That is an utterly odd correlation - that crowds should increase because they owned it themselves and had supposed extra money.
It speaks nothing as to where that money actually went and implies that they'd be perfect at running it independently from the get-go which is a ludicrous assumption in itself.
Calling 20k a not unrealistic goal is also a complete furphy, it was clearly aspirational and never likely to be achieved, there's never been an upswing in average crowds of that size where there's been no structural change to the comp (i.e. added or subtracted teams).
Generally if you set a goal in a strat plan you then set a strategy to achieve it with key kpi’s and dedicated investment to deliver. 2011 you could have blamed conflicted ownership, a merkin puppet ceo and the game having little money to invest in acheiv8ng it’s targets. 2013 onwards none of those impediments existed. Ironically crowds went backwards despite the advantages the game has had in the last 5 years.
Like I said an increase would have at least shown their ability to implement their strat plan, the fact crowds have reduced is the big issue, not that they didn’t quite reach 20k.
Pre strat plan and target being set
2009 16069
2010 16406
2011 16273
2012 16423
That’s 4 years with a crowd avg over 16k
IC takes over and new mega $ tv deal kicks in
2013 15940
2014 15905
2015 15074
2016 15214
2017 14919 (nearly a 10% drop from the high of 2012)
Even with your spin you can’t hide it was an abject failure on the nrl’s part in one of its key kpii areas of its strategic goals to grow crowds.
