Attendance today

DiscoCAFC

Sorry to sound negative but I thought the attendence today was poor especially with the advertising we used and the £5 promotion. Also considering we had 24,767 last season against Exeter and we had a brilliant start. I am suprised we did not beat last season's attendence or even match it.

What happend to the 2,500 who attended last year who did not turn up? I think we would feel gutted that the away end was not filled in by us, especially we had about 50 stewards in the away end.

I think the club did what they could to persude people to take this oppotunity, so why was the attendence less than Exeter's?

JT

Arsenal & Chelsea were at home. 

Kap10

Anything over 20,000 was a result, well done to Airmans team.

MuttleyCAFC

Yes, was decent and a good atmosphere in th eground- I'm sure a few will come back too -good game - good atmosphere, right result.

Clem_Snide

Only 22,151 wanted to come.

DiscoCAFC

Arsenal & Chelsea were at home. 

True

RugbyAddick

Didn't Exeter sell out? I can't remember. That is a fair point about Arsenal and Chelsea being at home as well. 

les_says

Didn't Exeter sell out? I can't remember. That is a fair point about Arsenal and Chelsea being at home as well. 

Arsenal and chelsea sold out today and I doubt the 2500 extra £5 fans at the exeter game were paying £50 plus for glory-boy football this weekend.

RodneyCharltonTrotta

Sorry to sound negative but I thought the attendence today was poor especially with the advertising we used and the £5 promotion. Also considering we had 24,767 last season against Exeter and we had a brilliant start. I am suprised we did not beat last season's attendence or even match it.

What happend to the 2,500 who attended last year who did not turn up? I think we would feel gutted that the away end was not filled in by us, especially we had about 50 stewards in the away end.

I think the club did what they could to persude people to take this oppotunity, so why was the attendence less than Exeter's?

Get in the real world mate.....22k for a third division game is brilliant.

RugbyAddick

No I mean didn't Exeter more or less sell out their allocation?? Chesterfield didn't sell out their half of the JSS and the other half was virtually empty.

Mike

Chesterfield brought more than Exeter did I think

MattD

Why would it be as good as the exeter crown? We got run around in that game and on top of that prem and champ teams at home in london.

22k is good for l1, but having full attendance would be quality.

MuttleyCAFC

The Valley comes to life when 20k plus are in it.

oohaahmortimer

i think if we go up it'll be tough to increase our average home crowd by more than 2-3k cos the years of failure since curbs left the building has allowed many fans to fill their saturday with alternatives

but it'll be  a nice problem to have come may next year (hopefully!)

MuttleyCAFC

I agree but a few years of success and the right pricing and we'll get them back. Something that pleased me about yesterday was the increased number of people from ethnic minorities I saw. You can understand given past years why they are less inclined to go to football but they had the opportunity to see that racists are not welcome at our club and they are most welcome. Hopefully a few will want to try again -sure the kids will badger their parents. Kids like top of the league - my 10 year old is enjoying watching his football again thank god.

guinnessaddick

The next 2 or 3 home games will tell if yesterday's operation has worked. The club repeat it again before Christmas and I would suggest our game against Oldham, the last Saturday game before the 25th. This day always seems to give poor attendances, it might give some people a reason not to go shopping.

MuttleyCAFC

receipts will be up when you factor in club shop and food sales so that in itself makes it a success.

GlassHalfFull

Don't forget that we've sold fewer s/ts this year so we were starting from a lower base of seats already sold.

AFKABartram

I think it was a good not great attendance and I would have hoped that the momentum of being top,.albeit early, would have carried more weight.

Find it staggering that even before the premiership years we could sell 35k for wembley and 10k in one day to travel 250 miles to Old Trafford, yet now when we are practically giving it away we can't get more than 20k home fans mostly paying a minimum to get in.

