Crowds

[Midfielder]

I am a Football fan from pre NSL days thu NSL and the A-l...

WSW was the shinning light of the A_l and its future....

Fully understand the issues WSW fans have been put thu....

However whats keeping your crowds away as they still turn up for the SFC match...

Moreover how do you get them back....

Is it the style of play

Past management decisions

Current management decisions

Over policing

????

 

[Tranquilo]

53 minutes ago, Midfielder said:

I am a Football fan from pre NSL days thu NSL and the A-l...

WSW was the shinning light of the A_l and its future....

Fully understand the issues WSW fans have been put thu....

However whats keeping your crowds away as they still turn up for the SFC match...

Moreover how do you get them back....

Is it the style of play

Past management decisions

Current management decisions

Over policing

????

 

Bandwagoners will always turn up for derbies but that's where their interest in going to matches ends. Would be interesting to see if they still watch A-League via 10 bold or Paramount plus or are more the casual fan. I know the last derby being shown on prime tv at 7pm did attract a lot of new viewers and that has sparked an interest in them wanting to attend an A-League game.

Winning will help get at least a quarter of the fans back, the rest unfortunately it's much more deeper being burnt too much over the years with the same issues with the club.

[Potkorok]

The other thing is, much as Commbank stadium is lovely and all, it is prob 10k too big for regular games - I know, I know, when we were going great before Parra was knocked down we were all clamouring for more capacity, but in all honesty around 18-20k is prob the A league sweet spot for regular home and away fixtures - that way the atmosphere is better (the old Parra, for all its age and limitations, honestly had a great atmosphere with 10k in) and people experience it, spread the word and invite people to experience it - then you start getting 15k+ in and it builds itself.

But of course that isn't to deny that our appalling form, over-policing of active support and a sense from many that the club isn't really all that bothered by mediocrity leads to a real drop-off in attendance.

 

[sonar]

At the old Parra you had around the ground seating for fans. 

The place had atmosphere.

The problem with CommBank is the stupid corporate section on the western side taking all the seats.

Kills the atmosphere imho.

 

[immortalshogun]

Fans of sport in Sydney are very very fickle and this is in every code. Go to a NRL game where Parramatta or the Tigers are rock bottom and you’ll get low crowds as well. 

We have a core fanbase of around 10k that show up to games. Obviously down from our early days when we winning quite consistently and we were a hot ticket. A decade of being mediocre would turn away even the most diehard fan and its going to take more than 4 games of good play to bring the casuals back. Bet ya if win the GF or the Australia Cup, you’ll see heaps more WSW kits around the place

[mack]

Highest WSW non-derby crowd is 17,091. The first game there vs the mariners in 2019. Then 14.2k vs the Roar in Round 4. After that there's a handful of games 11 to 12k.

[Legionista]

Errrr.

Cost of living.

[EmMac]

4 hours ago, sonar said:

At the old Parra you had around the ground seating for fans. 

The place had atmosphere.

The problem with CommBank is the stupid corporate section on the western side taking all the seats.

Kills the atmosphere imho.

 

While boiling the actual supporters in the heat of the Australian summer 🤦

[matty]

3 hours ago, EmMac said:

While boiling the actual supporters in the heat of the Australian summer 🤦

Mate and I are ready to build a 30 foot high shed style roof extension onto the corporate roof to block that damn sun 

[Smoggy]

Always said the long term aim for the club….like next 30 years should be to somehow move to our own home. You look at some of the redeveloped or new stadiums from league 1 down in England and they are basic…but pretty good. I went to York City’s new ground last year and it’s a fantastic what they have done and thought them something similar would do us.

The issue will always be land value of course. But as the club matures I have always thought it should be an aim to leave Parra Stadium one day.

Not sure we will live to see it.

Edited Tuesday at 07:50 PM by Smoggy

[Sithslayer1991]

I think its just lack of confidence in the team. The feeling isn't the same and I am not sure how many people actively follow the club from their homes. ONce the fans fall off its hard to get them back in.

