Just finished reading all 26 pages of this interesting thread and lots of good points have been made. Being a supporter and a season ticket holder I personally think there's about 5 reasons as to why NRL crowds havent really improved in the last 5 to 10 years.
1. Ticket Prices
I've been a Souths club member (ticketed the last 3 years) and in my opinion ticket prices are wayyy too high. Being a reserved ticketed member I get into the games for about $25 a pop which isn't too bad but for those who arent members getting slugged $40-$50 at the gates for a Cat 1 reserved seats week in, week out for 12-15 games a season is a joke. At the end of the day it is just a 2 hour footy game.
Dont even start me with this "but we have cheap packages for families & cheap tickets to give everybody the opportunity to attend games" crap that Dave Smith pitches. Cheap packages to sit where??? behind the posts at Allianz or ANZ stadium to watch the big screen? No thanks I'd rather not waste my time and a lot of people feel the same.
In 2006 when Souths first moved to ANZ Cat 1 reserved tickets were $30, now they're $50 for the blockbuster games. How can they justify that much of an increase in 6-7 years? Most people that support the game week in week out haven't had a hourly wage increase from $30 to $50 an hour during that time.
Forget the grand final this year. Even though I do want my team to make the grand final it will be funny and interesting to see what happens to all those Diamond/Platinum tickets if both the Rabbitohs & Roosters choke and we see a Cronulla v Melbourne grand final.
Cat 1 Reserved should be no more then $20
General Admission for Adults no more then $10
Kids under 12, let them into the general admission area for free for gods sake
2. Crappy Schedule
For starters i must admit I actually enjoy coming home on a monday night & watching the last game of the round but lets face reality, anyone who hosts a home game on monday night takes a hit of up to 50% less people in crowd numbers. Souths v Roosters usually get a decent turnout but in 2012 when they had both games scheduled for monday night crowds for games were crap.
As said above too many night games and i can sympathize with the families being 1 of those who does attend almost every game when it hits 11 degrees on a friday/saturday night in homebush its bloody COLD. Too often i look around and I see the same families with their kids and the same kids every night game trying to rug up because they're freezing. Why should an average family be slugged well over $100 at night when they can just watch the game in front of a heater for free on TV? can anybody blame them? I dont. Thats the problem though when you're at the mercy of channel 9 and FOX.
3. Too many games played
Here's another problem. No matter how you look at we're killing our elite athletes and shortening their careers by an average of 3-5 years with the amount of games we play during the season particularly those who's teams make the finals, origin and test matches. I counted 1 year that Darren Lockyer played over 35 games in a season (2004 i think it was when we had the tri nations tour in England). That's absolutely brutal to the human body so is it any wonder why when someone like Inglis gets injured during the state of origin he then comes out and says this injury has been a "blessing in disguise". Players need and players enjoy that rest when they get even a minor injury. Again we're at the mercy of channel 9 and FOX here. In the NFL for instance they only play 16 games and most teams dont make the playoffs after. I think if we did play only 15 or 16 games then I bet crowds would be much bigger as the games would have more meaning. If you support any of the Sydney teams its really not a big deal if you miss a home game because there's almost another 20 games that you can attend during the season so the regular season games dont really have the same meaning as a state of origin game or an NFL regular season game would.
4. Getting away from the smaller grounds
No matter what point of view you hold in regards to this topic I'm not sure how in the long term teams like Manly who play out of brookvale oval, Penrith who play out of Penrith stadium and Cronulla who play out of shark park will be able to compete with the rabbitohs, Roosters, or Tigers(looking at playing more games out of ANZ next year) to name a few who play games out of ANZ/Allianz stadium. Whether you're for or against suburban grounds it's obvious that they're dying a slow death. Sure a lot of people dont like ANZ stadium but my mate is a mad manly supporter & he's dragged me along to a few Manly games this year and let me tell you that standing on that crappy hill when it's 11 degrees like its 1982 all game isn't much fun either. Sure getting 15,000 plus at Brookvale, Campbelltown or Kograh gets a bit of an atmosphere but unfortunately the NRL is just flogging a dead horse there because that's about as good as it will EVER get.
5. Too many teams playing the same style now
Someone brought up a very good point in this thread that no matter what game you watch they all just look the same now, some teams just do it better then others thats all. I personally hate the Dogs and as much as I hated watching them beat Souths last year I enjoyed watching them play period and I cheered for them in the grand final. It reminded me of parramatta back in 2009, how exciting were they to watch back then whether you supported them or not. I think because of the way the NRL reacts to every comment made its made the game exactly the same from week 1 all the way up to the grand final. Someone gets hit in the head, lets ban the shoulder charge. Someone gets hit harder in the knee during a tackle, lets now ban the third man in. Its dumb. A lot of people are bored and sick of it.