We are getting less and less well supported in local areas as people pass away or move away, we need to have another era of the club being on the up coupled with good work off it to make it work. I'm not convinced the current policy of giving away thousands of tickets to schools and sitting them next to the away end is having the right impact.

buckshee

bore off the lot of you 

we are top of the league , who gives a god damn what the attendance was , this meassage board is turning into the suicide squad. Jesus Christ

I'm sure every week some of you miserable lot sit there wondering what to whinge about

Plaaayer

Quality!!

Rufus is a dogs name

I couldn't believe the poor sods in the jimmy Seed - in the end there were only about 50 Charlton fans who were moved a couple of times by the stewards before being asked to move to the East stand instead. They were being ushered out of the Jimmy Seed right at the point we had a FK, and as a consequence most of them missed Jackson's goal! If that was me I would not have been happy...

Kap10

I think it was a good not great attendance and I would have hoped that the momentum of being top,.albeit early, would have carried more weight.

Find it staggering that even before the premiership years we could sell 35k for wembley and 10k in one day to travel 250 miles to Old Trafford, yet now when we are practically giving it away we can't get more than 20k home fans mostly paying a minimum to get in.

We are getting less and less well supported in local areas as people pass away or move away, we need to have another era of the club being on the up coupled with good work off it to make it work. I'm not convinced the current policy of giving away thousands of tickets to schools and sitting them next to the away end is having the right impact.

I think another problem nowadays is the overwhelming support Sky and BBC give to a handful of premier clubs.  It would be good if these mega giants also go behind local clubs and their ticket initiatives.

Rothko

bore off the lot of you 

we are top of the league , who gives a god damn what the attendance was , this meassage board is turning into the suicide squad. Jesus Christ

I'm sure every week some of you miserable lot sit there wondering what to whinge about

This!

Airman Brown

I couldn't believe the poor sods in the jimmy Seed - in the end there were only about 50 Charlton fans who were moved a couple of times by the stewards before being asked to move to the East stand instead. They were being ushered out of the Jimmy Seed right at the point we had a FK, and as a consequence most of them missed Jackson's goal! If that was me I would not have been happy...

With hindsight we should not have opened the Jimmy Seed Stand and in my opinion a decision should have been made at 2.45pm to close it. Unfortunately, hindsight is a wonderful thing. Apart from the fact we have to commit earlier than the matchday in order to have the resources in place, experience suggests it is difficult to get people to use Lansdowne Mews for access and tickets, so we have to give clear messages in advance.

Yesterday we sold 2,100 tickets on the day, but 1,000 of them by one o'clock, mostly over the phone. This was only fractionally more than than the Exeter matchday sale in February, which we had put down to the weather. Evidently that assumption was wrong.

While I shared the view expressed above of what happened at the time, two things need to be taken into account regarding the fact they were moved out (as opposed to moved around, which I won't defend). One is that many were known to the club and, more significantly, the police. The other is that the refreshment facilities and toilets on the other side of the JS Stand are inadequate for 1,225 people, which is what Chesterfield brought (Exeter had 1,021). So it made sense to allow the away fans access to the facilities on the home side of the stand, which wasn't going to happen with (those) home fans there.

I was disappointed the attendance was not better, but pleased that this time we put on a show. We  sold 11,000 or so home tickets @ £5 compared to 13,000 in February. I need to do more work to find out why the gate was 2,600 lower with more away fans but a chunk of that is shortfall in season tickets. We may have clamped down harder on comps this time.

Bear in mind also that the previous home (League) attendance includes the 1,000 schools comps and various community ones. For Scunthorpe it was 2,000-plus. We actually sold about 7,500-8,000 more home matchday tickets than we would probably have done for this fixture.

I think the main difference from February was novelty then, including Chris Powell's return, but I am sure that if we could have reached enough people we would have sold home areas out. There were lots of new visitors yesterday; we had calls asking how to get to The Valley from Woolwich, etc.

Although we didn't trumpet it, we went back to new ticket purchasers with offers twice after Exeter, with understandably limited success, and we will do the same again. It is probably unrealistic to expect many of them to buy 18-game season tickets, but that offer is there for them and for lapsed STs and other occasional fans who may have come in yesterday and liked what they saw.

