Lowest League 2 attendance
Agreed, partly due to ACFC's pathetic away support but I would have expected at least a 5000 plus crowd for the first game of the season. And the Club's decision to no longer have the 50/50 draw as they are now a cash free society is not going down too well according to the natives. I will gloss over the programme sales
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League 2?
And has the first game of the season ever been one of the higher attendances? Not that I can remember.
Perhaps 600 people stayed away in protest at the 50/50 scandal.
Football is a habit, so 15 or so months without games won't have helped to say the least.
Maybe the parking stuff put people off? Maybe Accy aren't much of a draw?
But in August, with foreign holidays being more awkward this year, you'd hope for more.
Would have to see the stats on attendances in our last league one season. I suspect Accy is never more than about this figure.
It was a low attendance, but once people are back from holidays and the local cricket league's are finished, I'm sure we'll see the crowd numbers increase.
Minus away fans, we didn't have 5,000+ on the opening day in 18/19 or 19/20 either.
I was disappointed that we had the lowest attendance in League One and lower than five attendances in League Two.
I can’t see there being much difference in attendance numbers to those of our last season in League 1.
Despite the obvious improvements we are still in an area which is a catchment area for the major London based Premier League teams.
We may also take a further hit this season with both Brentford and Watford both in the Premier League.
Ironic really when you think how well we competed against both those clubs on four of the five occasions on which we played them. (Brentford away in the Championship best forgotten!)
@Malone Home attendances vs Accy, going backwards from 19/20 season...
3566 (Tue), 3819 (Tue), 6178 (near end of promotion season, Accy also up there), 2747 (Tue), 4041, 2621 (Tue), 3073, 4577 (Bank Holiday).
So all in all, Saturday probably not too bad.
Poor weather, some people still worried about covid, no disrespect to Accy but one of the least glamorous opponents for the occasional fan / neutral supporter, and people off on summer holidays.
It was always going to be tough to call, but had every chance of being an underwhelming attendance on the face of it.
Not saying it was an influence on the attendance, but anyone stumbling onto this site wouldn’t have come near the match.
You’d be worried about:
Being stuck in a car for 2 hours
Being unable to get in the ground because of queues
Being unable to buy a ticket by any means at the ground
And that’s before we start on food & drink.
I have never read so much moaning on any version of the gasroom as I have over the past two weeks. It’s embarrassing. Every little error or miscalculation picked at by a sea of armchair experts who would all have predicted all things perfectly.
I read someone saying the ground didn’t look any better than it did before lockdown. That’s a nice thing for volunteers to read after spending a day (or more) cleaning seats, painting walls etc.
Now we’re onto bus allocation. Too many buses at the West Wycombe park and ride (disgrace). Then if they cut to two and more people turn up it’ll be ‘not enough’ (another disgrace).
Why not give it all a few games to settle down? If nothing changes by end of September, fair enough, go for it. And if you think the food is shit and overpriced, don’t buy it. The message will get through soon enough.
Personally I thought the pitch was too green and the markings too white.
But on a more serious note, I saw someone complaining about lids being removed from bottles. Uh, is that not a universal thing across all football grounds for a very good reason?
Can’t agree with your last sentence. The weather (didn’t think it was that bad), COVID and summer holidays arguments were the same for every club that had a higher attendance than us. It was the first game with unrestricted attendance for a very long time, we have several exciting new players and we still couldn’t muster 5,000 fans.
Anyone know which season we had our highest average attendance as an EFL club? 2001/02 maybe?
The figure is a bit misleading. A lot of the ‘big’ clubs were at home, while the likes of Morecambe, Accy and Cheltenham were away so the average attendances are skewed upward. Also Fleetwood didn’t disclose a figure. That said, I’d have hoped to get bigger crowd than Crewe, who managed 5,000+.
Truth is home support at AP has pretty much always been 3,500-5,000 as a season average depending on how well we’re doing. We’ve never been mid-top end League 1 side for a sustained period so it is hard to say if that might stimulate bigger crowds (if we do indeed have a few seasons as a ‘good’ league 1 team). But my guess is that we might be at 5,500 avg home support in a few years if we make the play offs a couple of times. That’s good progress but not the 7,000+ that we need to be anywhere near serious about sustaining ourselves as a small Championship outfit.
I doubt we will ever realise those sorts of attendances at AP, no matter how good the off field experience.
We averaged 5,800 in Martin O’Neill’s last season as manager, 6,600 in 2001-02 (finished 11th in League 2), 6,000 in 2002-03 (finished 18th).
We now have arguably our best ever squad, best ever facilities and last season we played at the highest level in the club’s history.
I really thought there would be a hunger to return to Adams Park, hence my disappointment at the size of the crowd on Saturday.
I agree @Glenactico. It is simply that we are inside the catchment area of big Premier League clubs.
5,500 would be a pretty good average for Wycombe.
I wonder if the reason for the low attendance, despite the positive reasons to come that @glasshalffull lists, is because the club is concentrating marketing efforts on building a 'Worldwide Wanderers' following rather than persuading people from the town and surrounding area to visit. It would be interesting to hear how many matchday iFollow passes were sold around the world as a result of this tactic. Maybe they could announce that at the end of the match along with the attendance figure.
