Crowd (2 Viewers)

SuperFoxes said:

Shut up! Why does every football forum have a dick who is obsessed with a few full stops missing and comma here,get a life

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Because forums are a written medium, and clarity of written communication reflects clarity of thought. That being the case, it's unsurprising that your grammar falls short.

Back to the Crowd question.
The problem here is not just Sisu's fault.
There are a lot of people out of work and there are more important things for there money to go on like keeping a roof above there head and if they have a couple of kids who would like to go how can they possibly afford it.
There is also the lack of transfer activity as well (although to be fair if you do support your team then that is something as a cov fan you should be used to, being let down over the years and lied to by every board that has been here not just sisu).
At the end of the day I think it is a culmination of years of nothing to cheer about and finances where there are more important things to spend money on.

The recession has hit the whole of the UK though. Maybe they should put more special deals on to get bums on seats. A tenner a seat is better than an empty seat...

The recession has hit everywhere I agree Nick but when was the last time cov had anything happen to generate any excitment and make it worth going up for as well?
I have been saying for years that making it cheaper to go up would help and as you say a tenner is better than having nothing.

Nick said:

The recession has hit the whole of the UK though. Maybe they should put more special deals on to get bums on seats. A tenner a seat is better than an empty seat...

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I agree nick, problem is that ST holders eventually get screwed out of the 'savings' element. I remember a few years back we worked it out and we were saving about £40 given all of the potential discounts. I think they need an incentive to keep ST holders also for example each year you renew you get an additional 1% of the cost so a loyal fan could get 10, 20, 30% off the ST eventually.

There are a few clubs in the lower leagues offering discounts to those out of work, often parallel with OAP or junior prices, but it's more of a gesture than a solution. If you're out of work, chances are you can't afford to spend £10-15 on a ticket any more than you can afford £20-25. As far as the £10 per ticket idea goes, I don't think it'd mean a rise in income: assuming we have 8,000 season ticket holders who all paid £300 (so not counting free JSB season tickets, early-purchase discounts, and crudely aggregating), that's worth £2.4m to the club, or the equivalent of just under £105,000 per game; taking this number into account, we can assume a further 6,000 tickets will be sold on average for each game at an average price of £20, equalling £120,000, and totalling £225,000 per matchday when taking into account season ticket values. To discount tickets to a flat rate of £10 (not taking into account any of the other offers on tickets the club is running, like the membership schemes and the 12 for 10, etc.), we would obviously need to bring in double the number we currently are - around 12,000 ticket-buying fans per game, and thus raising the average attendance to 20,000, in order to reach the figures we're currently bringing in. Ultimately, it's not sound logic to expect that to be the case. Not only that, but season ticket holders would then be disadvantaged by paying an average of £13 per game as opposed to the £10 proposed for everyone else.

NB: If we assume that lowering ticket prices would mean an additional 2,000 attend (optimistic, perhaps, but possible), then we'd be pulling in £80,000 per matchday on tickets (season tickets being a lump sum before the start of the season in most cases) as opposed to the £120,000 we are currently, and our losses per month would increase by the equivalent of losing one home fixture per month (meaning monthly losses of £620,000 as opposed to the £500,000 we're losing at present), assuming three homes games per calender month. I don't think it's our ticket prices are particularly problematic. Exeter City, for example, have more expensive tickets on offer than we do, and their average price is slightly higher, and they're a mid-table League One side at best - it wasn't even long ago that they were non-league. We showed last season that when the team is playing well, the fans will come out and pay the prices - 25,000 for Leeds, for example (although 6,200 were away fans, granted). Football fans feel entitled to results, as though the price they pay for their ticket means it is owed to them; it's a sad reality that it isn't the case. When the results are good, we can expect larger gates, but until then (and as much as I'd love to pay £10 a ticket) I think the club is actually doing a pretty good job of pricing tickets competitively and finding initiatives that make us more attractive to floating fans. We just have to learn to accept that we're a small club with a small fan-base. Coventry isn't a big city, and there are 92 other professional teams in England alone that Coventrians can choose to follow if they like what they have to offer, and it's frequently the case that they do. Most of our 18-21 year-olds with disposable income move away from the city for university, and those who don't have a propensity to struggle to find employment; the previous generation are by and large disillusioned with the club since relegation, and have families to spend their money on instead of a Saturday of frustration; the one demographic that we do always seem to get solid support from is the OAP bracket, many of whom bring young children, and this is pivotal to the future of the club. Encouraging families is always important, and securing that next generation of match-goers can prove the difference between administration and robust attendances ten years down the line if managed properly.

