Kairdiff Exile wrote:Goddard & Woods - I'm not arguing that it's impossible for a club of our size to play at a higher level. What I am saying is that doing so is (more often than not) a brief high point in that club's history. What we don't tend to consider as part of that equation is that there are low points as well, which also need to be prepared for. Having a 20,000-capacity stadium for your provincial club is great when you're having a brief spell in the top tier - but when the winds are against you and you're in the Conference, you look a bit daft (ask Darlington fans).

My point is that the wisest clubs make themselves sustainable (which we currently aren't, I would argue), invest in infrastructure (which we currently can't) and then start to plot an upwards trajectory.

We seem to have gone off-topic, so to return us to the issue of attendances, I'd simply say that the answer to our modest crowds currently is around marketing. I don't think Newport County have ever (in the 15-odd years I've been going) marketed themselves effectively to the people of the Gwent and Cardiff region. That takes skilled personnel and money, and it's not a quick fix. But - to use the word again - it's the sustainable approach.

Touching on the point of sustainability, in terms of attendances, Northampton's seem to be fairly level in as much as there's only a 13% difference between their highest and lowest....compared to a 36% difference for County.
Northampton not having a great start, but somehow they've managed to keep their support coming back, much less eratically than County's..... I'd love to know what they've done to achieve that. Cobblers' fans appear to be happy to keep coming back, even though not brilliant league position currently.

Interesting thread. However it is difficult to measure the size of individual towns as opposed to urban areas. Newport if you add Cwmbran suddenly becomes much larger than Northampton.

My view is that unless or until those in charge of the club realize, as Flynn has done, that without 21st century facilities we can't hope to compete at our full potential.

newgroundrodney wrote: Touching on the point of sustainability, in terms of attendances, Northampton's seem to be fairly level in as much as there's only a 13% difference between their highest and lowest....compared to a 36% difference for County.
Northampton not having a great start, but somehow they've managed to keep their support coming back, much less eratically than County's..... I'd love to know what they've done to achieve that. Cobblers' fans appear to be happy to keep coming back, even though not brilliant league position currently.

Another very good stat. My hunch - and it's nothing more than that - is that we have a larger proportion of 'fair weather fans' who come when we're doing well, when we've got a big game, when Cardiff City are away, when the sun's out etc etc. Nothing wrong with that at all - their money is as good as anyone else's - but it can be harder to entice them to the archetypal cold Tuesday night home game against Northampton (say) when we're in the middle of a bad run and Liverpool are on the telly.

Your idea on a previous thread, NGR, for a "Super-12" ticket where fans get a discount for basically bulk buying at the start of the season is a good way to help address this. The key thing is to get people like me who go to half a dozen home games over the course of a season to come to 10-12. Giving us an incentive to basically sign up to doing that during July when we're full of optimism and have forgotten what cold weather feels like is a good start! It might mean a minor drop in away attendances (I'm not alone in attending fewer home games in order to save up for a few big days out at grounds I've not visited), but it'd benefit the club financially.

Stan A. Einstein wrote:Interesting thread. However it is difficult to measure the size of individual towns as opposed to urban areas. Newport if you add Cwmbran suddenly becomes much larger than Northampton.

My view is that unless or until those in charge of the club realize, as Flynn has done, that without 21st century facilities we can't hope to compete at our full potential.

I'd just count Northampton, not 'Northamptonshire'.... I think people from outlying areas may travel in to the 'big town' in their county borough or near area..... like people from Melksham going to watch Swindon, or people from Caerphilly watching Cardiff. But for comparison you need to just consider the town of Northampton, with the town of Newport (I know it's a city - but you take my point)...

In the final analysis, there are as many people as a percentage of population watching County as there are Northampton, though the County following seems much more erratic - fickle if you will - than Northampton's.

Kairdiff Exile wrote:

newgroundrodney wrote: Touching on the point of sustainability, in terms of attendances, Northampton's seem to be fairly level in as much as there's only a 13% difference between their highest and lowest....compared to a 36% difference for County.
Northampton not having a great start, but somehow they've managed to keep their support coming back, much less eratically than County's..... I'd love to know what they've done to achieve that. Cobblers' fans appear to be happy to keep coming back, even though not brilliant league position currently.

