Following the Huddersfield game, our average gate for 2012 was....................... 11,006

-Our figure for 2011 was 10,600, so attendances are up by 3.8%.

-I think the club said (Nov/Dec) that ST holders were up by around 6%, so either away following has dropped, or the occasional supporter numbers have dropped. My guess would be away support has declined.

-Our biggest gate was Saints 15,000 and Wigan 13,860. Smallest was Salford 10,400.

-The Widnes match attracted 12,045 whilst the corresponding 2011 Crusaders match attracted 10,000.

Do we need to promote the Wigan / Saints games more (the big one) as the gate is potentially so much bigger than our typical match ?

If you are a cup half full man, then we continued to progress with higher attendances in a difficult financial environment. If you are a cup half empty man then we got a disappointingly low attendance after spending over a million on our ground extension, and got a very low attendance for Wigan.

We are generating plenty of cash at the moment, and I suspect we will virtually have paid off the additional loan for the extension by the end of this year, but I have to admit to being a tad disappointed with the figures.

A rise is a rise, and in tough ecconomic times too. For a "working class" game like RL, you cannot put a negative spin on an increase in attendances even if it's 0.1%.
In addition, there is also no doubt in my mind that even some of our evergreen and regular fans, have started to select their matches due to the uncompetitive nature of SL outside the top 6/7.

I think that is more accurate.

You would probably be better served copying Wigan and heavily promoting other games. The Saints and Wigan games will get good figures regardless of promotion because of the good away following and the big game nature, so why not promote games like Catalans, London and Wakefield that probably would normally see a drop off in away and walk-up crowds? Promote them big-one stylee to businesses, schools and colleges in Warrington and bump the lowest crowds up by 5k rather than spending money to eek a couple of thousand out of an already big game?

away fans have been down, and i'd think possibly early to mid season home fans, probably were down some, because of how we were playing, remember how frustrated we all were on here due to not eviscerating teams like we were last year, or even just playing well even though we were winning.

I couldn't believe the Wigan crowd was less than 14,000, I could barely see an empty space in the ground! Let alone 1,000+ empty spaces. Your gates are fine, growing steadily, though i'm not sure what effect a 'dodgy' season will have after the recent success you've been spoilt with!

I would have thought gates would have dropped this year, fans are being turned off rugby league because of the farcical system where the team that finishes top is not crowned champions, the whole Super League season is meaningless and none of the games matter till the playoffs, I don't know why more people are going?

Do you think having our Catalan away game shifted out of holiday season would have a bearing on this a lot of fans base their holiday around that fixture thus being at home during summer holidays but because a lot didn't bother going Catalan during easter a large percentage would be on holiday during the summer fixtures?

In a town of Over 200,000 an average of 11,000 isn't very good, but not surprising given the limited promotion in the non traditional areas that would come under a Warrington catchment area of north Cheshire. In fact promotion in general is pretty poor and something that should be looked at. Now where's my pen ?

Away numbers have dropped for sure. Teams such as Leeds and hull for example used to nearly fill the west stand. Also could hammering a lot of teams last year and being a more consistent side lead to away fans not travelling aswell due to less chance of coming away with a win?. Would like to see more promotions to bump up the crowd like wigan have done with the "big one".

Well we know tv audiences are up a fair bit, so I wonder if fans are not travelling away, but watching a sky match instead ?

Another thought is that we replaced Crusaders with Widnes and got an extra 2000 fans on the corresponding fixture. If you were to remove this 'gift' our attendances would have looked a lot worse.

I do think the suggestions of greater advertising are a good idea. Isn't warri one of the fastest growing towns in the UK ?

Is it possible to ensure that we play our closest rivals on a Bank holiday ?

You are right as usual Sal. I think we need to reduce SL to just Warrington and Wigan and move the rest to the Championship. It's been a two horse race for the last couple of seasons anyway. Saints fans are openly saying they have a poor team, and Leeds want to concentrate on the cc after their dismal attempts at winning it in recent years.

This change would result in a high class game every week, short distances for travelling away fans, easy tv scheduling for sky, and above all, much higher attendances for Wire.

This all seems such an obvious solution I cant understand why nobody has thought of it before?

Am I correct in saying that we are more expensive to watch than Wigan and saints? I've also seen the price of an adult season ticket approach the magic £200 barrier. Now this is excellent value compared to the Premiership football, but the club needs to be wary of pricing itself out of reach of some supporters.

