Re: Salford's tiny fan base: how can the club survive? : Mon Feb 11, 2019 8:20 am  

Put into context; Castleford’s game was against Catalan’s, but I take the point that the onus is on the home team to fill their ground.

Re: Salford's tiny fan base: how can the club survive? : Mon Feb 11, 2019 9:43 am  

Him wrote:

Despite the person making the post there is of course a pertinent point about attendances. How clubs survive on crowds under 4/5k I don’t know.

The average crowd so far this season is almost bang on 9,000. Which doesn’t sound too bad and is probably an increase on the previous year’s end of season average but we’ve had probably 3 or 4 of the seasons bigger games already with Warrington & Wigan v Leeds, Saints v Wigan and the Hull derby.

Avg home crowd:
St Helens - 16,508
Hull KR - 12,100
Warrington - 11,807
Hull FC - 11,244
Wigan - 11,230
Catalans - 9,211
Castleford - 7,494
Wakefield - 5,815
Huddersfield - 5,387
Salford - 3,236
London - 2,149
Leeds - N/A

It’s disappointing crowds for Wigan, Huddersfield, Wakefield and Cas.
Obviously Salford and London are low but it’s kind of expected. You would have hoped Wakefield and Cas might have been able to push their crowds up a bit and Wigan’s was very poor.
Warrington and Hull’s are ok and Hull KR’s obviously is very good but will have to see how they go the rest of the season.

If the likes of Cas and Wakey are to progress and continuously challenge at the top they need to be getting 8k minimum every week.

Although the Wakefield crowd wasn't huge, it was the highest attendance for this fixture since 2013.
Typically this fixture generates around the 5k mark, so 5800+ is a modest improvement.

I love how you excuse Salford and London as being expected and as others have suggested, you may need to keep this one running a bit longer.
KR's attendance was superb but, they wont be hitting that number till next season and Cas, will probably improve on their attendance in every game, apart from any Thursday night fixtures.

Re: Salford's tiny fan base: how can the club survive? : Mon Feb 11, 2019 10:24 am  

Thought Salford attendance was reasonable in view of the number of opposition fans.

Will improve as they play clubs closer to home and even more so if they continue to win.

Re: Salford's tiny fan base: how can the club survive? : Mon Feb 11, 2019 11:08 am  

Trinity’s home attendance v Saints last season was 5231. This season it was 5815, an increase of 11% but I
don’t know what this ‘proves’.

Re: Salford's tiny fan base: how can the club survive? : Mon Feb 11, 2019 11:12 am  

you can slate Jean off all you like, fact is 3k is not enough to sustain a superleague full time team. especially without a rich backer. Salford regardless of being top (after 2 frigging games for god sake) they need to double that attendance and more every week otherwise how can the afford to keep paying the staff, two things will happen the will go into administration or will have to offload half the squad. it will be interesting to see if they can break 6k or even 5k on Sunday with Leeds in Town who no doubt will bring 2k at least for a Sunday afternoon game.

Re: Salford's tiny fan base: how can the club survive? : Mon Feb 11, 2019 11:37 am  

rollin thunder wrote:

you can slate Jean off all you like, fact is 3k is not enough to sustain a superleague full time team. especially without a rich backer. Salford regardless of being top (after 2 frigging games for god sake) they need to double that attendance and more every week otherwise how can the afford to keep paying the staff, two things will happen the will go into administration or will have to offload half the squad. it will be interesting to see if they can break 6k or even 5k on Sunday with Leeds in Town who no doubt will bring 2k at least for a Sunday afternoon game.

Salford's biggest crowds will be for their "derby" games against Wigan, Wire and Saints.
They were paying colossal rent at the AJ Bell a couple of seasons back and I hope for their sake that this was re-negotiated or, in the medium/ long term they are in deep, deep mire.
However, good on them for winning their first couple of games and their game against Leeds will be an interesting match up and if Leeds were to lose this one, the "faithful" will start getting restless and wishing that Brian Mac was back in charge (already).

Re: Salford's tiny fan base: how can the club survive? : Mon Feb 11, 2019 12:24 pm  

wrencat1873 wrote:

However, good on them for winning their first couple of games and their game against Leeds will be an interesting match up and if Leeds were to lose this one, the "faithful" will start getting restless and wishing that Brian Mac was back in charge (already).

Sure you’ll get a few who panic at the first sign of things not going well but I think on the whole the fan base understands how the fixture list has panned out and was always going to be tricky.

Fans of those other clubs hoping to push for top 5, throughout the season how many points do you think you’ll pick up away to Wire, Wigan and Saints? You’d hope you could pick up a surprise 1 win but realistically you’d wouldn’t expect any points from those fixtures....only difference is for other teams those 3 fixtures will be spread across the season (and some will have to visit twice because of loop fixtures, Leeds don’t) whilst Leeds have got them all at the start.

Fair play to Salford for their start and they may well beat us this week with their momentum but if they started with Wire and Wigan away and Leeds had Hudds away and London at home then we’re probably swapping places in the table give or take points difference.

Re: Salford's tiny fan base: how can the club survive? : Mon Feb 11, 2019 12:55 pm  

Budgiezilla wrote:

When I saw the post, I knew who had started it without looking......

If you showed me a million forum posts with only one Jean post among them, I reckon I could pick it out with ease.

Re: Salford's tiny fan base: how can the club survive? : Mon Feb 11, 2019 1:02 pm  

If you want crowds to be better, how about not bleeding playing games on Thurs and Fri nights across the M62? But we won't do that because it's about making it inconvenient as possible so that fans watch on TV instead of getting off their backsides and going to games, therefore swelling the TV viewing figures so it looks great when it comes to renewal time.

If the RFL and SL really wanted the best of both worlds they'd make it so there would be 1 TV Game on Thurs/Fri or Fri/Sat and the rest played on Sunday. Maximum TV viewing, and other games on a weekend when most people are free and can make longer journeys.

Re: Salford's tiny fan base: how can the club survive? : Mon Feb 11, 2019 1:02 pm  

The money from Sky for each club should cover the basic Salary Cap. So by skimping on all the backroom stuff, you could build a good squad on a low crowd as shown by Wakefield.