I've always thought, and occasionally said, that there's a lot more the club could be doing to market themselves locally. I don't buy in to the "matchday experience" as something likely to get new bums on seats any more than @ReturnToSenda - I think the club would be better advised to start handing out free tickets to schools and building players' individual brands more through personal appearances locally.
I was quite surprised when the attendance got announced to be honest. Thought my guess on the attendance thread was too low at around 5,100
? @aloysius
Some posters have mentioned that people are out of the habit of going to football. I do think this is a factor. It’s such a shame we couldn’t hook more people in with the inevitability larger crowds we would have had on the Championship in any normal season.
In the absence of a big publicity drive around town, it is really left to existing attendees to get others along. Recent threads have shown this to be a challenge, from fans comparing their ‘experience’ and value at other grounds to not actually being able to get to the ground in the first place.
Various managers and chairmen have bemoaned the lack of local support since we moved to AP which is why eyebrows are always raised when expectations of bigger crowds are mooted.
Hopefully the club will take feedback onboard and will continue to improve with each match.
IMHO the best way to grow the crowds is to make AP a convenient ground to visit, whether someone wants to arrive at midday for the full ‘restaurant’ experience (?) or at 2:55, and to play an entertaining brand of football. We are certainly doing the job on the pitch, we just need to ensure people visiting don’t feel like they are being taken advantage of.
I thought the old style village with its artisan vans, combined with the real ale bar was pretty much perfect and I was much more inclined to spend money elsewhere around AP after a couple of pints.
There is no way on earth i’m going to be forking out £7 for a veggie burger as was served up to @ReturnToSenda the other day. If it was like the ones previously served from the van in the village, I’d be very pleased to feed myself and the family. It’s not the cost per se, it’s the value that it represents.
All the above said, save for a few teething problems with the sound system, i thought the ground was MUCH improved from out last L1 campaign and everything seemed much more professional. There’s definitely a strong foundation to build on and I’m happy to give the Couhigs time to get things right.
A significant percentage of new sales in a number of leisure based industries is as a result of 'in reach' activities. Most of your new members as it were, come from recomendations from your current members (supporters in this case). I know the club have dabbled with this in the past but some kind of refer a friend scheme normally brings positive results. It needs to be sustained and not on an adhock basis which I believe has been the case in the past.
As someone else mentioned, schools are a fantastic lead generation opportunity and should be utilised for every home game. It only takes a few children to get hooked and they then attend with a parent or two and before you know it you start to build momentum.
It really is a numbers game. All about lead generation. Would be interested to know how many children from the football camps Wycombe run are now regular attendees at matches. Wycombe must have in house stats (conversion rates), one of prime drivers for these community camps is to get kids into the ground and attending matches.
There's a lot that can be done on the lead generation front.
Totally agree there. As I said in a post on the attendance guessing thread, when I looked around the ground at 2.55 I would have said around 5100. The terrace seemed as full as I remember seeing it over the last few years, on a par with the big games such as vs Sunderland. The Frank Adams Upper and Family Stand seemed pretty well populated as well.
I wonder if there's a change in policy this season, whereby the official attendance is the actual number in the ground rather than the number of tickets issued?
I think it was very respectable, given all the circumstances. When we play the many '1000+ away fan teams', which also gives our own support a bit of an increase, especially if these are matches at the top end of the table, we should get quite a few 6-7k attendances across the season. That would be up there with anything we've achieved across an EFL season since the "Semi Final Bounce" season. Forecasting across the season (ignoring the potential affect of the international weekends - which could admittedly mess with the numbers): Next 3 matches should be much higher; Oct looks like being an average month; the 2 fixtures in Nov are bumper; Boxing Day should deliver, as should January; The Feb/March fixtures will depend on how the season is going; and April should finish with a bang.
@glasshalffull Let's see what we average this season...
@Glenactico Fleetwood's attendance was 4,562 (1,092 Portsmouth fans)
I think I've worked out why they've stopped the bus from the train station... It's so they can flog more training tops, featuring a handy street map to guide you to the ground...
It's not unusual to be disappointed by the August crowds though. They always tend to be on the low side at Wycombe. Strange that this appears to affect Wycombe more than other sides though?
I know many AP regulars still play cricket through August and don't return until September. Looking at the next couple if home fixtures, I'd hope we can pull in 6k V Lincoln and somewhere between 7-9k against Ipswich depending on the start both sides make.
I expect Ipswich will be postponed for international call-ups
To be fair, it’s a two way street. When you have spent the last 18 months bigging up what a great fan expirence it’s going to be once fans return, you can’t complain that much when that side of things falls flat and people raise complaints.
Don’t get me wrong, the effort put into where it matters off the pitch seems to be paying dividends and they seem to be hitting that nail on the head in regards to the training facilities, playing surface and the squad etc.
But the lording things up of the off field stuff seems to be a little premature.
This old chestnut again.
Pretty sure people not coming have a pretty good reason for it and there are plenty of them at the moment. Probably more than at any other point where @glasshalffull has questioned a low attendance.
Give people a reason to go and they will if the barriers to going aren't put too high. The club needs to decide if it wants to increase the fan base or just milk those they have.
I doubt anyone who goes regularly has anyone left in their filofax who they haven't tried to get to games.