As possibly the only “Gasroom Active” representative of the generation before the Boomer generation (ie the Post War generation), I feel sure that @trevor is correct.
An alarming number of my erstwhile fellow fans and acquaintances have either passed on or are, like me, too decrepit now to brave the elements or to summon up the physical effort needed to get from Hillbottom Road to the stadium before scaling the steps needed to get to one’s seat.
The key to building the fan base is success. It grew under MoN as we were successful. It's not rocket science. Dare I say if we had played the Championship season in front of fans we would have added 15/20% onto the gates as of today. If we had stayed in the Championship it would have been more.
Absolutely right. Being successful will increase the numbers who want to come and see what the hype is all about.
But what you then need is for something that will make these new ‘supporters’, in effect, fall in love with the club otherwise they will disappear when the success ebbs away.
It will probably be different individually but I’m thinking along the lines of stirring comeback wins where the emotions of the game are overwhelming.
Although I am about to shoot my argument in the foot as I can’t believe that everyone who was at Selhurst Park (Wimbledon) and Filbert Street isn’t still coming along to most of our games…
I’m also wondering whether we had a slightly inflated figure of supporters in recent years who came to watch us because of Bayo and once he retired have stopped coming along.
I don’t think it’s the same as it nice was. In my day you made your choice of club as soon as you knew football. Tough luck. That was it. If you accidentally chose a club as you liked stripes that was your lot. Today I friends who kids have been through 3 teams (and all the merchandise) before they are 10. And they still have space to wear a Barcelona or Real Madrid shirt.
The only people I can think of were those strange northern lads (seemingly from Wigan given their accents and antipathy towards Bolton) who randomly sang "Akinfenwa" to the tune of "Alleluia" of the Leonard Cohen variety.
Unfortunately that is both a bit of a cop out for the owners in terms of the much heralded match day experience - manager must provide success, as if that isn't exactly what he's trying to do alongside all the other 91 managers but also leads to the stupid unsustainable spending with all clubs needing the next promotion to justify their being or mortgaging themselves because one day we might get a sniff of the EPL.
Of course the success of the team needs to be a priority but there are plenty of other things that define wether people are introduced to us, and enjoy their time enough to want to come back. Once you get fans hooked it's a license to print money.
In a way I do feel sorry for Rob Couhig. His plan, coming over from the States, to build an audience with an American-style matchday experience, with all the commodities, whizzes, bangs and forced fun that money could buy - well, it wasn't an awful idea.
But then he ran up against the poor logistics of Wycombe's location; apathy for lower league football in the area; the British natural cynicism; and - frankly - often ugly football from Gareth and often dull football from Matt.
That's not to say he didn't mostly bring this on himself... cheerleaders; overheated promises of the best experience ever seemingly before any soft-launch or testing; an aversion for doing the basics that couldn't be charged for like upgrading the toilets; squeezing contractors too much so few wanted to provide the commodities that would improve the fan experience (remember all those food stalls in the fan village disappearing when they couldn't make a profit); jacking prices up too soon and a stubbornness to discount to hook people in; bringing in the wrong advisers, or disregarding their advice in favour of that from conspicuously unqualified members of his own family.
Anyway, in a short, a failed experiment. Maybe we'll get some news today of him jacking it in and passing the club on to the Kazakhstani moneyman. It certainly feels that we're coming close to the time to write the obituary of Rob Couhig's stewardship of the club.
Same here. I also find it infuriating how young kids walk around in foreign team colours, it's nothing to do with me I know, but irritating still. There's a family in the village, their youngest used to go to school with my youngest, they are all English, but all of them wear Barcelona stuff all the time, and tell everyone they support Barcelona. Why, just why ?
The Grinch in me must have woken up, as it's so near to Christmas, since I also agree with much of what @aloysius has written.
However, with RCs experiment, I would comment that it's not the things you do that you regret so much as the things you didn't do. And missing out on fans in our Championship season was an absolute killer opportunity we never had.
