Brisbane Roar attendances a symptom of promotion failure

I like your suggestion, but you're blaming the FFA again for something beyond their control. The FFA doesn't control tickets for A-League home & away matches, so how can they give away tickets to an event they don't organise? You need to suggest th free tickets to the management team at Brisbane Roar. I think Brisbane and a few other teams did try this option during the Christmas period and it definitely had a positive impact.

Why doesn't the FFA look at what the AFL does? My 7 year old son did a semester of Auskick at his school and instead of being charged the near $400 I got charged for his soccer this year, we were charged $35. Fir that he got a backpack, footy, hat and all sorts of other goodies. But on top of that we have had free tickets to at least 3 AFL games. The FFA need to get the kids onboard. It's the secret to getting the mums and dads to the games. My son loves soccer but also likes going to the AFL now as well. If the Brisbane crowds are so poor, give a heap of tickets away to local juniors.

There are many more aspects to address than those raised in this article. The majority of fans at a match are home fans. Then you have the away supporters, those who live in the away team's area and have travelled to attend the match. Not many, unless only a short travel distance is involved. Add to this figure those who have migrated from the away team area to the home team area, and still have allegiance to the visiting team. Once again, not many!. For many years, interstate migration has been to Queensland, not from Queensland, but one would need to study interstate migration patterns in detail to determine the effects.. I will leave that to the statisticians, but I suggest that, on a per capita basis, fewer Queenslanders migrate to Sydney and Melbourne than from other A-League home bases. Outside of the home and away fans, who is likely to attend a match because the visiting team has a far better than average history? Precious few, I would suggest. Another aspect to consider is disposable income. In the past two to three years, the downturn in the mining boom has surely affected the disposable income of at least some fans. The suddenly unemployed mine workers, many of whom are FIFO. are not the only ones hit by this downturn. So are the workers employed in the supply and support sectors, most of whom are based in capital cities,. Overtime and bonuses are adversely affected, resulting in less money being available for trips to A-League matches. If I was confronted with such financial challenges, I would stop going to Suncorp, and keep subscribing to Foxtel. I would enjoy much, much better food and drink, and get to bed earlier as I would not be dealing with travel time of 5 hours plus. I am retired, so I can still go to Suncorp for the atmosphere. But if I was not retired? Then we have an undeveloped football culture, because the A-League is still in its infancy. Compare the costs of attending an A-League match with those of, say, League 2 in the UK. Was there last October, and paid twice the Suncorp admittance to enjoy facilities little better than third world standards. Admittedly, the playing surface was far superior to that in Brisbane, and the playing standard, as a generalisation, similar to A-League. But value for money, we are so much better off here than in many other places Yes, FFA and A-League clubs could invest more money, time, and effort into promoting the game. But would such investments be productive? From my experiences, for every great promotional idea, there are at least ten, if not twenty, duds. So very easy to "lose the lot". Whilst our present situation is far from perfect, I believe that under the present set of circumstances, it should be a case of "softly, softly".

dinoweb - your calculations don't match those of jbinnie and waz. Where did you get your numbers from?

I don't understand this article. It's probably the worst I've read.

Jeff, you say the question "why away crowds for Brisbane are lower than other teams" is a good one .... well here's the average crowds for six teams: AU 11,633 CCM 10,983 BR 10,682 NJ 10,662 PG 10,618 Nix 10,341 So is it a good question when the averages are the very similar? The only difference occurs between the 4 Melbourne and Sydney teams who of course have local derbies - surely no one is questioning why their away attendance is higher?? So is it a good question??

