2017 Crowd Watch

[Cumberland Throw]

brisbane members love 7pm kick offs.. said no one ever...

The suncorp games are about the only postive tv images the nrl has, and we have managed to f**k that up too

 

[dogz08]

you'd give perth red a run for his money for your negativity

 

[hutch]

If they are going to stick with a 6pm Friday game the crowd needs to be compensated. They should have massive discounts and promote it as the cheap family friendly game.

But they won't, we have never tried to grow our crowds or the sport in general so let's just put games on and hope people turn up.

 

[insert.pause]

29,370 @ Suncorp

Pretty good for a game against the raiders, especially considering the weather.

 

[user_nat]

Positive is that's the last 7pm game for us, people were still rocking up half an hour in.

 

[Warriors Fever]

10.5K for the Panthers pretty good considering the time-slot, opposition, a bit of wet weather and all. Seems a lot of their fans live in the close area making it possible. What did Souths and Roosters get?

 

[Emu01]

10.5K for the Panthers pretty good considering the time-slot, opposition, a bit of wet weather and all. Seems a lot of their fans live in the close area making it possible. What did Souths and Roosters get?

It got about 10,700. On a wet night

 

[Marley]

Just did a quick research and the Swans pulled 30K to every home game last year except for 2 (even one of them was 29K), including a Thursday night game in the middle of winter that got 42K.

Time slot is definitely not the problem for NRL. All the excuses here are "timeslots", "Sydney is hard to get around", "families cannot go" when the Swans are doing it and have been doing it for a while now. The A-league also get decent crowds, especially in Western Sydney.

Even the AFL game coming up Saturday night between Essendon and Hawthorn (a team getting passed a major scandal and another team that is going down) is estimated to have more than 85K people attending. People are travelling from all over the country to get to this game. That is because almost every place you go, the game is hyped as the Essendon players coming from suspension and they've scheduled them as the home game to showcase one of the biggest rivalries in the AFL. The hype alone could push it to 90K.
All of the hype has an effect on memberships as well, with Essendon getting 60K members before the season begins for the first time ever. And best believe that it isn't just the AFL, as Essendon has been working very hard to promote the game with some fixture assistance from the AFL. The AFL pretty much allowed Essendon to choose who their opponent was going to be for round 1, so not all the blame can be put on the NRL. Clubs have to be willing to promote their club more instead of just going through the motions. Spending money to promote each game will have a flow on effect in the future.

The AFL hype a regular season game like the NRL hype SOO and that is why the AFL attract massive crowds. Now I'm not saying that two Sydney NRL teams should pull 85K, but the NRL (and also the clubs) don't look like actively doing anything to promote the game both in Sydney and at a national level. I know a lot of people interstate that fly down for a big game at the MCG because of the hype as it is now seen as an event. That's what is missing in NRL.

 

[Canard]

Time slot is definitely not the problem for NRL. All the excuses here are "timeslots", "Sydney is hard to get around", "families cannot go" when the Swans are doing it and have been doing it for a while now. The A-league also get decent crowds, especially in Western

Living in Melbourne the one noticeable difference I find between the codes is all the free promotion the local media give the AFL and lack of any real negativity.

By the way, Western Sydney soccer crowds are far lower then those in Melbourne and even in Sydney "city" itself.

 

[CC_Roosters]

Seen the Thursday night game has been listed as "8,500 approx." on Wikipedia

What a disaster of a season

After 3 finished rounds
average = 14,466
Average Sydney crowd after 3 rounds and partial 4th round
average = 11,338

To put this in perspective when I kept track of Sydney crowds in past years the average was always between 14-15k over a season

Rd 5 is looking weak as well plus bad weather pending in north Qld means after next week the entire league average could be around 13.6k

 

[Marley]

Living in Melbourne the one noticeable difference I find between the codes is all the free promotion the local media give the AFL and lack of any real negativity.

By the way, Western Sydney soccer crowds are far lower then those in Melbourne and even in Sydney "city" itself.

I haven't followed A-league much recently so didn't realise the drop. Well at least the derbies have big crowds.

Yep that's true. We hear of NRL when a scandal arises whereas the AFL media regularly write fluff pieces for clubs to give a positive spin to pretty much anything. The Essendon scandal was made into how the players were hard done by and how brave they are to come back and play etc. That's only done to bring in the crowd and $$$ as Essendon are one of the biggest clubs

With the AFL set to break the record in attendance for a single round, that's all we hear about. The AFL of course deliberately fixtured round 1 to be this big though (expected to be 415K in a single round and about 220K in 3 games at the MCG), so they do try to work together with the media.