We were on a helluva high when we were promoted to the Championship, away numbers would have averaged at least 1,000, the atmosphere would have been electric for the majority of matches and I reckon gates would have averaged around 7,000, possibly more, but the dream faded on the narrowest of margins - one solitary, sodding point. Sad.
Not all awful is it? Success on the field relative to anything we've ever seen before (not 100% down to him but neither is anything else), and as far as off the pitch goes we went from being on the verge of bankruptcy to being mildly annoyed with over-promising. The key is how long he's prepared to fund losses (if he actually is himself) and what happens after. Far too soon to declare it a failure or success from our point of view or his. If he can afford this and has enjoyed it at all then he's got roughly what he came for.
I agree - it was a real kick in the teeth to get that far and not benefit as much as we could've done (if only Rob had opened his chequebook that Jan and bought us the Player...) But let's not ignore the c.£9m windfall from that season in EFL and broadcast payments without which the Couhigs may have had to sell up a lot sooner. And also the element of good fortune in the particular time that lockdown fell, curtailing the 2019/20 season while we still met the threshold. If it had played out any longer there's a chance our 1.74 average may have slipped, leaving us out of play-offs. So yes, covid really prevented Rob Couhig from making the most of his business model - but it also provided business opportunities.
The other aspect of his business model that, in hindsight, he may judge a mistake was the decision to jettison local marketing in favour of building the 'worldwide Wycombe phenomenon' which, I suspect, never caught fire as much as he would've hoped. If more emphasis had been put on advertising locally and promotional pushes to the South Bucks communities we may have a bigger average crowd now. I would imagine there's more opportunity to make money from pints and burgers at Adams Park then there is by selling bobblehats and keyrings on Missy's website, but given figures for worldwide viewing (excluding VPNs) isn't published, who really knows.
Most of the worldwide wycombe fellowship is the gasroom on vpn isn't it?
And arguably what gave us a big interest outside of these parts was having Bayo.
An absolutely unique character and style of player you get once a generation if that.
I'm not sure the location and fanbase is as big a surprise issue as stated though. They did look at Yeovil first which doesn't scream epic location and potential fanbase.
Apologies if this has been mentioned but only just saw this thread. Was any question asked about the funds from the Georgian guy and what was the answer?
Apologies if this has been mentioned but only just saw this thread. Was any question asked about the funds from the Georgian guy and what was the answer?
The closest we got was someone quite literally saying 'Russian funding?'. The misinformed use of 'Russian' pretty much gave Rob a very easy get-out clause to answering the question and he batted it away claiming that there had been nothing of the sort.
I am thankful to Rob for dedicating his effort, time and money to saving our club at a perilous time, and bringing us some truly memorable seasons, but I do agree with most of what you said.
However, you neglect one big thing about the Couhigs which makes me feel a bit less sorry for them.
So many owners from America (and other countries) have tried buying an English football club before him. He had hundreds of case studies to look at. Up and down the pyramid every year, foreign owners come in, with plans and ambitions, ranging from grandiose to moderate.
They all come in with their outsider perspective, from other industries, countries and cultures. Most of them think that they can apply the usual business rules and experience they know to running their shiny new club.
Most of them think they can fairly quickly make it profitable, improve the match day experience, increase the crowds, and bring on-field success, despite hundreds and hundreds of other foreign owners trying the same thing over the last few decades, and failing.
It's pure hubris. Rob really thought he'd cracked the formula, sat in an office with Pete in Louisiana, when all those other owners hadn't. Even with his more limited funds and Wycombe's fairly lowly status, he thought he'd smash it.
Due to some pandemic induced luck and Ainsworth's marvellous management that year, he genuinely believed he'd cracked the code , but it turns out its just as difficult for him as any other incoming owner.
