: Mon Apr 27, 2009 7:02 am  

bloomers wrote:

Apologies. In fairness I only looked it up on SLstats on here, and I think SBR just makes it up.

You should know SBR never makes anything up he's a man of Science!

: Mon Apr 27, 2009 7:09 am  

Marketing ! Price !

I see these usual suspects are being mentioned again as the reason for the poor attendance.

Listening to Ridings on saturday the game was advertised and got plenty of air time and as far as price was concerend the 2 games for £25 made it a very good offer.

I am not saying we can't do things better but the game did have it a bit going for it yesterday and who knows without the offer it could have been 4500

: Mon Apr 27, 2009 7:17 am  

TURFEDOUT wrote:

Im no acountant,but i thought you only paid tax if you make a profit.

Therefore unless we are making profits - which i doubt - therefore would be little to gain from fiddling the gates.

15% VAT maybe? Say 1,000 knocked off the official gate, so I reckon thick end of £3k saved, thats if you do pay VAT on it, which I assume you do. Extrapulated over the season I suppose you could pay for a fairly tasty player for the year.

: Mon Apr 27, 2009 7:46 am  

My take on the attendance.

I can’t concur with the chapster who said the ground looked empty. It wasn’t brimming but their certainly appeared to be more there then the pre 2007 5.5K attendances. My estimation was at least 6.5k.

However, reasons for this escape me as I too see no advantage of Wakefield undercooking the attendance, especially in this period of franchise points. I know a 10k average is a million miles away but improving attendances could be looked upon favourably when deciding a close call between two C clubs which at this rate is what the club will remain to be.

I’m of the impression that this season the advanced tickets are not factored into the attendance for what ever reason. Of course I have no proof of this and I have no idea why this tactic would be employed because all that it will do is damage peoples’ perception of the Wakefield club. We all know that mud sticks and with more attendances like this we will be seen as a poor club who can not generate interest while 7 miles up the road our main rivals pull in an 8K average.

£18 is a problem. It is quite clearly far too expensive for a casual supporter at the best of times never mind when people are tightening up the belts. The ground is poor but it’s the same ground as 2007 where we saw a steep increase in home support. I would like to see some sort of bring a friend season ticket scheme for all of the home games but I fear all that would happen is that season ticket holders would bring someone who would attend regularly anyway.

Presence in the City Centre in the run up to the match could help. A mobile van on the precinct through the week before a home match with games and prizes plus ticket sales would put the club under peoples’ noses.

Use partners like Subway. Have tickets for sale at a discounted rate when you buy a Sub meal (or something similar).

Invite all junior clubs with the district to feature as pre-match entertainment.

Small measures may make a difference. I'm sure things like this will have already been looked at but something needs to be done.

: Mon Apr 27, 2009 8:26 am  

Haywire wrote:

15% VAT maybe? Say 1,000 knocked off the official gate, so I reckon thick end of £3k saved, thats if you do pay VAT on it, which I assume you do. Extrapulated over the season I suppose you could pay for a fairly tasty player for the year.

Undercooking by 1000 per match would net the club approx 30k over the year.
Cant really imagine they would risk the wrath of HM custom for that gain.

However i do agree that there seemed to be more in than 5500.

: Mon Apr 27, 2009 8:40 am  

Not sure why the club is announcing lower attendences.

IMO there was at least 6500 there yesterday.

My worry is that these figures make the home support look poor.

I would love to know how we would have got another 5500 people in the ground yesterday....something is not right

: Mon Apr 27, 2009 9:34 am  

thought wigan had a decent crowd out today, i was well surprised at the 5500 announcement . We went in through the wild cats bar along with a few hundred more, do they count those people cos there is no turnstile just a doorman checking tickets

: Mon Apr 27, 2009 9:54 am  

Even if the attendance was under-estimated by a 1,000, a gate of 6,500 would still be disappointing.

I think in these difficult times it is going to be very difficult to attract new fans, no matter how well the team does. If you were trying to get previous fans back it might be slightly easier, but we have very few of them to target.

In times of recession people are looking for good value for money and bargains - getting something back.

Wakey should consider schemes such as giving a voucher to those paying to attending the matches. If they collect 3 vouchers (from 3 different matches) for the 4th match they get in for half-price. To promote the scheme and to get it started a free voucher could be printed in the Express and/or Guardian to get new fans interested.

: Mon Apr 27, 2009 10:36 am  

cockneywildcat wrote:

Not sure why the club is announcing lower attendences.

IMO there was at least 6500 there yesterday.

My worry is that these figures make the home support look poor.

I would love to know how we would have got another 5500 people in the ground yesterday....something is not right

Exactly and that was the crowd (around 11,000) against Castleford in the relegation playoff match...

: Mon Apr 27, 2009 11:16 am  

I was stood near the flats/hosptatilty boxes and the ground liked around 5500 which they printed not many in the sats and the tearraces below them,the end where wigan fans could have fitted asround 1500-2000 in and down the side where the wakey fans stand could have fitted alot more down.