Sadly I think the crowds are directly linked to the poor results over the last ten years. Until the club go on another good run like last year, then 21000 might be our ceiling. As for the Leicester fans, I don't mind them being on here but the cheap digs about our attendance gets boring. Good game yesterday though.

Leicester just aren't and never have been much, of a pull at the Ricoh.

They're not really that popular I guess :wave:

£10 a seat doesn't only provide the tenner for the seat but how many of the 'extra' fans will also buy a programme, i know its not much but in theory its adding say £3 to half of the 'extra' seats that have been sold, it all adds up! (potentially an extra £3000+) especially when you look at the point which i think Nick said, £10 pounds is better than an empty seat. SISU out at the end of the day! surpised there were no demonstrations/chants to be fair.

Low crowds are a fact of life for CCFC. It doesnt appear to be just about the stadium or the price or even success (1987 was at similar levels to now!)

http://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attnclub/covc.htm

We do not and have never had a great fan base(late 60's apart)........ and that is no criticism of those that do go or even those that choose not to.... we are in reality not a "hot bed " of football. Well thats what the figures would seem to indicate

There was nothing wrong with moving from Highfield Road, the problem was the money was never ringed fenced for the new ground. This was the start of all our problems, Richardson cost us big time and I will never forgive him and the board at the time. We are now on the brink, no stadium, no funds to invest, no prospect for our future without some multi million pound investment. Right now you would have to be crazy to invest in us. Only a die hard fan would do it, so that leave Hoffman, just hope he is the real deal. Gates will continue to fall if we don't have a winning side, and without investment I see nothing but relegation. Andy Thorn is playing nice football but needs help with some additional players now, he is doing fantastic with limited resourses

muners said:

Planks of wood in charge, bums on seats equals more sheckals in their miserly pockets. Stands to reason. Slash ticket prices, get the kids hooked.

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But that's a long term plan, would it intrest SISU?

It will be down to 9k averages when were in league 1 next year.

SISU out

SuperFoxes said:

I bet you were embarrassed to see all those Leicester City fans take over your joint yesterday,i know i would of been.

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must have been a silent takeover then

never seen 6000+ away fans make so little noise

I like that table, intesrestingly the average attendence last year is a smidgen higher than that from 1987 & what happened then!

SkyBluePryce said:

£10 a seat doesn't only provide the tenner for the seat but how many of the 'extra' fans will also buy a programme, i know its not much but in theory its adding say £3 to half of the 'extra' seats that have been sold, it all adds up! (potentially an extra £3000+) especially when you look at the point which i think Nick said, £10 pounds is better than an empty seat. SISU out at the end of the day! surpised there were no demonstrations/chants to be fair.

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But what about the people that aren't season ticket holders? The price that they would normally pay becomes a negative amount.

So it's not as simple as '£10 extra instead of an empty seat'. You have to factor in the losses that they would have made from selling those seats at normal prices.

Also season ticket holders would moan about paying more for watching a game as well over the long term of the season if £10 tickets were introduced.
Although I agree (and I did state about £10 tickets as some idea but the above would proberly not allow that anyway), something has to be done to encourage people back, what I don't know, I don't have a crystal ball but at the end of the day success breads success and until anything happens on the pitch in any shape or form regarding success then the fans will stay away as there is no incentive for them to part with there money.

oldskyblue58 said:

Low crowds are a fact of life for CCFC. It doesnt appear to be just about the stadium or the price or even success (1987 was at similar levels to now!)

http://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attnclub/covc.htm

We do not and have never had a great fan base(late 60's apart)........ and that is no criticism of those that do go or even those that choose not to.... we are in reality not a "hot bed " of football. Well thats what the figures would seem to indicate

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This lot had support very similar to ours in the past, now they get good crowds because their owners show some ambition.

http://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attnclub/leic.htm

so we have never had any owners that have shown ambition then ? or do you mean only the current ones dont?

and that lot (fester)have for the last 10 years been consistently a lot higher than ours including in the 1st division. Also a lot of the figures for fester relate to the 2nd level of the League (Championship) while we had the attraction of Premiership football.

Owners can have ambition but our average crowds makes me wonder if the Coventry public have the interest to really match it. Clearly folk here do so do the ones that go to the matches but are there now many undecided armchair fans ?

It is important to connect with the local community, to excite them, get their interest but clearly successive owners have failed to do that. Getting the supporters into the ground is how we right a lot of the problems at the club. Are we kidding ourselves the support is actually there to do it ?