Another very good stat. My hunch - and it's nothing more than that - is that we have a larger proportion of 'fair weather fans' who come when we're doing well, when we've got a big game, when Cardiff City are away, when the sun's out etc etc. Nothing wrong with that at all - their money is as good as anyone else's - but it can be harder to entice them to the archetypal cold Tuesday night home game against Northampton (say) when we're in the middle of a bad run and Liverpool are on the telly.

Your idea on a previous thread, NGR, for a "Super-12" ticket where fans get a discount for basically bulk buying at the start of the season is a good way to help address this. The key thing is to get people like me who go to half a dozen home games over the course of a season to come to 10-12. Giving us an incentive to basically sign up to doing that during July when we're full of optimism and have forgotten what cold weather feels like is a good start! It might mean a minor drop in away attendances (I'm not alone in attending fewer home games in order to save up for a few big days out at grounds I've not visited), but it'd benefit the club financially.

I think as we go forward, we'll need to start packaging things up to allow fans to buy their football in ways that suit them. I notice that a certain team from West London are selling what amounts to a 'Super 6' ticket.... a flexi ticket that lets you pick your games, so I'll be looking at buying one of those in the near future - though I've already got my ticket for Millwall tomorrow night - the only issue is that I'm not sure I can buy my ticket online with a Flexi 6...... there are only a certain few seats I like at Loftus Rd due to my back because of the leg room being so small... so that would be the only thing stopping me buying. But the point is, a flexi ticket is available, and once paid for, would lock me in for 6 games.... I usually do between 5 - 10 a season at home.

We need to do the same - lock fans and their money into a commitment to a number of games.


*** EDIT : The QPR flexi tickets are for 3 games or 5 games, not 6 ....

As I say there are many ways of calculating population but perhaps more importantly that which we should concentrate upon, and which both post above in fact do, is how to maximize our gate.

The bulk buy of tickets for twelve games, or six or whatever is something that many have suggested and has no drawbacks that I can see. Supporters often come up with ideas, many of which are very good. Perhaps if the club engaged with the fan base these ideas might be put into practice.

Stan A. Einstein wrote:As I say there are many ways of calculating population but perhaps more importantly that which we should concentrate upon, and which both post above in fact do, is how to maximize our gate.

The bulk buy of tickets for twelve games, or six or whatever is something that many have suggested and has no drawbacks that I can see. Supporters often come up with ideas, many of which are very good. Perhaps if the club engaged with the fan base these ideas might be put into practice.

Perhaps we could have a Flexible flexi ticket, where fans can choose how many games they want to buy: "how many tickets would you like in this bundle Sir?"......"Seven please, adult Bisley"..... "Ok, seven tickets, that'll be £113 please....that's one game for free"

Something like that anyway!

I like to compare us to Exeter the population of the two Cities roughly are the same (128900 to our 151000). Exeter have traditionally been a Tier 4 team with occasional forays into T3 and have to compete with a rugby team (a considerably better team than the Dragons). They are also fan owned and take considerably more from trust membership than we do. Although they have been a bit more successful in league finishes the last few years their average attendance over the last few years as below:
2018/19- 4122
2017/18- 4072 (finished 4th Lost in playoffs)
2016/17-4300 (finished 5th Lost in playoffs)
2015/16- 4008 (finished 14th)
2014/15- 3884 (finished 10th)

So my question is what are Exeter doing to attract 3.1% of the population (I know i have taken a total avaerage not just home fans)? Is there a lesson we can learn from them. Like Kairdiff Exile said I think we have seen that Exeter have been investing in the infrastructure and that has seen them make £5M from player sales in the last few years which has allowed them to keep players like Stockley and also improve their stadium, which in turn has seen them albeit eventually lose in the playoffs but they look like contenders each year. I think the answer may quite rightly lie within marketing and community engagement which does cost money but it could be seen as an investment to be recouped over time.

Immediately before this timeline Exeter spent summer 2014 under a transfer embargo with a PFA loan paying the wages!