You can't get thousands of people to change clubs, and go to a 0-0 draw in the pissing rain against Morecambe on a Tuesday because you lay on nicer burgers, toilets and wifi. Football supporters are deeply weird people to be honest, they don't follow the usual rules of consumers.
For Rob to not just think he was going to outsmart 99 in a 100 other owners, but also make Wycombe THE best match-day experience in the country was just utterly deluded. The rational conclusion anyone should make about lower league ownership is that its nearly impossible to rapidly grow fanbases and club stature.
FL clubs are a money pit. I'd wager one in a hundred owners makes a decent return on their investment. Most haemorrhage cash and sell up for break-even or less than they bought the club, with little to no major success. The usual rules of finance, business and customer service simply don't apply. You have to treat it as an expensive hobby, not a business in my opinion, until the entire structure is changed through legislation.
The Couhig's era, if it is coming to a close, will have ended better than most ownership eras do; some glorious success, not too much money burned, and their relationship with the supporters still broadly in-tact.
But WWFC are back to almost exactly where they were at the start of his ownership - largely the same league position, the same ropey finances, the same debt, the same quality of squad. It's not been the money-spinner he thought it would be, and I think the only person surprised about it is him.
Oxford Blue makes some excellent points and in his Q & A Rob did admit that he had underestimated the difference in culture between US sports fans and those here in the UK. In his defence, I would argue that if he moves on in the near future, Rob will leave the club in a better state than it was when he took over, and he has tried his very best to make it work. I don’t for one moment doubt his sincerity or integrity.
Comments
Here in the U.S., there has been a surge in popularity for the already-popular NFL because Taylor Swift is dating a Kansas City player.
Our path to more fans is clear: get one of our handsome, single lads to charm Taylor away and become her next squeeze.
Trying to think who Wycombe's equivalent of Travis Kelce would be 🤔
As possibly the only “Gasroom Active” representative of the generation before the Boomer generation (ie the Post War generation), I feel sure that @trevor is correct.
An alarming number of my erstwhile fellow fans and acquaintances have either passed on or are, like me, too decrepit now to brave the elements or to summon up the physical effort needed to get from Hillbottom Road to the stadium before scaling the steps needed to get to one’s seat.
The key to building the fan base is success. It grew under MoN as we were successful. It's not rocket science. Dare I say if we had played the Championship season in front of fans we would have added 15/20% onto the gates as of today. If we had stayed in the Championship it would have been more.
Absolutely right. Being successful will increase the numbers who want to come and see what the hype is all about.
But what you then need is for something that will make these new ‘supporters’, in effect, fall in love with the club otherwise they will disappear when the success ebbs away.
It will probably be different individually but I’m thinking along the lines of stirring comeback wins where the emotions of the game are overwhelming.
Although I am about to shoot my argument in the foot as I can’t believe that everyone who was at Selhurst Park (Wimbledon) and Filbert Street isn’t still coming along to most of our games…
I’m also wondering whether we had a slightly inflated figure of supporters in recent years who came to watch us because of Bayo and once he retired have stopped coming along.
Got it in a nutshell.
I don’t think it’s the same as it nice was. In my day you made your choice of club as soon as you knew football. Tough luck. That was it. If you accidentally chose a club as you liked stripes that was your lot. Today I friends who kids have been through 3 teams (and all the merchandise) before they are 10. And they still have space to wear a Barcelona or Real Madrid shirt.
The only people I can think of were those strange northern lads (seemingly from Wigan given their accents and antipathy towards Bolton) who randomly sang "Akinfenwa" to the tune of "Alleluia" of the Leonard Cohen variety.
Unfortunately that is both a bit of a cop out for the owners in terms of the much heralded match day experience - manager must provide success, as if that isn't exactly what he's trying to do alongside all the other 91 managers but also leads to the stupid unsustainable spending with all clubs needing the next promotion to justify their being or mortgaging themselves because one day we might get a sniff of the EPL.