[MartinTyler]

It's a 2 fold problem. Firstly with the current TV deal the A League is effectively hidden away from new fans. Secondly, Wanderers have been so uninspiring in recent years that it's become very difficult to attract new fans and re-engage lost ones. I also agree on the stadium issue; the new one might be nice and shiny but can't replicate the atmosphere of the old one.

[Sithslayer1991]

17 minutes ago, MartinTyler said:

It's a 2 fold problem. Firstly with the current TV deal the A League is effectively hidden away from new fans. Secondly, Wanderers have been so uninspiring in recent years that it's become very difficult to attract new fans and re-engage lost ones. I also agree on the stadium issue; the new one might be nice and shiny but can't replicate the atmosphere of the old one.

Paramount plus just isn't accessible enough that pubs won't have it.

[JustWandering]

12 hours ago, Sithslayer1991 said:

I think its just lack of confidence in the team. The feeling isn't the same and I am not sure how many people actively follow the club from their homes. ONce the fans fall off its hard to get them back in.

This. Our record at home has been worse than awful for years now. Die-hards will attend even if they are confident that the teams gonna lose. I expect many fans crave a happy ending though and just want to avoid that all too frequent feeling of leaving the ground with their tail between their legs. Going in to the Perth game, we had won two games in a row at home. it had been 6 years since we last won 3 at home in a row. I do believe that if the team can keep the winning home form going a bit longer, the confidence in the team will grow together with an increase in crowd numbers.

[Hughesy]

It’s supply and demand. WSW circa 2017 had a smaller stadium and a successful team. WSW post 2017 have a bigger stadium and an unsuccessful team.

 

[Smoggy]

Unless the weather was shocking or stupid kick off time the base level was always around 10k. When we had our most members at old Parra I swear half of them didn’t bother showing up…only for the big Saturday evening games. For many games at old Parra I used to hear the official attendance announced and think hmmmmmmmm……really….don’t think so like.. 

I always used that ACL game post Brissy final as the marker, the 10k that turned out there were the die hard and shouted the team to victory that night….The loss of fans below 10k is what hits hard as those are within that group…I count myself within that 10k and someone who drifted away…

Keep the winning run going…get back to 10k if we can…….and the blow ins bangwagoners will drift back with a sniff of finals football.

Edited 19 hours ago by Smoggy

[Hughesy]

The rapid success of WSW created an intense hype that blurred the lines between actual fans and posers. That 2012/13 season, WSW was the hottest ticket in Australian sport. I remember even celebrities and professional athletes from other codes getting in on the action and attending games. The day of the grand final was insane, it was like the whole city of Sydney stopped. It was never sustainable though and it gradually tapered off in the following seasons despite there still being a big following. 

I have friends and family who would’ve moved heaven and earth to attend a WSW game in the first few seasons but post the ACL win probably haven’t even watched us play on tv. It’s hard to categorise those people as dormant fans when they’ve been gone for so long now yet these are the same people we are expecting to magically reappear if we win games. 

Outside of form/performance, the golden opportunity to bring those people back was the opening of the new stadium and it was frustratingly disrupted by COVID which limited or completely denied access to games for the better part of 2 years. 

The truth hurts a bit but perhaps we just aren’t properly supported as well as what we’ve always thought? It’s been such a long time since the posers have had reason to jump back on the bandwagon so who knows…

[Sime11]

if we can somehow continue this run going on and beating Victory and the 2 NZ teams - be really interesting to see what crowd number we pull against Western and City.

the Western game is a Sunday 5pm so 100% wont get bandwagons
the City game being a Saturday 730pm game like Victory - maybe better crowds-  but its also a long weekend - so its likely to be worse than the Western game.

unfortunately i dont see a massive crowd in the regular sesaon - it would have to be a finals game and would have to be a decent opponent (Derby or MVC) for anything above 20k
 

[MartinTyler]

59 minutes ago, Hughesy said:

The rapid success of WSW created an intense hype that blurred the lines between actual fans and posers. That 2012/13 season, WSW was the hottest ticket in Australian sport. I remember even celebrities and professional athletes from other codes getting in on the action and attending games. The day of the grand final was insane, it was like the whole city of Sydney stopped. It was never sustainable though and it gradually tapered off in the following seasons despite there still being a big following. 