Est.1912 wrote:I like to compare us to Exeter the population of the two Cities roughly are the same (128900 to our 151000). Exeter have traditionally been a Tier 4 team with occasional forays into T3 and have to compete with a rugby team (a considerably better team than the Dragons). They are also fan owned and take considerably more from trust membership than we do. Although they have been a bit more successful in league finishes the last few years their average attendance over the last few years as below:
2018/19- 4122
2017/18- 4072 (finished 4th Lost in playoffs)
2016/17-4300 (finished 5th Lost in playoffs)
2015/16- 4008 (finished 14th)
2014/15- 3884 (finished 10th)

So my question is what are Exeter doing to attract 3.1% of the population (I know i have taken a total avaerage not just home fans)? Is there a lesson we can learn from them. Like Kairdiff Exile said I think we have seen that Exeter have been investing in the infrastructure and that has seen them make £5M from player sales in the last few years which has allowed them to keep players like Stockley and also improve their stadium, which in turn has seen them albeit eventually lose in the playoffs but they look like contenders each year. I think the answer may quite rightly lie within marketing and community engagement which does cost money but it could be seen as an investment to be recouped over time.

Even if you allow 300 for away fans, since Exeter is a long trip for lots of teams, you still get 2.9% of the population, and with a difference of just 10.7% from the highest to lowest, that's a very stable fanbase they have down there.
I wonder how many Trust Members they have, and how much they donate per year between themselves in total?.....

Two things come to mind with Exeter. Firstly, they've been running a Trust model for a bit longer and have probably therefore already learnt from mistakes that we're still making(!). Secondly, they had a very competent manager for a very long period of time in Paul Tisdale which gave them a long period of stability on the pitch - again, we're (hopefully) at the start of that same cycle ourselves with Mike Flynn.

Not that we should be complacent about either of those things bearing fruit - both will require work and investment. But Exeter can probably show what can happen if we stick with it.

The saga of Tisdale's departure suggests they had ceased to appreciate him and didn't realise what they were losing and change their minds until it was too late.

newgroundrodney wrote:

Est.1912 wrote:I like to compare us to Exeter the population of the two Cities roughly are the same (128900 to our 151000). Exeter have traditionally been a Tier 4 team with occasional forays into T3 and have to compete with a rugby team (a considerably better team than the Dragons). They are also fan owned and take considerably more from trust membership than we do. Although they have been a bit more successful in league finishes the last few years their average attendance over the last few years as below:
2018/19- 4122
2017/18- 4072 (finished 4th Lost in playoffs)
2016/17-4300 (finished 5th Lost in playoffs)
2015/16- 4008 (finished 14th)
2014/15- 3884 (finished 10th)

So my question is what are Exeter doing to attract 3.1% of the population (I know i have taken a total avaerage not just home fans)? Is there a lesson we can learn from them. Like Kairdiff Exile said I think we have seen that Exeter have been investing in the infrastructure and that has seen them make £5M from player sales in the last few years which has allowed them to keep players like Stockley and also improve their stadium, which in turn has seen them albeit eventually lose in the playoffs but they look like contenders each year. I think the answer may quite rightly lie within marketing and community engagement which does cost money but it could be seen as an investment to be recouped over time.

Even if you allow 300 for away fans, since Exeter is a long trip for lots of teams, you still get 2.9% of the population, and with a difference of just 10.7% from the highest to lowest, that's a very stable fanbase they have down there.
I wonder how many Trust Members they have, and how much they donate per year between themselves in total?.....

According to the extremely accurate Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exeter_Ci ... s%27_Trust it was 3329 in 2015, an interesting part of that page is how big a contribution the trust makes in wages one year it went as high as £18k. It is also interesting that they launched specific schemes with targets (relaid pitch, floodlights) it may be a better way of raising funds than the trust just asking for regular/one off donations if they create a specific scheme with a target (Blue Peter totaliser optional).

Est.1912 wrote:

Even

According to the extremely accurate Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exeter_Ci ... s%27_Trust it was 3329 in 2015, an interesting part of that page is how big a contribution the trust makes in wages one year it went as high as £18k. It is also interesting that they launched specific schemes with targets (relaid pitch, floodlights) it may be a better way of raising funds than the trust just asking for regular/one off donations if they create a specific scheme with a target (Blue Peter totaliser optional).

I agree entirely.

George Street-Bridge wrote:The saga of Tisdale's departure suggests they had ceased to appreciate him and didn't realise what they were losing and change their minds until it was too late.

I noticed a very different style of play under their new boss.

Still very effective though.