This article asks a very good question - why are away crowds for Brisbane are lower than other teams. Wellington is the team that traditionally has been the lowest in away crowds. In their case, the reason may have been that until last season, their form on the road was a bit inconsistent. And Brisbane for quite a number of seasons now has been one of the stronger teams. I do not think there is any single reason for Brisbane's away attendances. It is most likely a statistical quirk. I am probably not the best person to offer an opinion. I've seen every club play both live in the stadium, and on TV. I do not have any clubs I would not choose to watch, especially if they are playing a team that I follow. This week, I will watch Wanderers v Central Coast Mariners on Friday night (on SBS 7.30pm), and on Saturday night I will be watching Hakoah Sydney City East v Apia Tigers (NPL match of the week - no broadcast) My point is that football fans will watch football if they can. It's not about which team is visiting this week.

jb: I unfortunately didn't see your reply earlier on otherwise I wouldn't have bothered replying myself (in fact I nearly said "this is something jb could provide some insight on" lol). I think we're on the same page - the basis for the authors argument is badly flawed, if you normalise the attendances by taking out derby/grudge matches it shows a truer picture. The question of how does the HAL grow attendances is still necessary, and how do Roar play their part is still valid, but if you follow the logic here the "problem" is Roar draw a lowers average away attendance than nearly all other clubs, which is not correct, so any "solution" would therefore be fixing a non-existent problem. But if you accept the statistics show grudge and derby matches positively impact home and away average attendances (which is the conclusion I draw from this data) then if you want to impact the problem of low average crowds you need to create grudge matches (Roar/Sydney isn't one today but could it be?) and/or when expansion comes it supports the FFAs stance of "fish where the fish are" which might be better explained by "fish close to where other clubs are fishing" and rules out regional expansion, Canberra, Geelong (probably) and The Gong .... if you want to increase average away crowds for Roar the data says give Brisbane a second team. (Or a third in other city's or in Perth or in Adlelaide even?!?).

The FFA insisted on Suncorp over Ballymore at the beginning of the HAL which was probably the only time the government would/could fund upgrades and the moment has been lost. The QRUs financial woes have mirrored those if Roar and I've always thought there'd be more in it for the two if they cooperated, shared Ballymore stadium and training facilities. But past management in both sides have behaved like idiots as you will probably know. The only viable option I can see is the greenfield land out by the airport, much of it is zoned for light industrial and commercial and it's where the Lions are considering putting their T&A ... a 25k stadium there would be good for road and rail but then we get in to the cost of building in Australia - $200m is the predicted price which just isn't happening unless a new NRL club appears

Waz Thanks for that info, clears things up somewhat regarding the Roar and Queensland at least. On Ballymore having been there a few times for Roar trial matches, size wise location(maybe transport could be better) ideal, facilities old school, needs serious upgrade in that respect. In fact when the Bakries took over with their countless billions, I had visions of them taking over Ballymore from the QRU and upgrading it to a modern football only stadium for the Roar along the lines of the MLS. Of course we know all too well about the Bakries countless billions today, just ask Roars laundry man, so were stuck with a far from ideal large stadium, envying Adelaide & Perth for their more realistic sized stadiums. We can only dream at the moment of any A-League club having their own exclusive stadium, it offers multiple benefits for growth as the MLS has discovered.

Waz - When calculating averages and faced with derby/grudge inclusions it is a rather simple exercise to subtract the derby crowds and divide the remainder by the remaining number of games. Take Melbourne City for instance, their home average gate over the season is sitting at 11,000. (ie 143,000 divided by 13.) Remove the derby crowds from that figure, 49,000, and divide the total by 11 and that average drops to 8550. So realistically what figure can be allocated to City as their true "pulling" power???. As previously stated elsewhere one of City's biggest "non derby" attendance was 10,000 against Sydney FC held on 2/1 perhaps proving that "holiday time" does appear to have a certain attraction in pulling fans to games. Despite playing some very good football and chasing the title their last 4 home games City have not cracked 5 figures. Cheers jb.

Towser, we don't have stadium costs for comparison unfortunately although it's widely accepted that Perth and Queensland have the worst stadium deals in the country compared to NSWs/VIC. This may have something to do with volume of course. But actual stadium capacity is not a direct relation to cost eg the rental cost for Suncorp stadium (52,500) is the same as the rental cost of Robina stadium (28,000). There's no doubt in my mind that Roar would benefit from having their own stadium MLS style but that's the key, it would have to be their own stadium. Ballymore stadium is the only boutique rectangular stadium that's even close to HAL standard which is owned by the council and managed by QRU, the cost to rent that stadium is the same as Suncorp - in fact it would most likely be more expensive to rent Ballymore because there are less F&B outlets than at Suncorp which provide a significant rebate back to the club that hires it. So for now Roar are locked into Suncorp and are in the process of renegotiating their contract which hopefully will be much improved

