Are you worried about attendances?

[Guest]

Is there a player left that hasn't had COVID? Or are they just on their 3rd and 4th times round?

[The storm]

On 19/08/2021 at 22:19, Leonard said:

Is there a player left that hasn't had COVID? Or are they just on their 3rd and 4th times round?

I think we need to understand the demographics of our supporter base. 

[gazza77]

On 19/08/2021 at 08:46, bratman said:

I was looking at York this weekend for the Hull derby, half decent hotel is £300 a night!!!

Ebor race meeting. Not the best weekend to book a York Hotel. 

[GUBRATS]

19 minutes ago, gazza77 said:

Ebor race meeting. Not the best weekend to book a York Hotel. 

So it's only viable to visit York for the RL when the races aren't on ? 

[gazza77]

8 hours ago, GUBRATS said:

So it's only viable to visit York for the RL when the races aren't on ? 

No, but it helps explain why it's likely to be busy. 

[Chrispmartha]

4 hours ago, ShropshireBull said:

16,000 only last night.  Thought they would get at least 20k.  We are in trouble. 

It will be a long time till Wigan get 20k again, their fans are not a happy bunch at the moment and its nowt to do with  the wider game or Covid

[M j M]

4 hours ago, ShropshireBull said:

16,000 only last night.  Thought they would get at least 20k.  We are in trouble. 

People constantly delighting in death riding the game are really starting to get tedious. Especially when a tiny bit of scrutiny would bring some context.

What was the attendance for the last regular season non Good Friday Wigan-Saints game at the DW?

19th July 2018, 16,047.

[Damien]

1 hour ago, Chrispmartha said:

It will be a long time till Wigan get 20k again, their fans are not a happy bunch at the moment and its nowt to do with  the wider game or Covid

I completely disagree. There are a number of Wigan fans on here who have made their issues with the wider game known. Yes Wigan fans may have issues with what is happening at the club but it's false to dismiss the issues in the wider game. There is a malaise and discontent in the game generally that is affecting attendances at all the big clubs.

[Chrispmartha]

31 minutes ago, M j M said:

People constantly delighting in death riding the game are really starting to get tedious. Especially when a tiny bit of scrutiny would bring some context.

What was the attendance for the last regular season non Good Friday Wigan-Saints game at the DW?

19th July 2018, 16,047.

Completely agree, I’ve said before its going to become a self fulfilling prophecy.

[Scubby]

36 minutes ago, M j M said:

People constantly delighting in death riding the game are really starting to get tedious. Especially when a tiny bit of scrutiny would bring some context.

What was the attendance for the last regular season non Good Friday Wigan-Saints game at the DW?

19th July 2018, 16,047.

I was actually expecting 13-14k tbh. Sixteen thousand is not terrible - many Wigan fans would not have bought season tickets for 2021. The problem is can the club show any intent to drive optimism for 2022 that can stop the slide?

[GeordieSaint]

22 minutes ago, Scubby said:

The problem is can the club show any intent to drive optimism for 2022 that can stop the slide?

They have already brought in a Hugh quality import from… the London Broncos. What more do you want?

[M j M]

39 minutes ago, ShropshireBull said:

I tend to talk up the game but I'm not delusional enough to ignore data.  Now if Wigan had a proper stadium fine but if your biggest game is only 64% capacity then that means one of the sports biggest clubs will always look terrible on tv which means sky hand over less money for the product.  

 

Wigan's inappropriately large stadium isn't a new issue. If Danson wants to splash some of his cash, a proper Rugby League stadium for the club should be a priority, not least as the new owners of the soccer club are starting to make some dickish Allam-style noises.

[Scubby]

30 minutes ago, GeordieSaint said:

They have already brought in a Hugh quality import from… the London Broncos. What more do you want?

A fit and firing Gary Wheeler!

[Chrispmartha]

22 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

Part of the problem is that some RL fans are using figures that are already either poor or not bad at best and using them to illustrate how it's not that bad actually, because look at the poor figures *then*.

Not only are figures not growing (like we used to aim for) but they are going backwards. 

On the flip side using figures from during a pandemic as proof of the games decline is equally daft and ‘part of the problem’.

 

[GUBRATS]

1 hour ago, Damien said:

I completely disagree. There are a number of Wigan fans on here who have made their issues with the wider game known. Yes Wigan fans may have issues with what is happening at the club but it's false to dismiss the issues in the wider game. There is a malaise and discontent in the game generally that is affecting attendances at all the big clubs.

But mostly when their team is playing sheeeeite 

Whereas I'm a Leyther , my team ( loose term for a combination of whoever is fit or loaned any given week ) is losing every week and will do so again tomorrow , but I'm loving every minute of my RL this year , biggest gripe is they've changed the beer from Kaltenburg to Carlsberg

[Exiled Wiganer]

Wigan got the biggest crowd of the season last night despite having given nobody any reason to suppose that there was a genuine contest on the way. The day Saints “only” get 16k again is a long way away. 
 

As far as Wigan’s business model is concerned, as I mentioned in the match thread, all of our efforts should go into the first team, and buying overseas players and an overseas coach. We spend millions on community initiatives, and want to run multiple teams. A complete waste of time and money.
 

