Crowd Today Concerning

[forbespm]

I am amazed that people are surprised at the crowd today. It was obvious once the pay on the day prices were announced in the Summer that many many people would not now be able to afford to attend City games any longer, apart from the odd "big game" such as WBA.

If prices were lower, crowds would be higher. Simple as that.

I sent a text making this point to Radio Bristol earlier on, when Twentyman was saying that the crowd was surprisingly low, but they didn't read it out.

totally agree with you

[Cider Visor]

What has happened to the fans for the future scheme?? quid a kid, whatever you wish to call it. I know that other CCC clubs run it but it all seems to have gone quiet from city. Surely this would help bump figures up, may even get people in to make it look like the Williams was inhabited!!

[Nibor]

Today we played a game that could have taken us back to the summit of the championship that crowd was a embarresment 14000+

I appreciate two games in a week is hard on some people,however the population of Bristol should out way the shortages.

Never in a million years did we think we would be fourth tonight,incredible start,as said in another post it feels like a loss.

This is a testament to how far the club has come,it is just a huge shame that the people of Bristol don't seem to want to back the rise of BRISTOL CITY FC.

You've completely lost touch with reality.

The ticket prices were too far for many people and certainly for the more casual supporter that turned up for big games last season and might have thought about a season ticket this season. It was obvious at the time they were announced, you remember - while you were telling everyone how wonderfully lucky we were to be able to pay them to watch Championship football.

The fact is, the floating supporter is not going to come out to many games for £30 a seat no matter how well we're doing, they will pick the big ones. We'll have 14-15k home fans for the likes of Charlton, Cardiff, Southampton (who will all bring 2k+ away fans as well) but mainly more attendances like today for the other games.

The club should have gone for a 20% rise, shown a bit of loyalty to long term supporters and they'd be packing in a fair few more IMO.

[pdgifford64]

The fact is, the floating supporter is not going to come out to many games for £30 a seat no matter how well we're doing, they will pick the big ones. We'll have 14-15k home fans for the likes of Charlton, Cardiff, Southampton (who will all bring 2k+ away fans as well) but mainly more attendances like today for the other games.

What, like todays 14k +

PDG

[Robbored]

1500 more than Stoke - who many see as a 'bigger' club than City and 1200 more than at Cardiff.

That said - 14000 was about what I expected and I would expect similar size gates at most games this season.Much depends on how many the way team bring.Burnley aren't well know for taking large away followings.

I would guess that Burnley brought about a 1000 - take off 9200 ST holders and you have approx 3800 POD supporters. Thats not too bad imo

[Red Robin]

You've completely lost touch with reality.

The ticket prices were too far for many people and certainly for the more casual supporter that turned up for big games last season and might have thought about a season ticket this season. It was obvious at the time they were announced, you remember - while you were telling everyone how wonderfully lucky we were to be able to pay them to watch Championship football.

The fact is, the floating supporter is not going to come out to many games for £30 a seat no matter how well we're doing, they will pick the big ones. We'll have 14-15k home fans for the likes of Charlton, Cardiff, Southampton (who will all bring 2k+ away fans as well) but mainly more attendances like today for the other games.

The club should have gone for a 20% rise, shown a bit of loyalty to long term supporters and they'd be packing in a fair few more IMO.

Nibor,

I think our fees to watch the footy served so far have been excellent value for money,too many are shunning the reds which is concerning,Bristol and the surrounding areas which cover 20 miles radius is massive and we can not get 19000 fans into AG when we are fighting for top.

Sorry are true support at moment is poor in attendance take the 1500+ Burnley out of the equation and we had 12500 city in there today,with 10000 season ticket holders that means 2500 pay on the days that is a absolute joke for the catchment area.

City have been out of this League for eight years this surly has to be a big incentive to the people of Bristol.

[054123]

This could be an interesting debate, but the fact of the matter is it's just too expensive.

£52 - £56 for two games of football, get real.

When there's talk about an affluent society, it's often the 40+ brigade sat on a nice bit of capital at the peak of their earnings repeating what the Daily Mail has just told them.

These, sadly, are the fading generation and the future genration aren'y so likely to agree. Rental prices (driven up by the 40+ lot) are extortionate, and should you be able to just about afford a mortgage (very rare for young people, even rarer for young familes who need a three bed) it will cost almost all your monthly income due to the unproportionate cost of housing (again in no short thanks to the 40+ boys).

