"And Tonight's Official Pretendance is... "

[Gilliver's Travels]

Who gives a stuff? All you'll get is an embarrassingly silly number, seemingly drawn at random from a very large hat. We can safely leave ticket sales data to the accountants. But it happens everywhere nowadays.

Surely, most of us only want to hear the answer to one very simple question: How big is tonight's crowd?

Is that so difficult?

 

[Rugrat]

It was a novelty at first but beyond caring now. Would be nice to know when we broke records though but unlikely to happen

 

[Superphil]

How far out do you think the figure given is to the actual number on average?

The actual attendance is irrelevent anyway isn't it? The number of tickets sold hold far more importance for us as a club, and fans. FFP, financial obligation etc, all have more effect on the club and the fans than how many people bought a ticket and didn't bother turning up.

 

[HawkTheSeagull]

How far out do you think the figure given is to the actual number on average?

The actual attendance is irrelevent anyway isn't it? The number of tickets sold hold far more importance for us as a club, and fans. FFP, financial obligation etc, all have more effect on the club and the fans than how many people bought a ticket and didn't bother turning up.

About 1k really.

Only 2 games have we actually got a real attendance figure - Newcastle and Arsenal.

 

[Bozza]

The number of tickets sold hold far more importance for us as a club, and fans. FFP, financial obligation etc, all have more effect on the club and the fans than how many people bought a ticket and didn't bother turning up.

No they don't. All those things are measured in pounds sterling, not tickets sold.

I can see why we do it - simply if everyone else does, then we should be on that same level playing field for the sake of comparison, but it would be good if all clubs quoted both figures.

 

[Blue Valkyrie]

How far out do you think the figure given is to the actual number on average?

The actual attendance is irrelevent anyway isn't it? The number of tickets sold hold far more importance for us as a club, and fans. FFP, financial obligation etc, all have more effect on the club and the fans than how many people bought a ticket and didn't bother turning up.

Totally agree.

 

[TheMajor]

Attendances who cares?

 

[Thunder Bolt]

How far out do you think the figure given is to the actual number on average?

The actual attendance is irrelevent anyway isn't it? The number of tickets sold hold far more importance for us as a club, and fans. FFP, financial obligation etc, all have more effect on the club and the fans than how many people bought a ticket and didn't bother turning up.

I agree.

 

[Silverhatch]

Attendances who cares?

The football industry and players and their agents all care. We are the best supported club in the championship on tickets sold. That's worth knowing especially when the club are trying to increase ad/sponsorship revenues.

 

[Superphil]

No they don't. All those things are measured in pounds sterling, not tickets sold.

Yes, sorry, that's what I was getting at, tickets sold = £s. The more we sell over and above STs the better it is for the club. I guess if we know how many STs there are, a simple subtraction from the 'attendance' given on a matchday will indicate how successful they have been in selling full price tickets.

 

[TheMajor]

The football industry and players and their agents all care. We are the best supported club in the championship on tickets sold. That's worth knowing especially when the club are trying to increase ad/sponsorship revenues.

Are we? I didn't know that - thanks Silverhatch.

 

[Lincoln Imp]

Obviously all income is important whether it's profit from merchandising, naming rights or ticket sales. It's just that for over 100 years we have known how many people 'went down the Albion', and now we don't, and that's sad. That ancient stat about the greatest number of people to watch an Albion home game - against Fulham - is interesting. Personally I'd find a print out of aggregated data about gross ticket revenue less so.

 

[MattBackHome]

No they don't. All those things are measured in pounds sterling, not tickets sold.

I can see why we do it - simply if everyone else does, then we should be on that same level playing field for the sake of comparison, but it would be good if all clubs quoted both figures.

I don't wish to slag off Insider but I don't buy for a second his line that the reason for not releasing both figures is due to "not wanting to confuse fans" (I paraphrase). It really isn't that confusing.

They've admitted that 'actual attendance' is tracked and used as a KPI. Why not release it? I'm not talking about showing both on the big screen on the 70th minute - happy for them to use the 'pretendance' for that. Maybe just tweet the actuals afterwards or something.

 

[Brovion]

..

The actual attendance is irrelevent anyway isn't it? The number of tickets sold hold far more importance for us as a club, and fans. FFP, financial obligation etc, all have more effect on the club and the fans than how many people bought a ticket and didn't bother turning up.

I dunno. I hear what you're saying but I think it can make clubs look a bit silly, a bit North Korean, when they say "Today's match was a sell-out!" and there are vast swathes of empty seats as a load of STHs haven't bothered turning up because the season's effectively over or whatever.

EDIT: And to be pedantic (and I can be a terrible pedant) the figure is given as 'attendance', i.e. 'the number of people attending' and not 'the number of tickets sold'. 'Pretendance' is a great term for it!

 

[MattBackHome]

I dunno. I hear what you're saying but I think it can make clubs look a bit silly, a bit North Korean, when they say "Today's match was a sell-out!" and there are vast swathes of empty seats as a load of STHs haven't bothered turning up because the season's effectively over or whatever.

EDIT: And to be pedantic (and I can be a terrible pedant) the figure is given as 'attendance', i.e. 'the number of people attending' and not 'the number of tickets sold'. 'Pretendance' is a great term for it!

It's also a really good barometer of engagement - the more people turn up, the more likely they are to renew their STs and blow their wads all over the club shop tills. Or rather, blow their wads INTO the club shop tills.

Like I said - we know it's something they are already looking at - just not sure precisely why they are so protective about the real figure.

 

[seagullsovergrimsby]

I don't wish to slag off Insider but I don't buy for a second his line that the reason for not releasing both figures is due to "not wanting to confuse fans" (I paraphrase). It really isn't that confusing.

They've admitted that 'actual attendance' is tracked and used as a KPI. Why not release it? I'm not talking about showing both on the big screen on the 70th minute - happy for them to use the 'pretendance' for that. Maybe just tweet the actuals afterwards or something.

Releasing the actual attendance figure into the public domain could affect tender processes etc. How many other clubs release this data into the wild to allow comparisons with official attendances ?

 

[supaseagull]

We always have a little side bet on the attendance in WSU...YES WE KNOW HOW TO PARTY IN THE ROOST!

The person who wins gets to pick someone from the North Stand to eject

 

[mikeyjh]

How far out do you think the figure given is to the actual number on average?

The actual attendance is irrelevent anyway isn't it? The number of tickets sold hold far more importance for us as a club, and fans. FFP, financial obligation etc, all have more effect on the club and the fans than how many people bought a ticket and didn't bother turning up.

Actually, isn't the actually yield from those ticket sold the only really important factor? I only recently found out that when Derby were averaging in the high 20Ks we had one of the lowest yields per seat in the championship - Too higher a proportion of STH you see.....

 

[leigull]

Looks much better to sponsors etc when we can say we have an average of over 25k a game perhaps?

 

[MattBackHome]

Releasing the actual attendance figure into the public domain could affect tender processes etc. How many other clubs release this data into the wild to allow comparisons with official attendances ?

Fair point - though I'd suggest that monitoring, publishing and explicitly showing improvements to the actual figure could only have a positive effect on commercials. We're in such a strong position attendance wise, and I just think that being upfront would help us to leverage that position even further.

Re: other clubs - I honestly don't know. But again I don't think that is reason in itself to be clandestine.