It's not results helping attendances - It's Bazballers...

Woodwork · May 5

I’ve always been fascinated by how much money people in recruitment, sales and marketing get paid. When on the surface it is a relatively brainless job. I don’t mean that in an insulting way. I honestly don’t. But it is mad how much, for example, estate agents get for opening a door. As beyond that, most are pretty useless at answering any meaningful questions (I found this out when buying a listed building).

I am not saying there isn’t some skill & ability to being good at those jobs, and that good people at it don’t make a difference to profits etc for their company, but it seems even average or crap people get paid over the odds in this sector. People moan at footballers’ wages, but to be a professional footballer requires to be in an elite group of people skill & ability wise at least. And billions of people love the game.

But look at this example we have. I am sorry, but the thing that significantly & consistently drives up real, bums on seats football attendances is on the pitch performance. If Manchester United had to spend the next 30 years finishing nowhere in L2, they wouldn’t be getting 75,000 gates. If you built Gillingham FC a 40,000 capacity stadium & got them to play top half Premier League football with a top half PL team, they would fill it. It is not rocket science, no matter how much corporate waffle you spout. Same with people wanting good jobs / good employees, nice houses / cars… it’s a relatively brainless task to sell those things imo. A decent carpenter is more value to society, but can only work so many hours, so likely earns less than this muppet.

fenaddick · May 5

My rule of thumb is generally that if you have to shout about your achievements you aren't great at your job. In most areas your performance will speak for itself and doesn't need a lengthy LinkedIn post to justify why you did a good job

Hal1x · May 5

I see that a $4.5m overloaded boat full of bikini clad "influencers" sank in Florida yesterday with all said "influencers" thankfully safely rescued, some clutching expensive tequila bottles and designer handbags, free to continue their really vital role of wasting air and spreading bullshit.

Would it be possible, I wonder, to replicate this on a much larger scale with ALL influencers (including Mr Bazball above) invited onto a much larger overloaded boat, and just send them gently floating towards Antarctica. Alternatively just like Katy Perry was, offer a free jolly on some of Mr Bezos rockets......headed directly towards the Sun.

SporadicAddick · May 5

Woodwork said:

I’ve always been fascinated by how much money people in recruitment, sales and marketing get paid. When on the surface it is a relatively brainless job. I don’t mean that in an insulting way. I honestly don’t. But it is mad how much, for example, estate agents get for opening a door. As beyond that, most are pretty useless at answering any meaningful questions (I found this out when buying a listed building).

I am not saying there isn’t some skill & ability to being good at those jobs, and that good people at it don’t make a difference to profits etc for their company, but it seems even average or crap people get paid over the odds in this sector. People moan at footballers’ wages, but to be a professional footballer requires to be in an elite group of people skill & ability wise at least. And billions of people love the game.

But look at this example we have. I am sorry, but the thing that significantly & consistently drives up real, bums on seats football attendances is on the pitch performance. If Manchester United had to spend the next 30 years finishing nowhere in L2, they wouldn’t be getting 75,000 gates. If you built Gillingham FC a 40,000 capacity stadium & got them to play top half Premier League football with a top half PL team, they would fill it. It is not rocket science, no matter how much corporate waffle you spout. Same with people wanting good jobs / good employees, nice houses / cars… it’s a relatively brainless task to sell those things imo. A decent carpenter is more value to society, but can only work so many hours, so likely earns less than this muppet.

There’s almost as much nonsense in this as on the Bazballer post!

Woodwork · May 5

SporadicAddick said:

Woodwork said:

I’ve always been fascinated by how much money people in recruitment, sales and marketing get paid. When on the surface it is a relatively brainless job. I don’t mean that in an insulting way. I honestly don’t. But it is mad how much, for example, estate agents get for opening a door. As beyond that, most are pretty useless at answering any meaningful questions (I found this out when buying a listed building).

I am not saying there isn’t some skill & ability to being good at those jobs, and that good people at it don’t make a difference to profits etc for their company, but it seems even average or crap people get paid over the odds in this sector. People moan at footballers’ wages, but to be a professional footballer requires to be in an elite group of people skill & ability wise at least. And billions of people love the game.

But look at this example we have. I am sorry, but the thing that significantly & consistently drives up real, bums on seats football attendances is on the pitch performance. If Manchester United had to spend the next 30 years finishing nowhere in L2, they wouldn’t be getting 75,000 gates. If you built Gillingham FC a 40,000 capacity stadium & got them to play top half Premier League football with a top half PL team, they would fill it. It is not rocket science, no matter how much corporate waffle you spout. Same with people wanting good jobs / good employees, nice houses / cars… it’s a relatively brainless task to sell those things imo. A decent carpenter is more value to society, but can only work so many hours, so likely earns less than this muppet.

There’s almost as much nonsense in this as on the Bazballer post!

Ha. That’s your opinion. But I agree with Douglas Adams.

Airman Brown · May 5

Sad that the people paying the bills are evidently taken in by this nonsense.

There are things you can do proactively to increase attendances. That's why we started Valley Express and on occasion had up to 4,000 people travelling on it and paying both the fare and buying match tickets. The nature of the PL meant that we could even do this in 2006/07. It works in a neutral environment not just an improving one, but if you're chasing the promotion it's highly unlikely you need consultants to boost sales to existing fans.