There's no reason why the support can't be there. But you are right. The only stuff we see of the sky blues in the community is the odd player visiting a hosplital somewhere in the middle of the telegraph. Or having five minutes whe the christmas lights are being turned on. The Family Fun Day was of the right ilk but they need to be networking with sport centres and making appearances or training sessions. I think the squad needs to become more accessible and relatable. That way, Coventry as a City will want to see them do well and gladly put their money towards it.

It's an obvious point, but a team (especially one that is a city's main/only team) that has a large amount of investment such as the likes which Leicester have enjoyed, can easily bring in loads of fans. Lets face it, if floating fans saw that we signed 10 new players of a good standard and were tipped for almost certain success, they would be by far more likely to come to the matches. Which is why the boasting of Leicester fans about the numbers which they will get this season compared to ours should be ignored as any team can increase their fanbase with substantial funding. For example, Manchester City fans in London barely existed (unless they had moved there or whatever) untill they became super rich, yet now they spring up all over the place, buying mechandice and attending games. Obviously this is on a different scale to Leicester, but still a comparrison can be drawn. A true measure of a teams real support is what they can bring in when the going is tough, not when they're flying high.

Regardless of this I do agree that we should have more people attending games, but fans need to be tempted in with success, or the expectation of it. So don't rant about people not wanting to watch us when half the time we are asking ourselves why do we bother anyway.

torchomatic said:

I wish they'd get the bloody catering sorted out. We went in put our money on our new Season Tickets then found that the coffee/pie place was closed. The only place to get a hot drink was at a Cash Only concession! Christ, they only have to organise themselves every two weeks and they've had three months to prepare for today.

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They hadn't even bothered to flush the squirrels out of the stands! But I do like the new sauce dispensers

I don't understand why anyone expects a club that has had 1 good season in 40 years to get good crowds. If your a non die hard fan wheres the motivation to go?

The Chelsea gate and Leeds last season showed that if you give them a hint of hope, a load of the stayaways will come back. I know about 10 of them myself. Leeds brought a big number but even without them, it was a huge City following-superior to the Prem days. And that was based on us looking like genuine promotion contenders for the first time in 10 years. Adding to the squad under this manager could have seen something similar, with attractive football to boot. But SISU said "no ta". I would say this is the major thing Hoffman is waving in front of his investors-potential.


The club also needs to make a much bigger effort in the rest of the catchment area-Warwickshire should be all ours. Christ, most the squad live in Leamington yet there's more Villa, Wolves and Leicester here! Clouting made a big noise about this when he first came in, but I have seen precious little evidence.

Spanieldencer said:

It's an obvious point, but a team (especially one that is a city's main/only team) that has a large amount of investment such as the likes which Leicester have enjoyed, can easily bring in loads of fans. Lets face it, if floating fans saw that we signed 10 new players of a good standard and were tipped for almost certain success, they would be by far more likely to come to the matches. Which is why the boasting of Leicester fans about the numbers which they will get this season compared to ours should be ignored as any team can increase their fanbase with substantial funding. For example, Manchester City fans in London barely existed (unless they had moved there or whatever) untill they became super rich, yet now they spring up all over the place, buying mechandice and attending games. Obviously this is on a different scale to Leicester, but still a comparrison can be drawn. A true measure of a teams real support is what they can bring in when the going is tough, not when they're flying high.

Regardless of this I do agree that we should have more people attending games, but fans need to be tempted in with success, or the expectation of it. So don't rant about people not wanting to watch us when half the time we are asking ourselves why do we bother anyway.

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would suggest you look at the average gate size ,when we went down we still had a better average attendance,dont think you will find cov getting more than us over a season when both sides in championship, or the season in div one (not relevant i know as we were doing well),so to suggest the difference is just because of our spending is juvenile and you let down many good posters on this forum,
by the way i really dont care for a who's is bigger than who's competition but felt i had to reply to this

agreed with coundon, success breeds fans, weve had little success over the years, a few little facts on a average over 20 years, ignoring that factors that may of changed in 21 years ie, league, stadium change,

average league position - 16th
attendance - 16734
FA cup round exit - 4
League cup exit - 3

over the post war history of the club -
1 FA cup victory, 5 FA cup quarter finals
2 League cup semis, 4 quarter finals
3 relegations
3 promotions last one 1967,

no success in my generation (im 26) i cannot count the FA cup win as i was 2. Withdrawing any emotion i have for the city, why should i carry on going? and take my future children up?

looking around at half time i hardly seen any young kids with their parents, even less of teenagers wanting to go with their pals and i for one cannot blame them, many factors affect this (recession, spare money,work etc) at the end of the day people will only go if they want to, and if they want to they will - no exceptions.

