No I didn't, I called it a sht crowd which it was. Yeh weather was throwing it down but nib can hold a good 10k under cover at least so no excuse for less than 7k to show up. People are just soft and the supporter base and interest in the game is not high enough to sustain the poor times/weather/out of town teams/performances etc etc.
Where the game is at, 15k or over is ok to great depending on circumstances, under 15k is sht for a top tier sport regardless.
How many sub 15k crowds do you see in AFL or EPL or other top tier competitions around the world?
I don't think that the bold is really a fair assessment, I mean It's probably a factor but I don't think it's as significant as you are making out.
In this regard I can't really speak for Perth, Sydney, or anywhere else for that matter, but in Canberra's case the reason that the Raiders (and Brumbies, and other sporting events in general) get such low crowds hasn't got anything to do with a lack of interest or passion, interest and passion are certainly there, it's simply that the Raiders aren't very competitive within the marketplace for entertainment.
There're literally hundreds of other forms of entertainment (restaurants, Cinema, live shows, etc, etc) that are either a similar cost or significantly cheaper that are providing better or more unique experiences then the Raiders, for example for roughly the same cost as a ticketed Raiders membership one could go see 12 movies with 12 different dinners in a year and the experience would be significantly different each time, where as if they were to go to the Raiders once you've been to one game you've basically been to them all (apart from the odd classic game, winning season, etc), and even in saying that if we were to take into account the cost of actually attending a Raiders game for the average punter outside of just the price of admission it'd be significantly more expensive then your average outing to the movies and the comparative quality of the products you are receiving is way lower at the Raiders.
The problem that the Raiders (and I imagine the NRL in general) have is that they simply aren't competing with that, most people would prefer save their money to use on other things and still watch/listen to the game, and they aren't losing anything in not attending the game live cause their is very little in the live experience that you can't get through watching at home.
Traditionally the solution to this problem has been to continuously lower the cost of going to an NRL game, it doesn't really work to any significant degree and I don't think it'll ever work cause it doesn't matter how much you lower the prices it'll still never be able to compete with the movies, cause even if you could afford to make the cost of attending an NRL game the same going to the movies and catching a bite to eat (which I highly doubt you could do without the clubs running at a loss) an NRL game is still going to be roughly the same experience each time you attend and the quality of the products out side of games themselves are still going to be of a higher standard at the movies then at an NRL game.
I think that the only way that the NRL significantly and consistently increases crowds at their games is if they invest in the production value of NRL games, cause the only way that I think that the NRL can compete with the rest of the other forms of entertainment is if they invest in the entertainment and experience of a match day, and that added investment may mean that it becomes more expensive but people are willing to pay for a more expensive product so long as it's quality is worth the expense..
This post is pretty big now and I don't want to go on to much more so I'll just summarise ,and this may sound strange, that the NRL could learn a lot from large touring musical acts (particularly rock, metal, and hip hop acts) and things like the WWE and theater about crowd psychology, tacit crowd engagement, and the basic necessities of running a large technical event, and the NRL talking to people like that would do them the world of good without them carbon copying other direct competitors in the sports industry such as the AFL, which is a bad thing for heaps of reasons, but is best surmised as don't be followers unless you are willing to always be chancing the leaders, otherwise you'll just turnout as a poor mans versions of the thing you are copying.
I can't be bothered.
