Cowardly Fan

I'd be careful with some ofthose comparisons - MU require a membership to purchase for almost all games. City have a strategy of pricing an extremely small amount of tickets low, to give them a good PR number. SL for what I've seen has a more basic pricing structure.

We can't afford to be snobbish about people's understanding or interest in the sport. Look at racing - many people are mainly there for a nice day out, with just a slight interest in gambling and the actual races, but it brings revenue to the sport. Some of those fans who come for the beer garden will become more committed fans of the sport and others won't, we should welcome both.

Possibly. From my experience getting the details of ticket purchases for games at external venues was very difficult, even when the venue agreed to it in the contract we never got it all. I used to think The RFL could help e.g. Coventry to target an occasional game for. There must be 5-10k in the area who have attended a game, but never been to the Bears, and they could help with promotion and planning. However, based on that total figure they don't have the reach.

That's a very small email database. I'd have hoped they would have more than double that. I wonder if they struggle to have full data sharing in host venues or lost a lot due to recent legislation. Also notable they plan to grow quite significantly.

It's really popular. The discussion was about reliability of women's world cup viewing figures.

It's not guesswork at all. TV viewing figures will be accurate with 1% maximum. It's a common misconception that the population size (60m) should have a big impact on the required sample size. BARB is about 10k households from memory, which is a very large sample size, whether the population is 1m or 60m is largely irrelevant for accuracy of the statistics.

There is at the Olympics.

I'm not sure if this is satire or not, but just in case your own survey is irrelevant compared to BARB figures. Women's football still has some negativity from old school football fans, but it's attracting both some existing fans and also many women who previously had little interest in football. Also in the younger generation the negativity towards women's football is much less common among men. It's not excessive if you look at those TV viewing figures. Until Wimbledon starts it's the biggest sporting event and being promoted as such. Basing your opinion on comments rather than viewing figures is odd. Domestic attendances are irrelevant as well, there is much higher interest because it's an international tournmanent. In a similar way many sports get a huge boost in viewing figures for the olympics.

Agree, the last world cup was a real disappointment in dodging the 'guarantee'.

Thanks for sharing. Just wondering why Avignon don't get more? Given it's got a decent size population and their crowds for internationals I would have expected them to be one of the highest.

Who said that? I just contested when you said the positives were limited. It's possible for them to be both a plus for SL and not single handedly save the sport.

I don't have insider knowledge. A huge amount of alcohol is sold there, so that means TWP can charge a significant fee to the suppliers as plenty would compete for it. The amount would be guesswork but that it's good income isn't. If I had to guess I'd say 750k loss. That's way ahead of where I thought they would be, and given their advantages could break even relatively quickly.

Very interesting, thanks for the reply. Merchandise income won't be huge, but looks like it's better than most clubs. Alcohol sales definitely. Given the amount spent there, whether they charge a fee or take a % it is a very significant income. Suppliers would pay a lot to have that sort of access. I think they still make a loss, but aren't a long way away from break even. People tend to fixate on the travel (which is covered) and miss things like their stadium cost being a peppercorn rent.

I found the start a bit surprising, as I think TWP offer more positives (and negatives) than any of the teams that could join SL. Hence wondering if you don't consider the following significant or otherwise discounted them? - merchandise is professional and income appears strong - some of the biggest sponsorships in the sport - increased media coverage - very high matchday income from beer garden - extra TV time slots The elephant in the room is a potential TV deal. There's a high chance of someone quoting me using the phrase 'jam tomorrow', but even a small chance of TV money has to be considered as a plus. Though we shouldn't be seduced by that alone and make sure we review properly.

He's not quit. He's returned to the same role he had for the first year or so. We'd lose pointless threads like this.