We won't have made much money on that crowd, but we will have matched the anticipated receipts and covered the marketing and other costs with profit on other additional spending. My staff and those in the Superstore worked tremendously hard to sell the tickets, but it's fair to say everyone gets a buzz out of the exercise. I am sure we will do it or a variation of it again, but not before Christmas.

On AFKA's comments regarding the school tickets, I think is better than doing nothing and given the relatively small number of visiting fans in that division I cannot see the fact they are in an adjacent stand is of great significance. While we could and sometimes do put kids in the lower north, I don't think that is the best experience for new spectators either and we are not going to put them in the most popular areas where they would displace paying fans.

 

paulbaconsarnie

I couldn't believe the poor sods in the jimmy Seed - in the end there were only about 50 Charlton fans who were moved a couple of times by the stewards before being asked to move to the East stand instead. They were being ushered out of the Jimmy Seed right at the point we had a FK, and as a consequence most of them missed Jackson's goal! If that was me I would not have been happy...

especially as there were around 3-4000 seats available elsewhere in the ground. 

the club has obviouuly costed and actioned the segregation/extra stewarding etc, what did moving them achieve?

unless we were trying to coax london based chesterfield fans to convert to us by giving the an extra place to p##s in.

 

Airman Brown

We are getting less and less well supported in local areas as people pass away or move away, we need to have another era of the club being on the up coupled with good work off it to make it work. 

We have a much higher support profile in local areas than we did at any time from, say, 1970-1992, buttressed by the extensive work of the community trust in Bromley, Bexley and Greenwich. I can tell you from being at school in Bexley in the 1970s that to my knowledge I was the only Charlton supporter at my primary school and in percentage terms it didn't get much better at secondary. That didn't change much in the 1980s - it was when we came back to The Valley and starting building up our crowds and the community scheme that you started to see Charlton supporters in numbers.

Clearly success breeds support and being in the Premier League made a massive difference, but the idea that we need "good work" suggests that little is being done, when in fact we have never done more than now. If success returns on the field then the support will come with it, because as in the 1990s we are doing the ground work. 

bingaddick

AB, thank you for your usual detailed explanation. I am sure that the unachieved hope of higher numbers may be slightly disappointing but it is still a great achievement for a third division club. 

There was a big slap in the face by the team's Exeter performance and I am sure that would have had an impact both on any follow up promotions last season and marginally on this game. Thankfully the team turned up and put on a great display for this game. I am sure those who are returning and those coming for the first time will have greatly enjoyed the day out and perhaps a few more will want to come back again.

Friend Or Defoe

I couldn't believe the poor sods in the jimmy Seed - in the end there were only about 50 Charlton fans who were moved a couple of times by the stewards before being asked to move to the East stand instead. They were being ushered out of the Jimmy Seed right at the point we had a FK, and as a consequence most of them missed Jackson's goal! If that was me I would not have been happy...

Also disappointed that the stand had segregation which would have wasted a load of money.

I agree with AFKA. Also strange that we can take so many to Middlesbrough and Blackburn.

Airman Brown

Also disappointed that the stand had segregation which would have wasted a load of money.

I agree with AFKA. Also strange that we can take so many to Middlesbrough and Blackburn.

The segregation itself doesn't cost much money; it's really about what the police decide to do around it. You can just imagine the thread on here if we had locked 500 home fans out because we had made the decision not to do it and there had been a big walk-up, i.e. how we are all penny-pinching idiots, those people will never come back, wouldn't the club have made enough from selling the other tickets to take the risk, etc, etc. 

Also, I don't recall us taking 20,000 people to Middlesbrough and Blackburn . . . all that says is that there are 6,000 or whatever committed enough to travel a long way. It has very little to do with our ability to attract 25,000 people to a third division home match.

Ross

Just an idea Airman...

If and when we do Football for a Fiver again, perhaps the beginning of the season may be better i.e. at the end of August. I know a lot of students have gone back to uni by the end of September, and they may be attracted by the offer, yet obviously couldn't come as they were hundreds of miles away?