Of course the success of the team needs to be a priority but there are plenty of other things that define wether people are introduced to us, and enjoy their time enough to want to come back. Once you get fans hooked it's a license to print money.
I wonder if we did a poll on our season ticket holders what percentage are
1) Came in as a kid / born in the area
2) Lured in by success
3) Moved to the area and adopted us
4)Came once and were seduced by the "match day experience".
(Add your own hilarious or facitious others below)
In a way I do feel sorry for Rob Couhig. His plan, coming over from the States, to build an audience with an American-style matchday experience, with all the commodities, whizzes, bangs and forced fun that money could buy - well, it wasn't an awful idea.
But then he ran up against the poor logistics of Wycombe's location; apathy for lower league football in the area; the British natural cynicism; and - frankly - often ugly football from Gareth and often dull football from Matt.
That's not to say he didn't mostly bring this on himself... cheerleaders; overheated promises of the best experience ever seemingly before any soft-launch or testing; an aversion for doing the basics that couldn't be charged for like upgrading the toilets; squeezing contractors too much so few wanted to provide the commodities that would improve the fan experience (remember all those food stalls in the fan village disappearing when they couldn't make a profit); jacking prices up too soon and a stubbornness to discount to hook people in; bringing in the wrong advisers, or disregarding their advice in favour of that from conspicuously unqualified members of his own family.
Anyway, in a short, a failed experiment. Maybe we'll get some news today of him jacking it in and passing the club on to the Kazakhstani moneyman. It certainly feels that we're coming close to the time to write the obituary of Rob Couhig's stewardship of the club.
Same here. I also find it infuriating how young kids walk around in foreign team colours, it's nothing to do with me I know, but irritating still. There's a family in the village, their youngest used to go to school with my youngest, they are all English, but all of them wear Barcelona stuff all the time, and tell everyone they support Barcelona. Why, just why ?
A failure, yet getting to the highest level this club has ever been and whisper it...probably ever will again.
I pretty much agree with all of this
The Grinch in me must have woken up, as it's so near to Christmas, since I also agree with much of what @aloysius has written.
However, with RCs experiment, I would comment that it's not the things you do that you regret so much as the things you didn't do. And missing out on fans in our Championship season was an absolute killer opportunity we never had.
We were on a helluva high when we were promoted to the Championship, away numbers would have averaged at least 1,000, the atmosphere would have been electric for the majority of matches and I reckon gates would have averaged around 7,000, possibly more, but the dream faded on the narrowest of margins - one solitary, sodding point. Sad.
Not all awful is it? Success on the field relative to anything we've ever seen before (not 100% down to him but neither is anything else), and as far as off the pitch goes we went from being on the verge of bankruptcy to being mildly annoyed with over-promising. The key is how long he's prepared to fund losses (if he actually is himself) and what happens after. Far too soon to declare it a failure or success from our point of view or his. If he can afford this and has enjoyed it at all then he's got roughly what he came for.
My post was more picking allyooo up on his declaration of it being a "failure" by pointing out potentially the era gave us our greatest ever success.
I agree - it was a real kick in the teeth to get that far and not benefit as much as we could've done (if only Rob had opened his chequebook that Jan and bought us the Player...) But let's not ignore the c.£9m windfall from that season in EFL and broadcast payments without which the Couhigs may have had to sell up a lot sooner. And also the element of good fortune in the particular time that lockdown fell, curtailing the 2019/20 season while we still met the threshold. If it had played out any longer there's a chance our 1.74 average may have slipped, leaving us out of play-offs. So yes, covid really prevented Rob Couhig from making the most of his business model - but it also provided business opportunities.
The other aspect of his business model that, in hindsight, he may judge a mistake was the decision to jettison local marketing in favour of building the 'worldwide Wycombe phenomenon' which, I suspect, never caught fire as much as he would've hoped. If more emphasis had been put on advertising locally and promotional pushes to the South Bucks communities we may have a bigger average crowd now. I would imagine there's more opportunity to make money from pints and burgers at Adams Park then there is by selling bobblehats and keyrings on Missy's website, but given figures for worldwide viewing (excluding VPNs) isn't published, who really knows.