I'm sorry, but i know society is better off in many ways comapred to 25-30 years ago, but for us 'youngsters' (the future) money is still tight and £26 pound to watch football (£55 - £77 a month) is a massive ask on my finances.

£10 - £15 a game and you would see a dramtic increase.

As much as i love city, they will always be just behind my family.

Oh yeah, and the atmosphere at the Gate is often poor.

[Bristol Boy]

To be fair, once we stopped selling season tickets, the pay on the day prices meant that we were not going to get many extras in. At £26 a pop many people cant afford to go twice in a week and given the choice of WBA or Burnley, they voted with their feet and rightly so given the nature of Burnley's style of play compared with WBA's.

I still maintain that there was more than 16,500 in on Tuesday. A mate of mine went down with his son and tried to get in the Williams, Atyeo and Dolman before ending up in the East End.

My seat in The Dolman is £30 POD or £700 for the season-It's too expensive POD and with two games in a week, deals like £45/46 for two games will help, plus quid a kid and family days.When 800 ST Holders walk away in a promotion season you know something's wrong.

Our segregated capacity is about 19,500-You could have got another 1,500/2,000 in the EE and there were plenty of spaces in Blocks A & B of The Williams.

I guess the prices have to come into it somewhat. £27 POTD for the Dolman is not cheap. That said we really should be attracting more casual fans if you consider that we have 10K season ticket holders and Burnley brough 1-2K.

Burnley brought about 750 and we have 9,600 ST's

The worrying thing is that if we aren't getting bigger crowds now when we were 2nd what will the attendances be like if we slip down to mid table?

Spot on is it only CS that doesn't realise this

Of course I would expect Cardiff to sell out and maybe Plymouth. I notice that Watford and Charlton are both on a Tuesday which doesn't help.

Last year's average was 12.8K. This year it's about 15K after 4 games so about a 20% increase but probably about 1/2 is due to more away fans I guess.

Over the whole season you'll probably find that our away fans attendane goes up by 1,000 overal.WBA brought 2,000-Colchester will bring 200

You get more than 500 players up on the downs every week, plus Suburban league 6 divs (90 teams,1350 players plus club members), District league 6 divs, Premier Combination 2 leagues, County league, Somerset league 4 divs, Western league 2 divs, Southern league 2 divs. plus supporters of these clubs. Outside London this area has the biggest amount of non-league football in the country, ive been involved with non-league football over the years and it has a massive effect on crowds.

And there was as much local football thirty years ago and we used to get 20k plus-The plave where there's a lot more local football? Manchester and they seem to do OK!

[pedrino7]

I have to admit that the size of crowd yesterday and against Man city suprised me. I am currently exiled in Birmingham and had resorted to pay on day last year, but this often meant that I was unable to get tickets for the bigger matches (the gas, cup matches) as I couldn't get to the gate in person to buy tickets. I brought a season ticket again this year to avoid this situation and because I thought that demand would push me out of even more games, but that doesn't appear to be the case. It does frustrate me that people who have denied me a ticket for games in the past don't appear to be turning up on a regular basis.

By the way what is our actual ground capacity now with the clubs current east end policy?

[Long Ashton Red]

1500 more than Stoke - who many see as a 'bigger' club than City and 1200 more than at Cardiff.

That said - 14000 was about what I expected and I would expect similar size gates at most games this season.Much depends on how many the way team bring.Burnley aren't well know for taking large away followings.

I would guess that Burnley brought about a 1000 - take off 9200 ST holders and you have approx 3800 POD supporters. Thats not too bad imo

I noticed there were only 3-4 games in our League where the crowd was bigger and still quite a few that were around 7-8,000. So maybe not as many as some would hope for but still pretty good for this division.

That said, 2 games in a week and high ticket prices do obviously deter some fans from attending and I would agree that City haven't got their pricing policy quite right this season.

[Gerry Gows' Tash]

Is £25 really a lot of money for 2 hours entertainment though ? I mean what else can you do for that price, even sitting in the pub will 2 hours will cost you £20. Maybe I've lost touch with reality too but it doesn't seem a huge amount of money to me.

[Frome Valley]

Is £25 really a lot of money for 2 hours entertainment though ? I mean what else can you do for that price, even sitting in the pub will 2 hours will cost you £20. Maybe I've lost touch with reality too but it doesn't seem a huge amount of money to me.

£25 is a night out and its ten pints at least probably twelve or thirteen if you like cider

£25 is alot of money to me and my family.

