2010 Crowd Watch

[Teddyboy]

I really don't get why people insist on trying to reduce Sydney-based teams. It would be really silly. A helluva lot of people follow the teams but just don't go to games.

I think it's a bit of where we're at currently.. The push for memberships is definitely going to boost crowds over the next 10+ years. If you get rid of any Sydney based team, you'll end up losing that market.

North Sydney is a prime example of that. We NEED to get the central coast playing at least 2-3 games / year at Nth Sydney. The corporate support out this way is massive. On top of that, I know many x Norths supporters.

It's our strength and our weakness. We need a team in CC, Central Qld, Perth & maybe another in NZ. That would get us to 20 and we'd then be able to play games in NSW, QLD, NZ weekly. That'd be ideal. The value of the Sky contract with a 2nd NZ team would double + local interest. I guess you'd have to get the warriors back to 'Auckland' Warriors in the next 2-3 years to allow it.

Too many Sydneys is screwing the sport and we need to move on.Look at all the fuss the so called Souths fans did when they where kicked out yet 10 years later Souths re playing to pitful crowds as are half the NRL teams.

 

[dogz08]

What was the crowd tonight?

 

[Chook Norris]

around 12,000~ @ Townsville

 

[Perth Red]

crowds are not significantly changing and haven't for 6 or 7 years. Not sure what the answer is but empty stadiums and crowds of less than 12k make the game a bit of a laughing stock, especially when we want to lay claim to be the biggest game in the country.

 

[Jono1987]

crowds are not significantly changing and haven't for 6 or 7 years. Not sure what the answer is but empty stadiums and crowds of less than 12k make the game a bit of a laughing stock, especially when we want to lay claim to be the biggest game in the country.

That's fine. If anything it shows that we NEED change to our current schedule. No Origin in the middle of the NRL season. C'mon NRL wake up, we should be playing trials>NRL regular season>NRL finals>SoO>Test matches. Until then the integrity of the current NRL season must be called into question.

 

[MsStorm]

If anything it shows that we NEED change to our current schedule. No Origin in the middle of the NRL season. C'mon NRL wake up, we should be playing trials>NRL regular season>NRL finals>SoO>Test matches. Until then the integrity of the current NRL season must be called into question.

Well put. My view is to play Origin at the end of the Season.
Many supporters don't want to go and watch their team play during the Origin period, especially when their squad is decimated as Storm's will be on Monday night...

Great scheduling by the NRL there.

 

[Hugh Mungus]

I agree with the thought that crowds suffer during Origin period - however I am not sure that moving Origin to the end of the year is the answer either.

I have always maintained that having Origin on the weekend with other representative matches is the way to go. Tonga v Samoa, PNG v Cook Islands, NZ v Fiji spread over the Friday and Saturday with Residents, U20 and OPen Origin on the Sunday.

7500 for the GF replay or 12k on Townsville is definitely not a good look for the game.

 

[clarency]

And make the season shorter. When a team like Parra (last season) can do so terribly and then have a string of wins at the end and go on to make the grand final it may give the impression that a lot of the games are simply meaningless... at least they come off like that.

 

[bobmar28]

crowds are not significantly changing and haven't for 6 or 7 years. Not sure what the answer is but empty stadiums and crowds of less than 12k make the game a bit of a laughing stock, especially when we want to lay claim to be the biggest game in the country.

Crowds of less than 12k in a city of 4.5 million looks bad. 12k in Townsville is fair enough. What's the population? 400k?

Halve the number of teams in Sydney and you get double the crowds. That would free up franchises for expansion.

 

[big_matt]

crowds are not significantly changing and haven't for 6 or 7 years. Not sure what the answer is but empty stadiums and crowds of less than 12k make the game a bit of a laughing stock, especially when we want to lay claim to be the biggest game in the country.

I got absolutely slated for saying this at the start of the season. We need to stop being defensive and get our heads out the sand and work out how to improve crowds instead of defending the dreadful crowds we are getting. Let's put away the constant weather excuses and work out as a code how to attract fans into the ground to support their teams.

 

[Panther_Daz]

Crowds of less than 12k in a city of 4.5 million looks bad. 12k in Townsville is fair enough. What's the population? 400k?

From Wikipedia:

Townsville is Australia's largest urban centre north of the Sunshine Coast, with a 2006 census population of 143,328,[3] and a 2008–2009 estimated population of 181,743.[

 

[DC_fan]

I really don't get why people insist on trying to reduce Sydney-based teams. It would be really silly. A helluva lot of people follow the teams but just don't go to games.

I think it's a bit of where we're at currently.. The push for memberships is definitely going to boost crowds over the next 10+ years. If you get rid of any Sydney based team, you'll end up losing that market.

North Sydney is a prime example of that. We NEED to get the central coast playing at least 2-3 games / year at Nth Sydney. The corporate support out this way is massive. On top of that, I know many x Norths supporters.

It's our strength and our weakness. We need a team in CC, Central Qld, Perth & maybe another in NZ. That would get us to 20 and we'd then be able to play games in NSW, QLD, NZ weekly. That'd be ideal. The value of the Sky contract with a 2nd NZ team would double + local interest. I guess you'd have to get the warriors back to 'Auckland' Warriors in the next 2-3 years to allow it.