To be honest I wasn't sure what to make of it when I first read it, then work got in the way. Then the comments couldn't make up their mind whether this was about Roars home or away attendance. Then I looked at the data and saw: AU 11,633 CCM 10,983 BR 10,682 NJ 10,662 PG 10,618 (http://www.ultimatealeague.com/records.php?type=att&season=AP) The figures above only resemble the authors figures when you add in the effects of finals series matches which Roar have basically had home finals in all but 2 matches for the past 5 seasons which is when my head exploded - the difference in average away attendance is driven by (a) how many away matches you have in finals and/or (b) whether you have derby/grudge matches. That's a no sh*t Sherlock moment for me ..... of course that makes the difference :) Then there's an underlying assumption that Roar are a successful team who play good football therefore away attendances should be higher. Well for the first five seasons we were nothing special and regularly under performed so an analysis of average away attendances for Roar in the first five seasons v the second five seasons might have provided some insight but that was too hard for me lol. So I'm not sure what this article was trying to do but it's a pretty flawed analysis from my perspective.

Good point. But I guess it's about all venues, not Roar. I think FFA can be more innovative, without necessarily spending lots of $, With TV rights, for example, can they not consider selling local rights to FTA? at least for some teams, and still sell the Pay TV separately nationwide. So Roar home games could be viewed in Brisbane on FTA (& pay), and Glory in Perth, etc. At least for a couple of seasons. Some of their initiatives this year have been good, like family days and double headers with the W League. If they put a lot of effort into promoting the game, I'm convinced it will grow. It's a great product.

FUS hates us, really bad.

Really ! Would that be Roller Derby ? - absolutely loved that on TV as a kid ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9CHAMbfZ6A

Another piece on attendances in Brisbane. I can scarcely contain my excitement.

Was waiting for you to comment Waz! What took you so long?

this is an article and lacks sufficient data and anslysis to make real sense. It has the same logic as "all cats have 4 legs, therefore all dogs must be cats" (which essentially is a way of saying the analysis is lacking). - Roars aggregate away attendance is 1.46 million (that figure excludes finals which is reasonable as they will distort the numbers). - Roars aggregate figure is remarkable similar to most of the other HAL clubs, bigger than some, smaller than some but basically in the same ball park (it's 50k less than Mariners and 100k less than Adelaide) - there are two teams that stand out on aggregate figures: Victory (1.76m) and SFC (1.86m). Adelaide are next best at 1.57m - what do those three have in common? Derby matches for the biggest two yes, but then all three have matches that get big marketing (Reds v Victory "the original rivalry" and of course "the big blue"). That would explain the larger aggregate crowds. Okay, so then there's the question of average crowds ... where again there is a similar pattern: - Roars average away attendance is 10,682 (again excluding finals) is similar to all but 5 clubs. In fact only Mariners are higher at +300 and they have the F-whatever derby match - the 5 bigger averages are WSW (15.6k), SFC (13.6k), Victory (12.9k), City (12.5k) and AU (11.6k). Four out of these five have derby matches, the fifth (AU) have an established grudge match. So what do we make of this? 1. Roars average away attendance is similar to all the clubs that don't have a grudge/derby match. 2. The 4 Clubs that have a derby match top the average away attendance table. Therefore derbies increase average away attendance. 3. AU sit midway between those that don't have a derby match and thise that do. But AU do have a grudge match v MVFC Conclusions: 1. Derby/grudge matches increase average away attendances. 2. The five clubs that don't have one have similar away averages. 3. Roar haven't established a natural rivalry eg v SFC 4. The F3 derby is failing to attract above for average crowds. 5. The FFA have got it right - introducing a second team into a city improves crowds, home and away. 6. All cats have 4 legs, but all dogs aren't cats. The analysis in this article has been p*ss poor. My 12 year old does better!

Exactly. Though as I tried to point out, it's not my idea - I'm just borrowing it for the sake of this discussion.