Football has lost touch with reality with this affecting City.£50 gets your son or daugher a season ticket in the noisy Villa Holte End that gets eight or nine matches in the Atyeo and none at all in the vocal East End.

I thought yesterdays Gate was very good but doubt over a season our average will rise by 20%.

City will mumble thats the way it is but on the horizon things are looking bad less than 10% of premiership fans are aged 16 -24 and clubs really should heed the warning signs.

Bristol City fc could do a lot better than this but for that to happen the club need to involve supporters groups, fans in general instead of fleecing them at every opportunity.

[Rowley Birkin]

I think the proof is in the pudding, as to you can't get better entertainment that was served up Tuesday night, in front of 16.000 +.

You can't blame the football, as people would be there in droves.

So it's obviously the outrageous admission prices, to supplement ridiculous wages, in the vicious circle of stupidity, and greed.

If it was £10- £15 a game, we'd sell out most weeks, simple as.

Chelski wondered why they only got 24,000 the other night, after reducing their prices to £36 !

The ignorance of those at the top is unsurpassed, as they seem to think everyone is on £50,000 a year.

I thought it refreshing to her Birminghams chairman saying in the week, that prices were ridiculous, and clubs need to collectively drop admission prices, but couldn't see them all taking a blind bit of notice.

Until clubs start going to the wall every other week, I just can't see it ever improving.

[Brizred]

My seat in The Dolman is £30 POD or £700 for the season-It's too expensive POD and with two games in a week, deals like £45/46 for two games will help, plus quid a kid and family days.When 800 ST Holders walk away in a promotion season you know something's wrong.

Our segregated capacity is about 19,500-You could have got another 1,500/2,000 in the EE and there were plenty of spaces in Blocks A & B of The Williams.

Over the whole season you'll probably find that our away fans attendane goes up by 1,000 overal.WBA brought 2,000-Colchester will bring 200

And there was as much local football thirty years ago and we used to get 20k plus-The plave where there's a lot more local football? Manchester and they seem to do OK!

Bristol area has got 30 plus semi-professional clubs which is a lot more than 30yrs ago, many more leagues in parks football, these clubs become 'their team,' so you lose a generation of support, if as in all other parts of the country ( including Manchester) saturday amateur football wasn't so popular, then i'm sure more people would watch the professional game here. Don't know what comparing the support in Manchester and Bristol brings to the discussion, where in most Citys and Towns they have their own supporters branches, and have a slight advantage as Utd being the best known club in the world.

[kevinmabbuttshair]

The first four home games last time we were at this level (1998/99)

Oxford Utd: 13,279

Watford: 13,063

Huddersfield Town: 11,801

WBA: 13,761

A slight improvement this time around. Although I do agree that POTD prices are too high, it would appear that most people chose the WBA game instead of yesterday. 5 game packages, with a discount, might be a good idea, could keep people interested long term if they know they have a commitment

[Will Rollason]

This could be an interesting debate, but the fact of the matter is it's just too expensive.

£52 - £56 for two games of football, get real.

When there's talk about an affluent society, it's often the 40+ brigade sat on a nice bit of capital at the peak of their earnings repeating what the Daily Mail has just told them. no sweeping generalisations there then

These, sadly, are the fading generation and the future genration aren'y so likely to agree. Rental prices (driven up by the 40+ lot are extortionate, and should you be able to just about afford a mortgage (very rare for young people, even rarer for young familes who need a three bed) it will cost almost all your monthly income due to the unproportionate disproportionate cost of housing (again in no short thanks? to the 40+ boys).

I'm sorry,( so you should be for posting this) but i know society is better off in many ways comapred to 25-30 years ago, but for us 'youngsters' (the future) money is still tight and £26 pound to watch football (£55 - £77 a month) is a massive ask on my finances.

£10 - £15 a game and you would see a dramtic increase.

As much as i love city, they will always be just behind my family.

Oh yeah, and the atmosphere at the Gate is often poor.

Actually the last part i agree with but as you can probably tell i am 40+ myself and object to being lumped together with people who read the daily mail :noexpression: and have buy to let 2nd houses and by your insinuation that i am fading because of my age . All ages see property as an investment kidder so wakey wakey!

p.s anyone under 40 is a drain on our economy, can't spell or construct a sentence properly.....

and they smell of wee wee.

[zookeeper]

£10 - £15 a game and you would see a dramtic increase.

As much as i love city, they will always be just behind my family.

