Re: The Art of Spin..... : Wed Apr 24, 2019 12:05 pm  

Towns88 wrote:

The Monday games are awful. The fixtures are boring and the standard is poor.

As a kid I used to love 2 games in 3 days, now it's an absolute choir and the players hate it. Old saying in life, you can have too much of a good thing. Scrap Easter Monday and maybe expand the Easter weekend so all 6 games are televised with derby games (maybe London v Toronto could be the derby for 2020 over Easter)

Is this not like Magic Weekend ?

Re: The Art of Spin..... : Wed Apr 24, 2019 5:03 pm  

Call Me God wrote:

43,865 for the games on Monday.......... A bit of a drop from the last round of fixtures.....average of 7,311 which was what the competition average was before the weekend. Whilst the attendances that were rightly lauded were great, it does look like they were simply papering over the cracks and the question has to be asked, "where were the 35,308 fans who rocked up on Thursday/Friday on Easter Monday?

30 minutes by car from Wigan to Salford yet only 4,017 bothered?
Wakefield is a 10 minute drive from Leeds......6,785....pitiful.....in fact, more than that, disgraceful!



17,247 watched Ipswich Town get relegated to the 3rd tier of football at the weekend.........nearly 7,000 more that watched the 2017 and 2018 SL champions combined....our sport (and the clubs at it's head) need to sort out this issue,because fewer fans at games will have a massive impact on the TV deal ad no amount of selective back slapping will fool those who hold the purse strings

Ipswich got relegated two weeks ago when we drew against Birmingham and it could be argued we've been down since March given our poor form. Also, our attendances are well down on what they were 10 years ago, falling as low as 13-14k under Mick McCarthy last season. It's only improved as alienated fans have returned. We averaged 19k-23k in the mid 2000s.

However, comparing these is like chalk and cheese. We have 15.5k home fans and 12.5k season ticket holders. No away club has ever taken 10k fans to an away game barring major events, so you're left with home support.

We're also in a sport where we're saturated by the amount of times we play teams. In football, you play a team once home and away. In the stupid new loopy system you can play the same team 3 teams in the league, 4 times including play-offs, 5 if you meet in the cup and 6 if you meet in the Grand Final. 7 if you play a pre-season friendly against each other. It's too much.

You want fans to travel to a game you have to make it unique or a rarity. Cas have got Leeds at Headingley again in two weeks. It may be down the road but why would fans be bothered about attending again when you've done it once already? Playing at Elland Road made it more of an event and attracted fans including neutrals.

There's also the excitement of playing different teams in football and doing the '92' because there's more teams - unlikely in rugby league!

Re: The Art of Spin..... : Wed Apr 24, 2019 5:32 pm  

The Easter Monday game always seems to be a bit of a car crash for us we always seem to get beat I remember winning the derby then getting beat 6-84 by Wigan on the Monday

Re: The Art of Spin..... : Wed Apr 24, 2019 9:59 pm  

The Average BEFORE the round 11 fixtures was about 7,800.......the average in round 12 was again a number beginning with the digit "7".......but because we had a bumper round, the powers that be were spinning it as a positive.....the reality is that crowds are on the slide and with the loop fixtures to come, I still don't think that we will see an increase.
The clubs and the powers that be need to come up with marketing initiatives and schemes to attract new fans to games, not ones that simply milk more money from the existing fan base.

Re: The Art of Spin..... : Thu Apr 25, 2019 1:46 am  

For some positive spin. The combined gate over the whole weekend was 8000 more than in 2018.

Re: The Art of Spin..... : Thu Apr 25, 2019 4:37 am  

Egg Banjo wrote:

For some positive spin. The combined gate over the whole weekend was 8000 more than in 2018.

Again, that is remarkable given it involves London, but it is still papering over the cracks IMHO.
Without going down the usual route of slagging off Hudds, Wakey, Salford and London, the performances at Wigan and Leeds combined with the drop off in fans at those clubs is a real concern. Leeds would probably have been hoping that the new facilities would have seen a boost on gates, but compared to 2016 they are in freefall.
The 2017 season saw them average 15k and they were involved in 6 of the top attended 8 non magic weekend gates, with 4 of them at home.
2018 saw them only feature in 2 of the 8 top draw games and their average drop to 12,800 and that was with 2 games at Elland Road.....
2019 thus far and they feature in 5 of the top 10, but will lose 2 of those once Magic happens and an average of 12,600........
It's a downward trend that can't be ignored. Neither can Wigan.....these are our leading clubs and they are all seeing fewer through the gates.