Most of the worldwide wycombe fellowship is the gasroom on vpn isn't it?
And arguably what gave us a big interest outside of these parts was having Bayo.
An absolutely unique character and style of player you get once a generation if that.
I'm not sure the location and fanbase is as big a surprise issue as stated though. They did look at Yeovil first which doesn't scream epic location and potential fanbase.
There are pretty active twitter fan accounts based in both Mexico and Argentina. But yes, me and @Shev are the best ones.
Apologies if this has been mentioned but only just saw this thread. Was any question asked about the funds from the Georgian guy and what was the answer?
Apologies if this has been mentioned but only just saw this thread. Was any question asked about the funds from the Georgian guy and what was the answer?
The closest we got was someone quite literally saying 'Russian funding?'. The misinformed use of 'Russian' pretty much gave Rob a very easy get-out clause to answering the question and he batted it away claiming that there had been nothing of the sort.
I am thankful to Rob for dedicating his effort, time and money to saving our club at a perilous time, and bringing us some truly memorable seasons, but I do agree with most of what you said.
However, you neglect one big thing about the Couhigs which makes me feel a bit less sorry for them.
So many owners from America (and other countries) have tried buying an English football club before him. He had hundreds of case studies to look at. Up and down the pyramid every year, foreign owners come in, with plans and ambitions, ranging from grandiose to moderate.
They all come in with their outsider perspective, from other industries, countries and cultures. Most of them think that they can apply the usual business rules and experience they know to running their shiny new club.
Most of them think they can fairly quickly make it profitable, improve the match day experience, increase the crowds, and bring on-field success, despite hundreds and hundreds of other foreign owners trying the same thing over the last few decades, and failing.
It's pure hubris. Rob really thought he'd cracked the formula, sat in an office with Pete in Louisiana, when all those other owners hadn't. Even with his more limited funds and Wycombe's fairly lowly status, he thought he'd smash it.
Due to some pandemic induced luck and Ainsworth's marvellous management that year, he genuinely believed he'd cracked the code , but it turns out its just as difficult for him as any other incoming owner.
You can't get thousands of people to change clubs, and go to a 0-0 draw in the pissing rain against Morecambe on a Tuesday because you lay on nicer burgers, toilets and wifi. Football supporters are deeply weird people to be honest, they don't follow the usual rules of consumers.
For Rob to not just think he was going to outsmart 99 in a 100 other owners, but also make Wycombe THE best match-day experience in the country was just utterly deluded. The rational conclusion anyone should make about lower league ownership is that its nearly impossible to rapidly grow fanbases and club stature.
FL clubs are a money pit. I'd wager one in a hundred owners makes a decent return on their investment. Most haemorrhage cash and sell up for break-even or less than they bought the club, with little to no major success. The usual rules of finance, business and customer service simply don't apply. You have to treat it as an expensive hobby, not a business in my opinion, until the entire structure is changed through legislation.
The Couhig's era, if it is coming to a close, will have ended better than most ownership eras do; some glorious success, not too much money burned, and their relationship with the supporters still broadly in-tact.
But WWFC are back to almost exactly where they were at the start of his ownership - largely the same league position, the same ropey finances, the same debt, the same quality of squad. It's not been the money-spinner he thought it would be, and I think the only person surprised about it is him.
This is a fantastic post. Can't disagree with this.
But we still have a club!
Oxford Blue makes some excellent points and in his Q & A Rob did admit that he had underestimated the difference in culture between US sports fans and those here in the UK. In his defence, I would argue that if he moves on in the near future, Rob will leave the club in a better state than it was when he took over, and he has tried his very best to make it work. I don’t for one moment doubt his sincerity or integrity.