At £15 a game (with an appropriate discount on season tickets and cheaper tickets) we would have to attract crowds of 23,333 people to generate a similar amount of cash. It just doesn't add up!

I think what should have been done was what bristol boy suggested and offered a discounted package to include a prime game like WBA with a less attractive game. I really don't know why the club don't bundle price some of their products. I'm sure it would make financial sense as well as adding to the atmosphere.

Also the students are in transit at the moment so hopefully a few of those will be attracted to come watch and add to the crowd.

[Alex_BCFC]

Is £25 really a lot of money for 2 hours entertainment though ? I mean what else can you do for that price, even sitting in the pub will 2 hours will cost you £20. Maybe I've lost touch with reality too but it doesn't seem a huge amount of money to me.

Really?

It is a lot of money for families.

[054123]

Is £25 really a lot of money for 2 hours entertainment though ? I mean what else can you do for that price, even sitting in the pub will 2 hours will cost you £20. Maybe I've lost touch with reality too but it doesn't seem a huge amount of money to me.

Without being rude, you have lost touch by the sounds of it.

£25 is my water bill or mobile bill or bus fees.

times it by 3 (on averge for a month say) and it's my Shopping bill for a week or getting on for 3/4 of my council tax bill.

As i said before, if you're young(ish) maybe with a samll family, then your disposable income is very tight indeed.

[054123]

Actually the last part i agree with but as you can probably tell i am 40+ myself and object to being lumped together with people who read the daily mail :noexpression: and have buy to let 2nd houses and by your insinuation that i am fading because of my age . All ages see property as an investment kidder so wakey wakey!

p.s anyone under 40 is a drain on our economy, can't spell or construct a sentence properly.....

and they smell of wee wee.

Apologies, i realise it was a crass generalisation!!!

My point was that certain people don't seem to realise that £25 - £27 PER GAME is still a lot of money. I certinaly can't afford it!

As for the wee wee, that's probably because i can only afford cheap after shave!!

[xerox6060]

You've completely lost touch with reality.

The ticket prices were too far for many people and certainly for the more casual supporter that turned up for big games last season and might have thought about a season ticket this season. It was obvious at the time they were announced, you remember - while you were telling everyone how wonderfully lucky we were to be able to pay them to watch Championship football.

The fact is, the floating supporter is not going to come out to many games for £30 a seat no matter how well we're doing, they will pick the big ones. We'll have 14-15k home fans for the likes of Charlton, Cardiff, Southampton (who will all bring 2k+ away fans as well) but mainly more attendances like today for the other games.

The club should have gone for a 20% rise, shown a bit of loyalty to long term supporters and they'd be packing in a fair few more IMO.

Totally agree, I know several people who even if we were 10 points clear at the top simply won't or can't pay £28 per match end of story.

[Bristol Boy]

yes but prem teams get 30 mil minimum we get less than a mill

bid difference.if you want to watch city near the top of the league it needs to be funded somehow.

That Premier teams get more is a fact.It's also a fact that an average player gets £20kpw and costs anywhere between £1m-£23m to buy.We probably have one player on more than £5kpw and one £1m player.They get more, they spend a lot more, but many of them have realised if it's a choice between 10,000 @ £30 or 23,000 @ £22 then they know which one to pick.

The club should have gone for a 20% rise, shown a bit of loyalty to long term supporters and they'd be packing in a fair few more IMO.

Agreed

Bristol area has got 30 plus semi-professional clubs which is a lot more than 30yrs ago, many more leagues in parks football, these clubs become 'their team,' so you lose a generation of support, if as in all other parts of the country ( including Manchester) saturday amateur football wasn't so popular, then i'm sure more people would watch the professional game here. Don't know what comparing the support in Manchester and Bristol brings to the discussion, where in most Citys and Towns they have their own supporters branches, and have a slight advantage as Utd being the best known club in the world.

I've heard this argument down the years and it still doesn't wash.I don't know which part of "The prices are to high" the club doesn't understand.

[zookeeper]

They get more, they spend a lot more, but many of them have realised if it's a choice between 10,000 @ £30 or 23,000 @ £22 then they know which one to pick.

Do you think it is that sensitive to price?

I think his point is valid. The prem clubs have a wide range of revenue streams that aren't as accesible to us and can pass on more savings to it's customers.

