personally i hope they get relegated.

Debate re attendances - £24 on the day not in the real world and will put of many fans who make a decision to come at the last push. Easter Monday a good example - many families will have spent up over the Fri/Sat/Sun. So this one for me had to go out at £15 with loads of activities for kids to get us 6,000 in.

Tiered pricing taking into account opposition, television, kick off time etc an absolute must.

Town now in Championship a factor ? Well their attendances have gone up but not by much and largely driven by away support. So not sure soccer is tempting sports fans away from RL.

Bad relations between Town / Giants, fuelled by the stadium share issue. A minority hold stupid extreme views on both sides, but not representative of the whole. However, there is a high level of awareness of the share issue among Town fans and it is probably putting off a section of Town support from attending Giants games. At Wembley in 2009 lots of Town fans were in the crowd.

Also noticeable that there has been no marketing of Giants games to the thousands of Town supporters on the ticket office database. From a Giants point of view this is such an obvious marketing tactic you wonder why this hasnt taken place, are we back to the problem of the shares.

So lots to chew on. But as disappointing as the attendances are, the club can't simply question the desire of the people of Huddersfield.

Yeah there is, so far as I can see, very little marketing of the club in the town centre

Don't know if anyone saw this but apparently Man U don't quite tell the truth about their attendances. They regularly announce 75,000+ but according to police figures the attendance is never more than 65,000+. This means that every week at least 10,000 people buy tickets and don't bother to attend. For premier league matches £30-£52 is the range of United tickets.

Simply put price is not a factor. If people are willing to pay at least £30 to not see Man Utd play Soccer (no jokes please) then they are buying them simply to have "Manchester United tickets". The problem is with perception and desire. RL has no profile on a national scale. It's not a sport to be seen at. It's not a sport that has celebrities or the Prime Minister claiming to have been a lifelong fan of X club and turning misty eyed in reminiscence at watching a player who retired before they were born.

Until the profile of the sport as a whole improves then the club is fighting a uphill struggle. Particularly as we have 4 professional and 8 semi professional clubs within spitting distance all fighting for the same fanbase.

ATEOTD it is down to the people and the fans to show they want a Superleague club. £24 is not a lot to watch the premier RL competition in the Northern Hemisphere. If the people of Huddersfield can't afford that then KD should pull his money out and sod off cos there is no way the club can function charging any less. You don't need to look at the books to tell that, it's simple maths. £1.85 million to pay the players wages. That's 5929 people paying £24 every week. 7489 paying £19 every week. Or 9626 people buying a season ticket at £199. The club isn't a charity it doesn't exist to provide cheap, affordable RL to people, it exists to try and not lose as much money as possible (making money would be better but few sporting organisations do that). I know it sounds harsh but if you can't afford then you are no use to the club. Filling seats isn't a priority, raising cash is. Look at Bradford yeah get 10,000 to buy cheap season tickets, have 15,000 season ticket holders, doesn't help you when someone calls in your debt and you've no cash to pay it. Ken Davy has been urinating money against the wall for nigh on 15 years for this club and he wasn't even born anywhere near here. I think it isn't too much for him to ask the fans and people of Huddersfield to shoulder a little of this burden themselves.

There has to come a time in every businesses life when yo have to ask "Are we connecting with our customer base and can we continue to function in our current form?" I don't think that time has quite come but if things don't improve in the next year or so then we may no longer have a Superleague team to want.

All fair points

But surely the first question is "why aren't we?"
As I said in my last post there is close to zero advertising in the town centre, even if your a fan of the game you have to go and look for details on the next home game

It should be common knowledge but it isn't

agree

£99 for a season ticket this year behind the posts...not even £8 a game it works out at. so people moaning about the £24 pay on gate (or £21 pre purchase) should of thought about the £99 offer if they really wanted to watch the giants but do they?

ok money is tight for everyone but its the same for all clubs.

Again, not if no one knows about it

Every man and his dog knows when Man U are playing (and town for that matter) but not the Giants

Price IS an issue, no matter what you say though.

