Do you think that fans are going to feel any differently about going if we are shit than they were back then? I don’t as football is far more available on tv now. Depends just how many would be hard core from our increase from 7k to 30k would be.
I have always felt we have a hard core of 8k, no doubt that has increased since we came back to Brighton but I still think we’d struggle to get more than 12k who’d pay to watch a struggling team in the Championship or League 1.
If we got relegated and were competitive I doubt it would fall much at all as most fans love success
I don’t think we are much if any bigger than Reading, we are definitely not as tin pot though
We are much bigger than Reading, they averaged under 24,000 in the PL and that’s when they finished 8th, whereas we are looking to add more seats due to demand. In their promotion seasons they couldn’t average over 21,000.
We didn’t get an increase from 7,000. We had a lot more fans than that, most of them didn’t go to Withdean for every game, and if that’s the criteria needed to be a fan, then almost every football fan in England doesn’t cut it. Our away crowds were indicative of a bigger fanbase than the Withdean could provide. We had 44,524 supporters on our database in May 2013.
As has been said, when we were in the shit, we still had the biggest crowds in the league at The Goldstone.
I think we are 1 of only 2 clubs to have ever got a crowd over 30,000 in the 4th tier.
