Increased crowds

Again i say about existing, lapsed and new fans, a database of existing season ticket holders exists. so look at categories. season ticket holders, non season ticket holders but regulars, casual attendees, new people.

each of these, and others have individual motives to watch city. target promotions to each of these and you increase footfall.

The key is in the incentive, what rocks a season ticket holder may not entice the casual fan.

understand your audience and potential audience and you can start marketing towards them.

I can't even work out what rocks me as a season ticket holder.

Win and they will come. Fans are fickle. Hemel not bringing a coach now so that 800 crowd might have to wait.

It isn't just that though, is it? Many football clubs in towns and cities our size have better crowds that keep coming even though they don't keep winning. What is it that Exeter City, for instance, who have a population 20% bigger than us but historically have always had crowds 4 or 5 times the size of ours. It isn't because of the bigger stadium - it is rarely full. They have a reasonably successful rugby club now to compete with.

Of course, they have always been a league team apart from when they dropped into the Conference - when their crowds hardly dropped much. However, this brings in the odd circular issue that you have with the success = crowds conundrum. It is always said that crowds get bigger, the more successful a club is. However, it is also said that you need bigger crowds to bring in the funds to make a crowd successful.

Of course, there are outliers such as Wimbledon - smaller population than us and arguably more rival sports clubs - and Wigan - just larger than us - who have bucked this conundrum with an existing supporter base and sustained success and a sugar Daddy respectively. However, everyone else has to buck the crowd size/success conundrum.

It isn't just about winning either. Exeter City don't keep winning but still the crowds keep coming back even when dropped out of the league.

Luton Roman wrote:Win and they will come. Fans are fickle. Hemel not bringing a coach now so that 800 crowd might have to wait.

Perhaps, perhaps not, but I think the issue we have and that is overlooked when people say a winning team will bring people in; is that we have a tiny fanbase.

So we could win all the games from now till the end of the season and regain some missing fans, but given huge swathes of Bath have no idea we exist the crowds would barely increase. I say this as a person who played youth football, played football in Bath, and genuinely didn't know the club existed until I was 16 or so, and I was only introduced to the club by an existing fan, I could have easily sailed on for years not knowing the club existed.

Therefore, to increase crowds long-term (or even sustain them, as I am rapidly approaching 30 and reckon I am still within the youngest 80 in the crowd each week) some how we would need to increase the exposure of the club within the area, and encourage more people to visit.

Jon_BOA's exactly right - a winning streak might lift our crowds from 500 to 750 but it's not going to push it on to 1000, 1250, 1500 - winning football only brings down people who are already aware of the club and the non-league experience.

Winning is important, but we want to get to a point where crap football brings in 800-1000 and winning football brings in 1000-1200, or more.

EDIT: And of course the danger of thinking "it's all about winning" is that you start spending money you don't have on players, because hey it will pay off when we start winning right? Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

I think we need to get to a level were crap football brings in 1000+ as we can never rely upon winning football

It is the level of public relations that brings people in. If we are winning, and no-one knows the club exists, the crowds won't increase. We have seen some good games so far, but the increased attendances must be almost entirely due to the promotion of the Bid, its regular weekly articles in the Chronicle, local radio, viral videos re Eric Cantona, etc. Thanks to the Bid for this, especially Steve Bradley. It just shows how you can improve things dramatically via a proper relationship with the press and broadcasters.