Where could they advertise in Town though?

Genuine question. When I go to town I tend to go for one reason. I go in, get what i want and drive off. I couldn't tell you what half the shops where anymore and I couldn't really say where you could advertise.

There used to be small posters in newsagents in town. Some of the hairdressers used to have posters up. I think there's one at Sainsburys in Shorehead but that may be my fevered imagination. I call there every morning as well but I can't remember if it's there or not. Advertisers dream I am, I notice absolutely nothing of my immediate surroundings. There also used to be posters on buses I seem to remember before buses became too expensive and I had to buy a car.

Little fliers in shops are a start - even if its just the shop staff that know that's something

Plenty of Greggs & other food places in town now to advertise in

5600 at today's game... this is appalling

Yes it was, I was genuinely surprised at that gate, thought there'd be nearer 7k at least

A few hundred less rovers fans this year than last though didn't help

Making people aware there is a game on would be a start

maybe its just rugby league in general that doesnt get exposure, football is king, was the semi final on tv today so bet some stayaways watched that instead

Pathetic Crowd = Huddersfield obviously doesn't want a successful Super League Team. Mr Davy deserves massive credit for what he has done and I feel so sorry that he gets let down by the frankly apathetic Huddersfield public.

Probably true Brierly

I understand that attendances across ALL sports including soccer are well down this season

We are 4 years into an economic depression that's not going to get better soon, and it's really starting to bite now it seems. I hope Ken realises its not they don't want Super League rugby, just that people need to make a choice with their money in these tough times

There are probably a score of other reasons going on too - like last seasons dismal end and people waiting for the wheels to fall off, end of the soccer season and its overwhelming coverage, people generally cutting back on spending, shocking weather so far, chopping and changing of kick off times by Sky etc etc

What can be done?
Lots of things that take money (publicity, promos etc)
The team to grab headlines in a good cup run & a big seasons end (which helps more next season)

I don't know, there is interest in the town, harnessing it is the problem

marketing of the club,advertising games etc is absolutely non existant.
if more people knew about us and therefore knew we were 2nd in the league then more might turn up?rather than the diehards who would be there anyway.

they used to advertise games on the pulse radio has this stopped now.. not cheap though.

FWIW in the time i was at the turnstiles today, approaching them, talking to a friend, going through, talking to another friend -7-8 minutes maybe, i watched and not one person actually paid any money to get in .....whether that is saying something i dunno but if people arent payin cash to get in then it seems that they aren't willing to part with £24 for a game, granted they could have pre-bought but in the past there has always been people paying cash when i've gone through.

As for advertising i agree about there being very little if none in and around the town. The amount of time i have been stopped by people asking have the Giants played today ? suggests there is interest but no one seems to know about us ...this is something that needs addressing, maybe people with time on their hands could hand flyers out or something in town - i know i would do something like this.

Bradford only had 4200 crowd more than us and they were playing Wigan, who take 4 times more supporters to away games than HKR brought.
When Bradford have less than 10000 and they are 3rd in the league, and have had a lot of success in the not too distant past, we are not doing so bad.
Compared to other clubs, Wigan, Leeds, Hull are all down in crowds this season so we are not on our own, it is the state of supporters finances that is the main problem and all clubs will just have to ride the storm whilst things improve.

Lets not gloss over things and tell it like it is, Leeds have had a 20,000 gate, Wigan have had 2 and Hull FC got 19,000 v KR.


If we get 10,000 at any game this season we will be more than happy and just saying because everyone elses crowds are down we should just accept it is not the way to go. Leeds, Wigan and to a lesser extent Hull can deal with a thousand less on their average attendance and not bat an eyelid when it comes to next years budget and player signings.....can we honestly say the same????

It was a rubbish crowd set against every game this season bar possibly Wigan being a poor crowd and to blame away support is totally passing the buck and as we keep seeing on here does Huddersfield want a top SL team.....the answer is probably yes, are they willing to come out and support it??? The answer at present is a very firm NO!!!!