Nonleagueherewecome said:

The Chelsea gate and Leeds last season showed that if you give them a hint of hope, a load of the stayaways will come back. I know about 10 of them myself. Leeds brought a big number but even without them, it was a huge City following-superior to the Prem days. And that was based on us looking like genuine promotion contenders for the first time in 10 years. Adding to the squad under this manager could have seen something similar, with attractive football to boot. But SISU said "no ta". I would say this is the major thing Hoffman is waving in front of his investors-potential.


The club also needs to make a much bigger effort in the rest of the catchment area-Warwickshire should be all ours. Christ, most the squad live in Leamington yet there's more Villa, Wolves and Leicester here! Clouting made a big noise about this when he first came in, but I have seen precious little evidence.

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The Father in law a head teacher in Spalding has regular visitors from Norwich, a quick training sessions along with free tickets - a club which is 75 miles away - in comparison our catchment area is tiny, but i can only imagine the number of JSB`s has dwindled over the years, due to the fact eiether the childrens parents have lost interest in the city or the club isnt doing enough to attract the young ones.

howzer said:

w should never have left highfield road, it was a brilliant place full of real atmosphere ........ cant remember seeing us dancing 4 nil down at the shitRicoh. i have to be honest i hate the ricoh, especially the LLoyds stand ... it kills the atmospher that stand, they need to start again on that one. Plus it s embarrasing seeing away fans looking at the ground when they get here and wondering what are we doing with such a geat ground. sort of leads me onto another subject........ does anyone else wonder why it is the investors in Leicester chose leicester and not us? im just wondering because with such brilliant facilities surely we were a a more attractive business investment? whats happening there?

When will City learn they will not start to fill that ground until they do 10 pounds a person per game, 2 adults 2 children 40 quid instead of on the day 70 to 80 quid. we have to act like dealers and get fans hooked .!! then up the ticket price. SISU have no idea

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Why would investors choose Leicester over Cov quote,you having a laugh or what ,my sides are splitting so much through laughter!

SuperFoxes said:

Why would investors choose Leicester over Cov quote,you having a laugh or what ,my sides are splitting so much through laughter!

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I agree i nearly cried with laughter myself........................................ Oh wait :facepalm:

SuperFoxes said:

Why would investors choose Leicester over Cov quote,you having a laugh or what ,my sides are splitting so much through laughter!

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I will be honest our ground for facilities is a lot better try a tour!

pusbccfc said:

I will be honest our ground for facilities is a lot better try a tour!

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Does not matter a jot,Cov are nothing compared to Leicester City......the sooner you wake up and realize the better.

Our average gates will be 26,000+ this season....you can only dream about that .

Our investors have done there homework,get promoted....increase capacity to 40,000....big name in Asia the list goes on.

And you,league one... happy days...12,000 gates happy days.

I better shut up now my head is going to explode

One not insignificant factor that could be affecting gates could be the "Ricoh Experience"

I am referring to the casual supporter who may decide to go to the match on an impulse just a few hours before the match starts.

The decision to go is the easy bit

I hear from so many people complaining of the poor allocation of parking facilities, the fight to get half time refreshments with the soppy card system discouraging actual purchase and the time it takes to exit the ground.

In the Highfield Road days these obstacles were not there because of the close proximity of the ground to civilisation, could buy refreshments for cash and the exodus home was more accceptable.

Don't know the actual effect in lost fans / revenue to CCFC but the same reasons keep resurfacing - maybe need for some re -thinking and action.


PUSB

SuperFoxes said:

Does not matter a jot,Cov are nothing compared to Leicester City......the sooner you wake up and realize the better.

Our average gates will be 26,000+ this season....you can only dream about that .

Our investors have done there homework,get promoted....increase capacity to 40,000....big name in Asia the list goes on.

And you,league one... happy days...12,000 gates happy days.

I better shut up now my head is going to explode

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What happens when you don't get promoted this year?
A owner who I have heard owns a little more than 130mill, 10+ spent this year big trouble ahead.

The thing is we have the fanbase but have you had 11years In the same boring league.
I said before if cov had that investment we would take 6000 away.

You lot need to realise you have played one game which a lot of us thing you played well below average against a poor coventry side, we had a 18year old in centre mid and a 18year old at right back who you struggled to cope with!

And how are cov nothing compared to leicester what history have you had!

SuperFoxes said:

Does not matter a jot,Cov are nothing compared to Leicester City......the sooner you wake up and realize the better.

Our average gates will be 26,000+ this season....you can only dream about that .

Our investors have done there homework,get promoted....increase capacity to 40,000....big name in Asia the list goes on.

And you,league one... happy days...12,000 gates happy days.

I better shut up now my head is going to explode

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Leicester have never won a major trophy?