Attendances
- Thread starter Atticus Finch
- Start date
- Jun 27, 2013
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Trev, you are counted if you attend..... the question is do we count season tickets where they haven't attended and the answer is no.. and he question is should we..
- Jul 31, 2013
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Hi Simon - could you confirm whether non payers are in the declared attendance figure please.
Your Board decided two years ago to always "tell it as it is" so to speak and to the best of our abilities that is what we have always tried to do. The clue re all of this re season tickets IMO is in the word "Attendance" and we DO record all people who attend the game i.e. season ticket holders (always ticked off at the gate including Board members who are also season ticket holders) plus adult payees @ £6, concessions @ £4, under 12's free and comps that include league representatives and visiting club officials and then after the gate people pass everything to our treasurer he completes his spreadsheet and balances everything. We occasionally have late arrivals ( even a Board member arrived late once - forgetting that we kicked off at 2pm!) and these are included in the attendance figure that we announce at the game and advise the League etc of.
Our treasurer quite correctly records all paying attendees at games and he will have details of other season ticket holders who do not attend.
Members will see at the AGM just how thorough our treasurer is and how lucky we are to have such a dedicated and knowledgeable professional "on board"
There are other people at our games who we do not include such as players,bar staff,officials and rest assured none of these are ever included in our attendance figures.
Man united and other clubs may include "all season ticket holders" in their reported figures but that DOESN'T necessarily make it RIGHT
Now to another point: how good was that 5-0 win away from home on Tuesday? Didn't the lads do well? Didn't the management team get it right AGAIN?
Bring it on again on Saturday for what should be a cracking game
Our treasurer quite correctly records all paying attendees at games and he will have details of other season ticket holders who do not attend.
Members will see at the AGM just how thorough our treasurer is and how lucky we are to have such a dedicated and knowledgeable professional "on board"
There are other people at our games who we do not include such as players,bar staff,officials and rest assured none of these are ever included in our attendance figures.
Man united and other clubs may include "all season ticket holders" in their reported figures but that DOESN'T necessarily make it RIGHT
Now to another point: how good was that 5-0 win away from home on Tuesday? Didn't the lads do well? Didn't the management team get it right AGAIN?
Bring it on again on Saturday for what should be a cracking game
- May 21, 2014
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Certainly an interesting discussion and one I had actually never thought about in my life until reading this thread. I had always assumed that the attendance at any football match was just that, the number of people within the ground regardless of whether or not they are season ticket holders. How can an attendance include people that are not there, that just seems bonkers to me but I didn't realise some clubs do actually do that. It does make the non league attendance list a complete waste of time if some clubs include people not actually in attendance and some do. Maybe I'm a football traditionalist but including people not in attendance but still including them in the attendance doesn't make any sense to me.
- Jul 28, 2013
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JR doesn't share that opinion
- May 21, 2014
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To be fair Andy it sounds like many other clubs don't either. It makes a farce of the word attendance. If there is no-one watching a play at the theatre but it is usually full with regulars does that make it a full house anyway??
- May 21, 2014
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I honestly don't know Toddy, as I said above I never realised any clubs (apart from the obvious one!) include people not in attendance in their attedance figure. For me its an absolute nonsense and yet another example of why I fell out of love with modern day football along time ago. Whatever next, strategically placing Mannequins around stadiums where none present season ticket holders usually stand or sit to make the "attendance" even more realistic?
- Aug 1, 2013
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Lets flip this question around then. There are many mainstream sports there that don't provide official gate numbers at all. Why do football clubs publish attendance figures?
- Jul 28, 2013
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It's a way to gauge the success of a club, especially in the lower leagues.
- May 21, 2014
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It's a very good point Mark. Andy and Toddy are absolutely right and I would add that publishing the attendance seems to be a very British thing to do and that it is probably something that always has been done since the birth of football in this country. When you see Amerian football, baseball, Aussie Rules etc results in the newspaper or on Sky Sports news if i'm not wrong it shows the result but not the attendance, even at the grand prix or the boxing the commentator seems to round it up and say there is 20,000 or whatever here rather than 19, 741, as it would be in football.
Why are we so obsessed with the attendance figure? I think it is because it is part of our history and it would seem odd to me if it wasn't there in my sunday newspaper or even better the pink final back in the day. I have always enjoyed (perhaps sadly) reading the results, goal scorers and how many people were there watching - it adds to the drama when you imagine being there. Having said that if football clubs nowadays are including people not actually in attendance and, even worse, skewing figures I think that's sad and I will probably take a little less interest in attendance figures in the future as they are not a true reflection of how many people are actually there. Just my opinion but it should always remain old school for me - the attendance at a football match equals the number of spectators within the stadium watching the match. I can see why clubs don't do that these days but I can't say I agree with it.
- Aug 2, 2013
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- Thread starter
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Thought that it might be useful to do a 'raincheck' re where we are re attendances particularly in relation to last weekend which was awful weather wise and is traditionally the start of the Christmas shopping period - which, for some unknown reason, always seems to hit crowds. Last thing I'd want to do if there is a match on is to have to put up with the crowds on the High St!
Anyhow, the good news that last Saturday we again demonstrated that our core fan-base is very good and compared to clubs in higher leagues is to be envied.
For instance, of the 30 league games played at Step 3, we attracted a higher attendance than 18 of these games.
In relation to the NPL, our gate was higher than 17 of the 22 recorded attendances whilst in the Ryman League the equivalent figure was 31 from 35 games whilst in the Southern League it was 26 v 33.
So in total, when compared to Step 3 and 4, our gate v Colls last weekend was higher than 74 of the 90 games played at this level.
And given that the 16 games that recorded higher attendances than we do included the likes of Kettering, Merthyr, AFC Rushden & Diamonds, Slough Town, Enfield Town, Scarborough Ath - all of whom have traditionally operated at a much higher level and attracted a good level of support - then I think that puts into further context how well our support is standing up, particularly as there was always going to be a point when the 'novelty value' started to wear off.
In relation to the Non-league top 250, we currently occupy 138th place which is still well ahead of the likes of Conference South and FA Cup heroes Whitehawk and greater than 10 Evostick Premier Division clubs.
As for another club, well Winsford are in 250th spot...........
As good as these figures are, we shouldn't get complacent and we need to ensure that we try to encourage more 'new' fans to watch the team whilst trying to get those who started to watch us but maybe haven't come back as regularly recently to return.
- Aug 5, 2013
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The two games mentioned were both lost were they not? More often when we have had large crowd we've lost and not put on a good show. People want to watch entertaining football no matter what the level so we just need to make the most of it when we get the crowds.