I think most league followers, even those here in Sydney agree there is too many teams based here. The problem is that they cannot agree on which teams should go.

Its not just about crowds, its also about, maybe even more importantly so, sponsorship and corporate support. You cannot expect that a city even of Sydneys size can financially support 9 professional NRL teams. And thats not taking in to account all the other professional teams that play out of here. There is only so much money to go around.

You say that the push for membership is going to boost crowds. Yes it is. But like it or not, not everyone in Sydney follows or will follow league in the future. Other sports such as AFL are making big moves in to Sydney. They will take some fans away from our game.

For me you maxamise your potential. The best option for Sydney is to have about 5 teams playing out of it. Which 5 teams they would be is the difficult part.

AS for having twenty teams in the competition, well thats been tried before and it failed. The game doesn't have the depth of players to fill the needs of that many teams. I sometimes think we don't have the depth in quality of players for 16 teams. So I would hate to see the standard of the game if we had 20 teams.

 

[m0nty]

The push for membership is not going to increase crowds. It will increase revenue back to clubs, which is why it is very important. I don't think it will affect crowd numbers though, unless the club really drop their pants on prices, which would kind of defeat the point of memberships in the first place.

 

[chrisc101]

I think most league followers, even those here in Sydney agree there is too many teams based here. The problem is that they cannot agree on which teams should go.

Its not just about crowds, its also about, maybe even more importantly so, sponsorship and corporate support. You cannot expect that a city even of Sydneys size can financially support 9 professional NRL teams. And thats not taking in to account all the other professional teams that play out of here. There is only so much money to go around.

You say that the push for membership is going to boost crowds. Yes it is. But like it or not, not everyone in Sydney follows or will follow league in the future. Other sports such as AFL are making big moves in to Sydney. They will take some fans away from our game.

For me you maxamise your potential. The best option for Sydney is to have about 5 teams playing out of it. Which 5 teams they would be is the difficult part.

AS for having twenty teams in the competition, well thats been tried before and it failed. The game doesn't have the depth of players to fill the needs of that many teams. I sometimes think we don't have the depth in quality of players for 16 teams. So I would hate to see the standard of the game if we had 20 teams.

5 teams in Sydney? Are kidding? It is the one team one city teams which are struggling this year. Sydney is going great (apart from one obvious team), you just wait until the finals series comes with 6 Sydney teams.

 

[RockWheel]

I think most league followers, even those here in Sydney agree there is too many teams based here. The problem is that they cannot agree on which teams should go.

Its not just about crowds, its also about, maybe even more importantly so, sponsorship and corporate support. You cannot expect that a city even of Sydneys size can financially support 9 professional NRL teams. And thats not taking in to account all the other professional teams that play out of here. There is only so much money to go around.

You say that the push for membership is going to boost crowds. Yes it is. But like it or not, not everyone in Sydney follows or will follow league in the future. Other sports such as AFL are making big moves in to Sydney. They will take some fans away from our game.

For me you maxamise your potential. The best option for Sydney is to have about 5 teams playing out of it. Which 5 teams they would be is the difficult part.

AS for having twenty teams in the competition, well thats been tried before and it failed. The game doesn't have the depth of players to fill the needs of that many teams. I sometimes think we don't have the depth in quality of players for 16 teams. So I would hate to see the standard of the game if we had 20 teams.

How can you say 20 teams failed? Super League happened. Who knows what would have happened without Super League.

 

[Saint Doc]

Halve the number of teams in Sydney and you get double the crowds. That would free up franchises for expansion.

I hope you're kidding?? If peoples team got axed, you wouldnt just start following another team. People would be disillusioned and probably turn to other sports.

 

[Chook Norris]

no no no no no!

halve the number of teams.. halve the number of fans

ask yourself this. If your [team X] was cut, would you follow [team Y] instead? a fellow competitor?

as said.. you'd be disillusioned and disheartened

 

[hutch]

Crowds of less than 12k in a city of 4.5 million looks bad. 12k in Townsville is fair enough. What's the population? 400k?

Halve the number of teams in Sydney and you get double the crowds. That would free up franchises for expansion.

it doesnt work like this, anything who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves. halve the number of sydney teams and you lose literally hundreds of thousands of rugby league fans. crowds in sydney are improving despite one weekend which can be put down to a ridiculous schedule during rep season and one of the wettest weeks in sydneys history. lets work to keep improving crowds in sydney and everywhere else instead of simply calling to chop teams which would do more damage than good.

 

[Timmah]

The simplicity of some people thinking it's the way to go to just "cull Sydney teams" is alarming. Cutting off the nose to spite the face sort of stuff - you would lose so many fans to the game, many of them forever. Ridiculous. I'm not a traditionalist by any means but I can't see people supporting merged clubs a great rate, it's taken most of a ten-year period to get Saints and WT's right, and we all saw the failure NE was.

 

[Brutus]

How can you say 20 teams failed? Super League happened. Who knows what would have happened without Super League.

Fully agree.

I'm sick of people suggesting that certain things failed in the period of the mid-to-late 90's when they never acknowledge Super League's influence.