If the club sold out (19500 every game) they could charge £18 to generate a similar amount to what they achieve with £25 and a crowd of 14,000. Now the risks associated with that are quite substantial as any non sell out means that we underachieve. It also meant that the huge income from season tickets would not have occurred at one time driving up the financing costs of the transfer payments.

Do you think a reletively small drop of a couple of pounds would add thousands onto the attendance?

[Bristol Boy]

Do you think it is that sensitive to price?

I think price is a major issue at AG and was proved to be at many Premier clubs last season.Football has always been the working class mans game.The fan base has changed over the years and you see many more women, which is super, but take away the working man and football would die.Your corporate revenue will the first to walk away if th club fails or even doesn't acheive in line with their expectations.

I think his point is valid. The prem clubs have a wide range of revenue streams that aren't as accesible to us and can pass on more savings to it's customers.

The revenue streams are the same-they're just far greater.TV-FA Money, Merchandising etc, etc-then again so are the costs-Newcastle's wage bill is far, far greater than our turnover........by about ten times!!.

If the club sold out (19500 every game) they could charge £18 to generate a similar amount to what they achieve with £25 and a crowd of 14,000. Now the risks associated with that are quite substantial as any non sell out means that we underachieve. It also meant that the huge income from season tickets would not have occurred at one time driving up the financing costs of the transfer payments.

I agree with the maths and the risk and it's not an easy decision, but if we can't sell the place out when we're in the top two, it'll drop like a stone if we do! The problem was with the 30/40% hike in the first place.That saw off about 800 ST Holders in a promotion season and as a club with a smaller fanbase that a lot of others we simply can't tun our back on those people.

Do you think a reletively small drop of a couple of pounds would add thousands onto the attendance?

It would help as would some of the other suggestions regarding other charges-The teams doing well, we're playing decent football, why else aren't people turning up? I appreciate what people saying about increased liesure activities and the young lads having more options than years ago and I agree with that.The situation needs looking at I reckon CS woud rather have smaller more managable crowds.

[Red Cloud]

fact is, depsite constant claims that we are such a big club, we don't actually seem to have that big of a fan base who actually want to go to games, poor attendance today, however it's still WELL WELL up on attendances last time we were in this league.

who claims we're a big club? - the Gash call us it all the time to justify their own failings but I personally a single city fan that does!

[myol'man]

I think the mistake was made in the summer, no early bird discount,

no loyalty discount for last season's ST holders,

pitching ST prices at £425/£450, intead of £350/£375,

means we have less than 10,000 instead of 12,000 + ST holders.

considering that, and the POTD prices, 2 games in a week etc.

i didn't think that 14,000 was to bad, and if we finish mid-table

that will be about our average for the season

[Brizred]

That Premier teams get more is a fact.It's also a fact that an average player gets £20kpw and costs anywhere between £1m-£23m to buy.We probably have one player on more than £5kpw and one £1m player.They get more, they spend a lot more, but many of them have realised if it's a choice between 10,000 @ £30 or 23,000 @ £22 then they know which one to pick.

Agreed

I've heard this argument down the years and it still doesn't wash.I don't know which part of "The prices are to high" the club doesn't understand.

May not wash with you but does with the thousands of non-league players in the area.

[Henry]

Who says these non league players would go to the games and are even City fans?!

[Nibor]

Do you think it is that sensitive to price?

Anything is that sensitive to price when you approach the maximum people actually can pay. There's a point beyond which they just can't do it no matter how much they want what the money buys. This is something the likes of Red Robin don't seem to understand, just because you can pay it it doesn't mean everyone else can or that they're an embarrassment and not proper fans when they don't.

I believe we stepped over the line of what actually is affordable for some people for the first time with this season's hike. It will do us no good in the longer term.

[Gerry Gows' Tash]

Without being rude, you have lost touch by the sounds of it.

£25 is my water bill or mobile bill or bus fees.

times it by 3 (on averge for a month say) and it's my Shopping bill for a week or getting on for 3/4 of my council tax bill.

As i said before, if you're young(ish) maybe with a samll family, then your disposable income is very tight indeed.

The point I'm trying to make is that many people have strange priorities, they'll pay £40+ a month for sky, smoke 30 a day, buy a 4x4, go to the pub every night, wear designer clothes, take 3 holidays a year and then moan that football is "too expensive"

My second point is I've lost count of the number of times people on here have justified bans on smoking/standing/swearing/breaking wind by saying that footy is no longer a working mans sport, well the downside of that is paying "middle class prices" I'm afraid. I still think it is a working mans sport BTW.