I have friends and family who would’ve moved heaven and earth to attend a WSW game in the first few seasons but post the ACL win probably haven’t even watched us play on tv. It’s hard to categorise those people as dormant fans when they’ve been gone for so long now yet these are the same people we are expecting to magically reappear if we win games. 

Outside of form/performance, the golden opportunity to bring those people back was the opening of the new stadium and it was frustratingly disrupted by COVID which limited or completely denied access to games for the better part of 2 years. 

The truth hurts a bit but perhaps we just aren’t properly supported as well as what we’ve always thought? It’s been such a long time since the posers have had reason to jump back on the bandwagon so who knows…

Great post. The hype around that 1st G/F and the difficulty in getting tickets suggested to me that had the Olympic Stadium been available we'd have had a 60k+ crowd even with only 10-15k from the Mariners. Maybe it was a case of too much too soon.

[VedranRozic]

In the early days, outside the hardcore football/club fans, others (bandwagoners whatever you want to call them) were coming for the atmosphere. I remember early days at Parramatta walking to the ground overhearing the same conversation a number of times ‘I never went to ‘soccer’ before but the rugby league never has this atmosphere’.

We all know what happened to kill the atmosphere. But it’s why the remnants of the others still come to Derbies. (Btw I don’t have the same hate for bandwagoners as others do. If they fill the stadium who cares)

We had our chance. We stuffed it up - although we were also fighting the deep sport state that felt threatened by us. We will probably never get that other crowd back unless we rebuild that atmosphere. But as we saw last Sunday every time we make some progress in that regard the cops are there to put us back in our place.

 

[marron]

3 hours ago, Hughesy said:

The truth hurts a bit but perhaps we just aren’t properly supported as well as what we’ve always thought? It’s been such a long time since the posers have had reason to jump back on the bandwagon so who knows…

I think the break of both stadium move and then covid really did a number on us with this.

I was thinking about my workplace. There's one team that is I think 8-9 staff, 5-6 of those wear wanderers gear every day, no joke. But they are all in their 30s with young families and kind of out of touch with the team. 10-15 years ago they were going to matches all the time, the right age to be taking themselves along to the football regularly and enjoying themselves. Now they are in a different phase of life. The point being that in that patch, when going to the football was a bitch or not possible, there should have been - or normally would have been -  a bunch of new younger people to replace those guys for when they were less likely to be going. But there wasn't. Because it was ****. It's like an enforced generation gap really. It's just a perfect kind of storm.

Edited 9 hours ago by marron

[StringerBellend]

It's the losing 

The other stuff is secondary 

the problem came with letting the season 4 team go and replacing them with shite 

We got 60k at ANZ to watch us get bummed by Sydney

 

[marron]

1 hour ago, StringerBellend said:

It's the losing 

The other stuff is secondary 

the problem came with letting the season 4 team go and replacing them with shite 

We got 60k at ANZ to watch us get bummed by Sydney

 

I mean, yeah. haha.

But I reckon we would have done better without all the other ****. Like I said, perfect storm.

[StringerBellend]

22 minutes ago, marron said:

I mean, yeah. haha.

But I reckon we would have done better without all the other ****. Like I said, perfect storm.

Yep but if we had won that game 5 0 and gone onto win the league I still think the other stuff would have had nowhere near the effect 

 

[Smoggy]

1 hour ago, StringerBellend said:

Yep but if we had won that game 5 0 and gone onto win the league I still think the other stuff would have had nowhere near the effect 

 

If we only had won this game or that game

if only Covid had never happened

If only the cops weren’t all bastards

if only the media weren’t all anti football chunts

If only we had club owners that could run a club…

if….if…if…

What if all your what if moments lead to the same ending…..which is how I feel it probably is.

Meh..it is what it is…..forwards!

Edited 4 hours ago by Smoggy