Re: The Art of Spin..... : Thu Apr 25, 2019 8:06 am  

Is that not because they are playing poorly ? Leeds particularly. Also do the games really matter that much ? Last year Wigan were calling for wane to go before the end of the season because they were playing that bad, they won the grand final. I'm sure there were calls for McDermott to go in 2017, they won the grand final.

Re: The Art of Spin..... : Thu Apr 25, 2019 8:09 am  

A personal opinion but, Good Friday is a traditional thing, going to the game is what us older folk have always done on Good Friday, & there always seemed to be big crowds. Everyone gets hung up with soccer but they have always in the main attracted bigger crowds. What crowds did we get in the 1950’s 60’s 70’s & 80’s. It is my personal opinion (not backed with serious study) that the best way to improve gates is for each club to play every game every week on the same day, then it becomes a habit the only thing the fan needs is to know are we home or away. The attending could be made a lot easier I don’t remember having to get tickets in advance until recent years or being herded into away areas, just used to decide am I going & just turn up ( I except some games tickets are needed ) It used to be so simple quiet often a bunch of us would decide let’s go to a game today & we sometimes had the choice of three games in Hull.

Re: The Art of Spin..... : Thu Apr 25, 2019 9:00 am  

Call Me God wrote:

Again, that is remarkable given it involves London, but it is still papering over the cracks IMHO.
Without going down the usual route of slagging off Hudds, Wakey, Salford and London, the performances at Wigan and Leeds combined with the drop off in fans at those clubs is a real concern. Leeds would probably have been hoping that the new facilities would have seen a boost on gates, but compared to 2016 they are in freefall.
The 2017 season saw them average 15k and they were involved in 6 of the top attended 8 non magic weekend gates, with 4 of them at home.
2018 saw them only feature in 2 of the 8 top draw games and their average drop to 12,800 and that was with 2 games at Elland Road.....
2019 thus far and they feature in 5 of the top 10, but will lose 2 of those once Magic happens and an average of 12,600........
It's a downward trend that can't be ignored. Neither can Wigan.....these are our leading clubs and they are all seeing fewer through the gates.

I'd agree on the point about Leeds. Whilst I would argue that there is some slight mitigation in that the club hasn't played any of the big draws at Headingley yet (aside from Castleford), it is much easier to get a ticket at Headingley for the better parts of the ground than it used to be.

The on-field performances will certainly be a factor in that, as would the way in which the club made something of a meal of selling seated season tickets this year, but it's concerning.

But I think it's also worth coming back to the point that Hetherington made during the whole "split" saga - that clubs were using the S8 structure and the RFL as a convenient excuse for their own poor commercial performance. Those clubs that were arguing that the S8s were negatively impacting their gates are still, in the main, showing declines in this new format. At what point does the self-reflection begin?

Don't get me wrong - I still think that the format needs to change, but not in the way I suspect many club chairmen would like it to. I want to see the format change to have fewer games, a greater emphasis on events and a greater emphasis on quality. Having clubs playing 29 games in a regular season, plus the play-offs and CC is just far too much.

Re: The Art of Spin..... : Thu Apr 25, 2019 9:22 am  

Call Me God wrote:

Again, that is remarkable given it involves London, but it is still papering over the cracks IMHO.
Without going down the usual route of slagging off Hudds, Wakey, Salford and London, the performances at Wigan and Leeds combined with the drop off in fans at those clubs is a real concern. Leeds would probably have been hoping that the new facilities would have seen a boost on gates, but compared to 2016 they are in freefall.
The 2017 season saw them average 15k and they were involved in 6 of the top attended 8 non magic weekend gates, with 4 of them at home.
2018 saw them only feature in 2 of the 8 top draw games and their average drop to 12,800 and that was with 2 games at Elland Road.....
2019 thus far and they feature in 5 of the top 10, but will lose 2 of those once Magic happens and an average of 12,600........
It's a downward trend that can't be ignored. Neither can Wigan.....these are our leading clubs and they are all seeing fewer through the gates.

Leeds attendances have dropped over the last two years mostly due to the stadium being a building site and having a vastly reduced capacity, yes poor form will have an impact, but from end of May stadium will be complete and attendeced will go back up somewhat. It will be easier to judge Leeds attendances next seaon when hopefully more competative and full use of stadium fot full season. That said the days of pushing nearly 18k average are gone for the time being, i would expect 15k next season or there abouts. Maybe less if the poor form does not turn around and build some momentum for next season.

Simply too many games loop fixtured which no fans wanted.the clubs have simply ly made fans pick and choose what games they want to go to rather than “i cannot wait for the next home game hate to miss it it”