I got my kids hooked during the days of £15 wolfpack tickets. Is there anything comparable these days?

If supporters stop going for financial reasons, they will pick the most attractive games. These normally end up televised anyway, so they might even give these a miss too.

Because that really stops people attending the NFL doesn't it? Or the NRL for that matter?

If your team can't perform in the pressure cooker of the play-offs, thats their problem...

People have had 17 years to draw the conclusion that the play offs are the part of the season that matters ? What a joke that is ! Last season,Leeds winning from 5th was unusual & it doesn't mean it will happen again this year. There are 3 lots of silverware on offer ,but it is up to the individual supporter to decide which one, or all, he or she considers to be the most important.As for attendances the playoffs will be a good indicator of the current health of the support.Judging by the Challenge Cup rounds ,supporters don't like spending extra to what they have paid for season tickets so the gates have been badly hit, which is understandable in the current economic climate .It will be interesting to see the gates for the playoffs. We are living in hard times & with the price of petrol is it any wonder that away support is down ?

I don't live in Warrington, I live far away but go to every game, one of the things that surprises me is that there are many casual fans who could go but don't because it's a tad inconvenient. I live in a town with no sporting team to support and consequently the town has no real identity, no feeling of pride in the town. Warrington is lucky it has such a team and the local population should realise how lucky they are, because without doubt if more people choose not to go to the match because it interferes with their busy lives, one day, there won't be a match to go to.
If you're a fan, you have a duty to go, inconvenient or not !

A season tickets rise of 6% shouldn't mean a corresponding rise in attendance. I would hazard a guess that most of the new season ticket people were just fans who went to almost every game last year anyway?

Attendance can also be dictated by which games are chosen by SKY as well so it's potluck. All seems very promising to me if you're saying that even for the games that are not supported well by the away fans, we did not drop under 10,000!

5% of population isnt THAT bad. Take Leeds. Using a similar proportion they would need to attract over 35k. The smaller overall increase in average compared to the increase in season tickets, to me, means that more people like what they see and have chosen to come every week.

Promoting the Wigan/Saints games (as previously stated) would be a waste of money. You would not generate a larger increase in revenue than it would cost. There have been falls in crowd this season have been in the away stand. The Wigan attendence was probably hit by people who had a) spent their money visiting langtree on the Monday, b) were away on holiday and c) saving their pennies for Wembley.

I must admit that on matters of our attendances, I'm in the glass half empty camp. Yes there appears to be a continued rise, all be it a slight one skewed by the "gift" of Widnes, but, I think we are light.

Blame the government's econimic policy, the bankers, the oil cartell, Sky TV, competition format, a drop in away fans, whatever. There has never been a better time to be a Wire and the townsfolk should back the team another 1500 on the average and sell outs v Wigan and Saints would show Moran and the players that we are behind them...sorry for my Delia Smith moment

I think the visiting fans are responsible for most of the drop in our gates , i'm sure the only time the away end was full of visiting fans this year was for the visit of Saints.

How far away do you live, and do you have a car? I rely on public transport so getting to the home games is costly and eats up a lot of time, even though I could probably manage it now. I usually go to the games in West Yorkshire, though I have to admit this season has been pretty meh and I've only been to the Leeds game (missing that would be criminal since I can [isee[/i the stadium from my top floor). I think last season really spoiled us and so this season has been disappointing in comparison, even though I used to go to plenty of games a few years ago.

it wasn't that long ago we had an average gate of 4500! Any year on year increase is fine...especially in the current economic climate.

Ah, those were the days ! No queues at half time, plenty of space for the species. Where did it go wrong ?

On a more serious note, Hull are aiming for 10,000 ST's next year and managed to sell well over 600 on their first day of sales. And no, they are not discounting prices. I suppose they have invested in new players and there has always been a big potential pool of supporters over on Humberside. Who knows, perhaps they will make it.

Someone get this man a Blue Peter badge. He's clearly our bestest ever fan of all time innit.

As for increase in season ticket sales not being exactly reflected in overall increase, well of course it isn't. Do you think those extra season ticket holders had never been to a match before, or do you think that just maybe they went to a lot of games anyway and now they have a season ticket they are reducing the number of pay on the day fans? Hardly rocket science working that out is it?

Any increase is a positive. End of story.