Featherstone Rovers chief reveals season ticket sales and makes admission on attendance numbers

[Total Rugby League]

FEATHERSTONE ROVERS chief executive Martin Vickers has revealed that the club has sold over 1,000 season tickets for the upcoming 2025 Championship season. However, under...

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[tuutaisrambo]

Does anyone get 3400 average home gates outside SL?

Especially now with pretty much zero chance for promotion until the next SL club goes bust.

I hear people banging the drum for Bradford but they got less than 3k in the CC win agains Cas last weekend.

Paddy needs to be patient.......we played pretty average rugby last year and burnt a few bridges.
All we've had so far are friendly matches and CC games against amateur teams all in horrendous weather.

Hopefully if we start to put decent performances/results together the crowds will slowly grow but to average 3400 is a ridiculous target outside Super League, the majority of the championship will struggle to get half that gate.

 

[sentoffagain2]

   If we get an average of 2400 this season it will be way above my expectations.Paddy has made a start with the season ticket prices encouraging younger supporters and reinstating the £15 for OAP's.I would encourage the local community, people within 5 miles from Post Office Road to support the club by attending when possible.It's not a bad way to spend Sunday afternoon in the summer.Certainly better than the garden centre or trailing round the supermarket or shopping.However if we finish top ,win the play offs and win the 1895 cup every year for the next three seasons other Championship teams will have more points for admission to SL.It should get the gates up to 3500 though.

[The Phantom Horseman]

1 hour ago, tuutaisrambo said:

Hopefully if we start to put decent performances/results together the crowds will slowly grow but to average 3400 is a ridiculous target outside Super League, the majority of the championship will struggle to get half that gate.

 

In fairness if you listen to the interview, Martin was commenting on being asked via the Blue Wall Voice about how we can improve our IMG scores and he said the biggest issue was the attendances and he quoted 3,400 as the average crowd needed this year - I think that's the average we need in 2025 to take our 3-year average over the 3,000 threshold that gets you an extra 0.5 points compared to averaging over 1,500.

I'm sure they're very aware that this seems like pie in the sky at the moment but it seems reasonable enough to outline to fans now what is needed. As sentoffagain2 says, we probably aren't going to be near to getting the required IMG points for SL in 2026 even if we win the comp this year but I think it's reasonable to outline just where we need to be in answer to fans wondering where we need to improve. If we're averaging crowds of say 1,400 going forward it won't matter what the club is able to do in terms of improving results, finance, digital interaction etc as far as ever launching a challenge for SL is concerned.

I'd also add that getting bigger gates might give us more leverage in terms of suggesting changes to the IMG criteria. If we can get close in terms of our IMG score to the likes of Bradford and York we can point out with some justification how outrageous the catchment area scoring is in that they get 1 point more than us just for their location and there is nothing we can do to improve that. At the moment though that's not what makes the difference between their scores and ours.

[haskey]

This catchment area is part of the reason why IMG is a complete waste of space. I wonder if they have ever been near Featherstone and are aware how close we are to Wakey and Cas 2 SL teams

[Monkeymagic22]

I’m sure that crowds will be way higher for the League matches, and hopefully will increase if we make a good start to the season. I’ll be there on Sunday.

[The Phantom Horseman]

6 minutes ago, haskey said:

This catchment area is part of the reason why IMG is a complete waste of space. I wonder if they have ever been near Featherstone and are aware how close we are to Wakey and Cas 2 SL teams

That's their point though ie that we are close to 2 SL teams so in theory have limited prospects of increasing their gates.

I've got 3 issues with this:

1) The best indicator for future SL crowds of Championship clubs is their gates when they are in Championship, NOT where that club is situated and their "catchment area". Most teams seem to roughly double their Championship crowds regardless of their "catchment area"...so Leigh went from say 4k to 8k and Wakefield will probably see a similar increase on their Championship crowds, whereas London went from about 1,500 to about 3,000. If catchment area was such a solid indicator, you'd expect London and Toulouse would have both been regulalrly bringing in five-figure crowds when they were promoted, but of course they didn't.