Ditch all that, and we can do very well on 10k crowds. Which is still of course more than pretty much every other club whose fans post dozens of “woe is me, look at Wigan’s tiny crowds” posts on here. 

[Exiled Wiganer]

1 hour ago, ShropshireBull said:

The whole thread is about that.  Its a game wide trend of which Wigan, known as one of the games biggest teams, is sadly an example of. 

I would argue that Wigan’s crowds tell us very little about the wider game. There are lots of things we can do, as I mentioned in my post, which are specific to us rather than symptomatic of other issues. Our circumstances are unique - you can’t learn anything from Wigan’s challenges which would help with solving the issues as Huddersfield, Salford, Trinity etc. 

[Spidey]

5 minutes ago, Exiled Wiganer said:

I would argue that Wigan’s crowds tell us very little about the wider game. There are lots of things we can do, as I mentioned in my post, which are specific to us rather than symptomatic of other issues. Our circumstances are unique - you can’t learn anything from Wigan’s challenges which would help with solving the issues as Huddersfield, Salford, Trinity etc. 

All clubs in the game are experiencing a decline.  It’s sheer arrogance that you think it doesn’t apply to Wigan

[Exiled Wiganer]

51 minutes ago, Spidey said:

All clubs in the game are experiencing a decline.  It’s sheer arrogance that you think it doesn’t apply to Wigan

It’s not arrogance at all. It’s arrogance to accuse me of arrogance, but I will let you off. Wigan and Leeds’ positions are entirely different from others, and should be treated as such, in my opinion. We have clearly all the latent support we need, it is simply a question of how to appeal to that latent support again. The problem for pretty much everyone else is how to appeal to new potential spectators. I would love everyone to have Wigan’s “problems” - a great schools and junior network and generations of deep love for the institution that is our club. Our “problem” with crowds isn’t about raising awareness, it is because we have implemented a ridiculous business model which is both ruinously expensive and entirely self defeating. 

When Wigan’s crowds grew from the 4K who watched when I started to the regular 15k crowds they did so off the back of recruiting and fielding box office attraction players. And would return as soon as we have box office players again. The only lesson to be learnt from that is don’t waste money trying to build a home grown team and ditch all these “community” initiative distractions. You can learn far more of general application to the rest of the game by looking at the likes of York, London, Barrow and Newcastle for do’s and don’ts rather than Wigan’s micro climate caused by over entitled triumph or disaster fans. 

Looking at it another way, there have been occasions when the overall average at SL games was at or near 10k. Which was nice, but those averages were usually inflated by the 3 very well supported SL sides - Wigan, Leeds and Bradford: scratch the surface and there were already plenty of clubs within that pyramid which were getting far less than break even crowds. 

[Exiled Wiganer]

2 minutes ago, ShropshireBull said:

Reducing crowds, ageing fanbase and infrastructure that makes the product look awful on tv lowering the money we can get?

No.  They are the same. 

We have plenty of latent support, but have deliberately gone down a route which ignores why they came in the first place. We have plenty of juniors and schools playing our game, and plenty of younger fans. As for the “look”, I will give you that, though I am sure Sky would love to see Huddersfield and Salford’s grounds so full. For what it’s worth, I prefer the set ups at Saints and Wire, but we have had no say in where we play, and are unlikely to do so any time soon. 

[bratman]

As others have said... see what crowds are like next season, hopefully after the pandemic has finished and no more last minute cancelled games.

[Chrispmartha]

1 hour ago, Johnoco said:

Not when other sports or events are attracting good or better figures than before. In fact it highlights the endless excuses in RL and the complete lack of doing anything about it.

It's not as if the figures *before* the pandemic were anything to write home about. 

My point still stands, there’s a few factors  why crowds are down and covid is a very big factor

[Chrispmartha]

Just now, Johnoco said:

Well then, come next season crowds will be good, if not excellent..... won't they? 

Let's see 

They’ll be better than they are currently.

[GUBRATS]

1 minute ago, Johnoco said:

Is that an achievement? Crowds are down from a few years ago, keeping them at that level is not a positive. 

It's all about aspiration. In 1999-2000 traditionalists laughed at the vision of SL then, and it wasn't without problems by any means,vee had plenty of low crowds then. 

But the overall mentality seemed to be 'great, Leeds-Bradford got 18K...next time we want 20K' - and there would be at least an attempt publicise that. Now it is 'Wigan-Saints got 16k, that's great'

 

No , it's " thats ok a month after we can open up fully , next year we have to get back to where we were and build from that " 

[Josef K]

13 hours ago, ShropshireBull said:

16,000 only last night.  Thought they would get at least 20k.  We are in trouble. 

I took a Stoke City fan to the game last night, his first ever live RL match. He loved every minute of it, even though it was one sided affair he didn’t care who won he just enjoyed the whole night. He has only seen the players get stuck in to one another on TV, but he said “seeing it live was something else, how the f*** do they f****** get up and carry on playing after those tackles”. He was also surprised how good the atmosphere was. I’ve not persuaded him to be a Saints fan (yet), but he said “he’d love to come another match”.
I know people will say ‘he’s a Stoke fan he will watch anything”, but he is now a Stoke City fan who has enjoyed the games on TV but would now love to attend more live RL games.