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After attracting 28,000 fans to their debut AFL game at the Gabba in Round 2, the Gold Coast Suns saw their home crowd drop down to just 12,111 in Round 4. It was an alarming drop fuelled by a variety of factors. One of those factors was obviously the on-field performance and you wonder how bad it could get if the results don’t improve.
Now firstly, before I ponder engraving this club’s tombstone or anything to that effect, I will acknowledge both games were in Brisbane not the Gold Coast.
The Suns have approximately 12,500 members and they’ll be able to count on their loyalty a bit more down on the Gold Coast when they start playing in a more convenient location at Metricon Stadium from Round 10 onwards.
Interestingly, it was revealed only 6000 of the club’s 12,000 members actually made the trip to the Gabba to attend the Round 2 game.
That’s an interesting figure to interpret, as it also shows the incredible pulling power which Gold Coast’s debut game had in Brisbane.
Attracting 27,914 supporters to the Round 2 game against Carlton certainly exceeded expectations and was an impressive start. That figure makes the Round 4 attendance against Melbourne look poor, which perhaps is a little unfair.
Gold Coast’s debut AFL game had a sense of occasion and novelty about it and such a figure was never going to be repeated, particularly against a team like the Demons.
However, there’s no denying, losing more than half of your crowd isn’t ideal.
It’s hard to measure what contributed to that crowd drop, in reference to those aforementioned factors, but without doubt people would have been turned off by the team’s on-field performance.
While many expected the Suns to lose to Carlton, few foresaw such a margin. The 20-goal defeat wasn’t a good look. The game wasn’t good viewing either. It was brutally lopsided.
Of course, a lot of the Brisbane people who went to the Round 2 game but didn’t turn up in Round 4 won’t be in the Suns’ key market but it’s an alarming drop-off to consider.
This is particularly relevant in the context of Queensland where AFL isn’t number one.
It shows the influence a winning team makes to crowds… or at the very least a competitive team.
Unfortunately for the Suns, at the moment, the team winning a game appears a long way off. Being competitive doesn’t seem around the corner either, as they take baby steps in AFL ranks.
There’s no doubt the way the AFL have organised their expansion clubs this time means the youthful Suns should be a strong side in a few years, but in the meantime there’s a few concerns about keeping crowd numbers in five digits.
Given they are a new club to the AFL, there’s certainly a novelty about their existence on the Gold Coast and that should last among the local community for some time yet.
But copping hiding after hiding won’t help preserve that ‘novelty factor’ which will be important in the time before they become competitive. Finding new ways to generate buzz in the meantime will be important for the Suns.
A fortnight ago Suns CEO Travis Auld said only 5000 tickets remain for the club’s first game at the 25,000-capacity Metricon Stadium against Geelong, along with their Round 18 blockbuster against Collingwood, which is fantastic.
Both those games certainly have appeal with the Gary Ablett factor against Geelong in the Suns’ first-ever game on the Gold Coast and the reigning premiers factor against the well-supported Magpies. You can understand the attraction of those games.
But it’s games like the Round 12 clash with North Melbourne or the Round 22 clash with Adelaide which will worry the AFL, particularly if the Suns’ on-field woes don’t improve.
Nevertheless, Auld is hoping the Gold Coast public are sympathetic to the side’s cause and can see the long-term plan.
He said after the Carlton loss: “(People) realise it is going to be a journey and they want to buy into that.”
Maybe, but the problem is I’m not sure people expected the journey to start so poorly.
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