I agree with that

But let's also not gloss over the damage done by last seasons debacle.
At the end of the season I'd decided I wasn't going to renew my season ticket, couldn't stand that again

I changed my mind, but it seems a lot of people didn't. Can't blame them.

So lets look at the issue

1. Do people want a super league team - yes, last seasons support and our previous trend of growing our support base show this

2. What's been the problem this season - manyfold. Wider economy, disastrous last season, people expecting us to fall away again etc etc

3. What can be done? Lots, but we, and the club, can't just expect people to turn up cos we are playing. Awareness in the town of when we are playing and how well we are doing is probably ZERO. No "if you play they will come" situation here, now in the tough times we need to actually advertise!

The stadium shares the complex with two high footfall places - the cinema and the gym, why not advertise in there? Including Costa and Pizza Hut?
Get a stall into Kingsgate on a Saturday, some young academy player handing our fliers with details of the next game on (especially if next game is the day after!) maybe even with a buy 2 get one free deal on?

I can't begin to say how grateful I am to Ken Davey for the team we are now watching, but he needs to have a word with his marketing man as to why no one in the town barring core support has a clue when games are on

Your not wrong and we do need to be adaptive so we can try to cash in on our success.

I'm not sure the reaction of some season ticket holders to offers for the first few games helped as it might have put the club off those sort of promotions but personally I would much prefer 8,000+ at a few well marketed games on cheap tickets than the attendances at recent games. I know there is a knock on effect that some might not renew if they think match by match will not cost much more than a season but to limp from game to game like we are currently doing does not instill confidence in the way the club is going off the field.

We should be alright for half decent gates with Wire and Leeds (as long as Sky do not want to show that one....I fear they will) being the next 2 Sunday games (Saints on a Monday might be a shockingly low gate) but after that I feel the club needs to pull out all the stops and if the team are on their way to glory make sure they have the audience those feats deserve watching them.

Yeah, adaptive, and proactive in selling the club & raising awareness - soccer season is soon ending so the deluded minority aside there is a big group used to going to watch sport every weekend to target

Easiest option
Saturday job for someone, 5 hours in Kingsgate handing out fliers with
Next home game, prices (maybe a deal of some sort with said flier) and a snapshot of the league table showing us 2nd behind Wigan

Maybe also some similar posters to put up in town centre shops (Local & Indendents perhaps, I could name a dozen good candidates) with maybe some freebies to give to the shop staff as a sweetener

Instantly increases the club profile over what it currently is

We certainly need to do something.....get someone in town ....someone recognisable like Eorl or Robbie HP with Big G to ask people :

.If they know about the Giants?
.Do they go to the games?
.Why they dont attend ?
.Would they be interested ?
.Give them a flyer informing them about our season/players/aims etc
.Show them a short promotional film/DVD of our best tries/biggest hits etc
.Offer them a buy one get one free or buy one game get next one free type deal

Find out why people aren't coming and try and sell the club and the product to them rather than just thinking that because we're 2nd in the league people will come....they aren't and without any hard pro-active marketing, they wont !

Ask fans to ask local business's if they could maybe put a poster up advertising home games and like you say, maybe a voucher for a reduced ticket or something.
Personally i think we should be targetting groups of people rather than individuals as we know from the past the individual will probably just sell his ticket on to someone who is a fan rather than using it.

maybe do a pub/club/workplace group ticket that can admit 4 at a time or something so groups of mates can go together.

Yeah, I suggested a 2/3 deal or something which might work

And at the present out spectators seem to be made up of season ticket holders - if freebies end up in the hands of fans, chances are at the moment they weren't going to go anyway and so that's still a spectator we wouldn't have had

Moreover it might just persuade them that they are missing our this season and they need to come back, as it were

In terms of selling - we sold an inferior product last season and our consumers stopped buying, we need to do something to make sure those consumers know this seasons product is better and worth buying again

That might mean giving freebies to last seasons stayaways