the situation as being unalterable. The key to making a more successful attempt to raise crowd numbers is to get more people involved in working to this end. The bottom line is - more volunteers needed.

[Kebab Belly Bob]

Talking of advertising matches - our game against Welling next Tuesday is not on the official Blue Square South fixture list !!!! That doesn't help our cause.

kbb

[Andy K]

Maybe this is the right conversation happening in the wrong place. We've all got our theories as to why crowds are down, going from recession to under performing team to weather to not enough volunteers, but that doesn't really explain the 150+ down we are. Is there anyone who posts on here who in the last few seasons counted themselves as regular matchgoers but now are not?

Is there anything the club can do that would make you come back more often? Have we really lost this many home supporters? Have the themed days artificially put our average up and with less of them this is our core base? Has the loss of bigger teams made the difference? Are season ticket sales in line with previous seasons?

This conversation is happening here where the main audience is regular supporters and those who mainly due to geographical and employment constraints, can't make games.

I think Nomadic U makes a really good point about communication. Yes posters are part of a solution (albeit a very labour intensive one) but there are other ways of making people know about. Word of mouth is very powerful as are less temporary and time sensitive solutions. I know this has been discussed before, but we really need clear signs by the cricket club (which we have) and the by-pass (which we don't).

There are plenty of other possible ways we can do, and I really don't think that anyone is just shrugging their shoulders saying "Oh well that's life", but although more volunteers is always wanted, so is more money. Sometimes it actually is unattainable. If that's the case then we do have to make the most of what we've got.