Quote ="Mad_Jack_Mcmad"It's no good blaming the marketing department. Rugby League is a small, regional, sport who's champions and most succesfeul side can only draw an average of 17,000. How in the name of all that's holy does anyone excpect most sides to draw attendances of more than 10,000? That would be like expecting most Premier League sides to attract an average of 44,000. Something only 4 sides do.
Man United get 75,000 yet teams like Chelsea and Tottenham draw between 35 and 40,000. Bolton only get 20,000 and Blackpool and Wigan get 15-16,000.
And that's in a sport with a truly international profile and with so much money they pay average players like Frank Lampard and John Terry £75-100,000 a week.
8-9,000 is more reasonable within these parameters for a team like ourselves and teams at the bottom should be getting 3-4,000.
Unless we can improve spectator levels across the board it is unreasonable to suggest that we will significantly increase our crowds.
Even if we do it will probably be at the expense of Leeds and Bradford rather than from some mythical stream of untapped supporters who are sat around on a Sunday afternoon thinking "I'm bored i wish there was something I could do that involved watching 26 men fight over a ball for 80 minutes in Huddersfield".'"
While I agree with you to an extent, if Chelsea had a 75,000 seater stadium then I'm sure they could do a decent job of reaching those attendances. Many premierleague clubs are restricted by capacity. Arsenal have a 60,000 seater staidium but still have a huge waiting list for season tickets.
I agree that all teams won't be averaging top figures though, we are a club with a huge history but also current champions and will go top of the league with a win on wednesday, we are averaging 17k at the moment but that still isn't good enough IMO. We took 30k+ to Old Trafford and we got a sell-out for the Saints game, 17k home fans for the Warrington game, 18k home fans for the Hudds game, 24k home fans for the WCC and yet only 13k for some of the other games. We have enough support to fly above 20k.
Hudds took 15k+ to Wembley and Twickers. The demand is higher than their current average if they can reach out to it.
At Wigan out chairman wants our average to get up to 20k in time and our club does a lot to try and get to this total. He thinks we need 13k season ticket holders along with the other marketing initiatives to reach 20k average.
Hudds should steal some of the initiatives going on in the rest of the league and create some of their own.
-- Hudds could get 7,500 to pledge to buy a season ticket, this along with away support and the boost of other games could see them reach 10k
-- every year since 2009 we have had a 'big one' game.... this saw us get 21k against Leeds, 22k against wire and 19k against yourselves.... much higher than the usual crowds for these games.... we had a limited number of cheap tickets in each stand and lots of campaining up to the game... Hudds could do this for a game against us (because they already get big crowds against Leeds, who would be the obvious choice).
-- Also market the first home game as a 'home opener' we got 20k for this against wire in 2007... the fans have been starved of home RL for a long time so will be more likely to buy a ticket.
-- we sell tickets in bulk to local companies with large ticket deals.... Heinz have twice bought a whole stand which gave us 15k one year and 19k the following year both being against quins...
-- we do scrum tickets which allows one season ticket holder to invite 6 other people for a price of £5 a ticket, imagine if every season ticket holder used their scrum ticket... you can use it for one game during a season... we have 11k season ticket holders... each of them bringing 6 more people during the year would mean 66k more people through the gates which means a 5k increase in our average if everybody used them.
-- a festival of rugby goes on each year which invites thousands of kids from around the north west and the rest of the country to come and compete against each other and then attend a game later in the day...
I'm, not saying Hudds should take on all these ideas but it shows just a few could result in a big increase. A 10k average is more than realistic... it is very achievable. It is amazing what marketing can do, I study it so I know how big an impact it can have.
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