2) There's already a points system for attendances - why not use that (and actually audit it properly) rather than some flawed system of projections based on the local population?

3) The whole IMG system is meant to be there as an incentive for clubs to improve, a lot has been made about this, yet this is one area where it's impossible for clubs to do anything about their situation.

[Gooleboy]

3,400 crowds in the Championship?? The powers that be at the RFL and IMG need to give their heads a shake. Bradford only had about 2,500 last week in the Cup against SL opposition.

[jamescolin]

Variety on the day of the match. Include other attractions to generate more people attending. I wonder if that has been considered.

[Fevrover]

43 minutes ago, jamescolin said:

Variety on the day of the match. Include other attractions to generate more people attending. I wonder if that has been considered.

They have the fan zone, drinks and food stalls, can't think of anything else they can do, bouncy castle been tried .

[Les Tonks Sidestep]

6 hours ago, Gooleboy said:

Bradford only had about 2,500 last week in the Cup against SL opposition.

Although you have to remember that the crowd was counted using the shared gate attendanceometer......

[Gooleboy]

Just now, Les Tonks Sidestep said:

Although you have to remember that the crowd was counted using the shared gate attendanceometer......

Yes, but it puts things in perspective regarding the Championship clubs.

[Maureen T-k]

21 hours ago, jamescolin said:

Variety on the day of the match. Include other attractions to generate more people attending. I wonder if that has been considered.

The new Blue Wall Voice group are ahead of the game with this and the new fanzone will be in operation on Sunday 

[jamescolin]

Cheers M-Tk

[tuutaisrambo]

On 13/02/2025 at 15:14, The Phantom Horseman said:

That's their point though ie that we are close to 2 SL teams so in theory have limited prospects of increasing their gates.

I've got 3 issues with this:

1) The best indicator for future SL crowds of Championship clubs is their gates when they are in Championship, NOT where that club is situated and their "catchment area". Most teams seem to roughly double their Championship crowds regardless of their "catchment area"...so Leigh went from say 4k to 8k and Wakefield will probably see a similar increase on their Championship crowds, whereas London went from about 1,500 to about 3,000. If catchment area was such a solid indicator, you'd expect London and Toulouse would have both been regulalrly bringing in five-figure crowds when they were promoted, but of course they didn't.

2) There's already a points system for attendances - why not use that (and actually audit it properly) rather than some flawed system of projections based on the local population?

3) The whole IMG system is meant to be there as an incentive for clubs to improve, a lot has been made about this, yet this is one area where it's impossible for clubs to do anything about their situation.

IMG system is simply there the keep the existing SL clubs safe

There is no way a side outside SL can get a better grade than a side in SL now the first lot of grading has been done.

It's only possible by throwing away money into a sport that doesn't make any.

The top scoring team outside SL (say it's Bradford) are simply waiting for a super league club to go bust otherwise they have zero chance of getting a higher score than a side already in SL.

The original idea of B Grade clubs being allowed to go up and down was ok but that is clearly too close to proper P&R.

The only good thing about this system is that we now have a proper semi pro championship without a full time team in there with a much more expensive squad.

Whoever wins the Grand Final this year is the best semi pro side.  
We've basically broken away from SL and provide an insurance policy for them in case one of their clubs goes bust.

[POR]

34 minutes ago, tuutaisrambo said:

IMG system is simply there the keep the existing SL clubs safe

But don't forget t they have already said success in the capital is high on their agenda when it comes to transforming the sport’s long-term prospects and that capturing the attention of people in London and developing the sport in the city is firmly among their priorities after their research showed it ranks better than traditional rugby league cities in areas such as participation and interest. Furthermore their 2025 grading has increased to 12.65 from 8.07 taking them from 24th  to 14th