NRL have the tools to win back fans to bring regular crowds of 30-40K at least if they focus more on attendance than ratings because sooner or later, that will drop as well.

 

[Jizmos]

I must be the only guy on this forum that actually lives in Sydney!?

I can assure you there is plenty of media attention and promotion for the games.
No matter which radio station I flick it to (main promotion for attending), which free to air station newscast (always ads on channel 9 obviously) or which of my regular Foxtel channels I view you always hear and see promotion of all the games and what times they're on etc..

Anybody saying there's no promotion of any games are just making excuses.

 

[taipan]

Problems that will continue whilst ever we have Thursday nights,Friday 6pm,poor scheduling and the worst weather in March for decades.2018 NRL controls scheduling not the times.We'll see outcome.
Families are not going to risk getting their ankle biting kiddies soaked under etc current conditions.
Yet most Sydney clubs have record memberships.So far to date Penrith,Parra,Roosters,Tigers,Sharks,and the others are not far off theirs.

Comparisons with the Swans are not quite there.Most of the Swan's fans( you can throw a blanket over where they come from :Eastern Subs/Surry Hills/Paddo/Lower Nth Shore and inner west.They have a purpose built all seat stadium, mostly under cover, that helps one hell of a lot.Most of their scheduling is either family friendly or reasonable day wise.

I'll try and show some positivity I'm sick of the continual negativity, when Parra stadium is built their crowds will rocket ,more cover, ditto ANZ with more cover and a rectangular configuration.And suburban clubs if manly get their new stand up ,that will increase theirs.Throw in the NRL actually telling the TV stations ,this is our schedule ,like it or lump it,shoudl further assist.

 

[Warriors Fever]

So the crowd at Penrith at 6pm, against an out of town team was almost as big as the greatest rivalry in the NRL.
I know thursday night and wet but a few people were bagging the opening crowd at Shark Park, along with Belmore. What's happened with Souths fans do they not care anymore? if not why?

 

[BuderusIsaBeast]

What surprised me when I went to the Panthers vs Knights last night was ticket prices were exactly the same as any other game. Surely for timeslots like Friday 6pm and Thursday night they shouod have cheaper tickets

 

[Emu01]

I'm not reading anything into the crowds just yet, with the wettest start to march in 30 years in Sydney it's hard to draw any conclusions on crowds.

Let's wait and see how crowds go when and if this weather ever clears up in Sydney.

 

[Warriors Fever]

I'm not reading anything into the crowds just yet, with the wettest start to march in 30 years in Sydney it's hard to draw any conclusions on crowds.

Let's wait and see how crowds go when and if this weather ever clears up in Sydney.

We'll see how we're tracking once easter and ANZAC Day have passed. Obviously numbers have been disappointing so far.
It's a bit ridiculous some posters are saying these public holiday games will struggle to get over 20k, although if you told me at the start of the year the Panthers would get the same crowd against the Knights on a Friday at 6pm; as the Rabbits got against their arch rivals; you would be laughed out of the forum.

 

[PARRA_FAN]

Although the crowd last night wasn't great it certainly wasn't what I expected for a 6pm and horrible conditions during the week. Well done to those fans who turned up. Next week's 6pm game is at Allianz.

 

[adamkungl]

If the weather's a bit nicer im quietly confident Roosters v Manly at 6pm won't be a complete disaster.
The SFS is one of the few places suitable for the timeslot. I much rather it than a Thursday game, easy bus trip straight from the city.

Generally, Ticket prices and kickoff times are as much a problem as the day allocations. As has been pointed out above, you have worse timeslots and still charge the same premium for tickets. Why? Why not set kickoff for 7.30 sharp instead of the increasingly later slipping post-8PMs we're getting? Why are there only 2 proper day games out of 8 every week?

Why do the Roosters/SFS charge $30 a ticket when they can't get close to filling the stadium, and even more bafflingly why do they charge $45-60 for the good seats when people aren't even buying the dud ones?
Roosters are just an example here because of the bigger stadium, but it applies to everyone.
How many times do you see Penrith stadium packed on the edges but an awkward empty gap between the 30 and 50m lines.

Sydney's event culture (lack of) is such that people for the most part would rather stay home or at the pub than go out. See this not only in NRL but live music and other areas too. BUT they will go out if given a reason, rather than roadblocks. All sorts of rubbish events pull crowds - the key is they are events and they're in good locations at good times with cheap tickets and hype around them.

The NRL is putting up more roadblocks than reasons right now.

 

[Raiderdave]

very very meh at brookvale