The biggest factor in the Target 10,000 days, long before social media, was the existing fans working as volunteers.

Woodwork · May 5

Airman Brown said:

Sad that the people paying the bills are evidently taken in by this nonsense.

There are things you can do proactively to increase attendances. That's why we started Valley Express and on occasion had up to 4,000 people travelling on it and paying both the fare and buying match tickets. The nature of the PL meant that we could even do this in 2006/07. It works in a neutral environment not just an improving one, but if you're chasing the promotion it's highly unlikely you need consultants to boost sales to existing fans.

The biggest factor in the Target 10,000 days, long before social media, was the existing fans working as volunteers.

Moving back to The Valley was emotionally huge for the fanbase. The capacity was limited (8,337). The team were improving. Then promotion to the PL was achieved. Gradually building crowds wasn’t some impossible task.

If the club had built the current 27,000 capacity stadium on the return, & that meant relegation to L1 (Div3 back then) cos of budget, do you think we could have got 15-20,000 gates thanks to the Valley Express in our 2nd or 3rd etc etc seasons back at The Valley? What would a midtable Div 3 game against Bury attract, even with things like Valley Express?

My point being (again), is all this sales & marketing nonsense is often just that. Nonsense. That isn’t having a pop at you & the fantastic work you did. But it is questioning this kind of bullshitter. And the money these bullshitters get paid. For bullshit.

The return to The Valley had a narrative that people could get behind & you helped the club exploit that to the max. But football crowds will always, always be driven by results in any meaningful way. Although I do agree that the area you can make some differences is with floating fans, but if we stay down, lose some players like Small, and are 12th in November playing Port Vale on a Tuesday at home the crowds will be back to 8,000 odd in real terms.

Radostanradical · May 5

Does this mean if we give Bazballers 4x what we give them now, we can move in to 60k seater stadium ? Sounds like a win-win.

Henry Irving · May 5

They provide no real evidence that it was their work that was responsible for all or any of the increase.

If they said that they targeted overseas visitors to London and this had seen X% increase of purchases from that source then fair enough. And it maybe that they have contributed to the increase in sales. Whether the cost of employing them is justified is impossible to say from the outside.

But existing "customers" buying an improved product is going to be more about the improved product (winning football games) than any marketing.

This all feels very Charlie Methven.

Northupper · May 5

Correlation does not imply causation

Jon_CAFC_ · May 5

Can’t wait for the boast post about near selling out the home play off

swords_alive · May 5

Jon_CAFC_ said:

Can’t wait for the boast post about near selling out the home play off

So clever. Can boast they sold it out twice by about Tuesday midday.

DOUCHER · May 5

i'm sure a lot of it is unrelated but i've got to say that the home crowds over the last month or so have been beyond what i was expecting and i've seen a lot more groups of foreigners attending this season - every little helps as they say but the fact that with just a little bit of success on the pitch we can suddenly start to virtually fill the ground, despite the years of crap we've endured, is very pleasing. The owners must be thinking the same - in november they must have been thinking they were flogging a dead horse but the last few months have shown we're far from dead - get it right on the pitch and the support is there - even under sandgaard when we were absolute pants we sold 10,000 tickets for the man u cup game in a day - if u was a rich investor, why on earth would you be pumping money into the likes of stockport and wycombe? no disrespect to them but with the potential we have, its bizarre how the big money keeps on missing us.

Airman Brown · May 5

Woodwork said:

Airman Brown said:

Sad that the people paying the bills are evidently taken in by this nonsense.

There are things you can do proactively to increase attendances. That's why we started Valley Express and on occasion had up to 4,000 people travelling on it and paying both the fare and buying match tickets. The nature of the PL meant that we could even do this in 2006/07. It works in a neutral environment not just an improving one, but if you're chasing the promotion it's highly unlikely you need consultants to boost sales to existing fans.

The biggest factor in the Target 10,000 days, long before social media, was the existing fans working as volunteers.

Moving back to The Valley was emotionally huge for the fanbase. The capacity was limited (8,337). The team were improving. Then promotion to the PL was achieved. Gradually building crowds wasn’t some impossible task.

If the club had built the current 27,000 capacity stadium on the return, & that meant relegation to L1 (Div3 back then) cos of budget, do you think we could have got 15-20,000 gates thanks to the Valley Express in our 2nd or 3rd etc etc seasons back at The Valley? What would a midtable Div 3 game against Bury attract, even with things like Valley Express?

My point being (again), is all this sales & marketing nonsense is often just that. Nonsense. That isn’t having a pop at you & the fantastic work you did. But it is questioning this kind of bullshitter. And the money these bullshitters get paid. For bullshit.

The return to The Valley had a narrative that people could get behind & you helped the club exploit that to the max. But football crowds will always, always be driven by results in any meaningful way. Although I do agree that the area you can make some differences is with floating fans, but if we stay down, lose some players like Small, and are 12th in November playing Port Vale on a Tuesday at home the crowds will be back to 8,000 odd in real terms.

I agree about the narrative and momentum in the 1990s, but the reality is that it was the opening of the east stand in 1994 which enabled different approaches that built the crowds in 1994/5. That was actually a season in which we went backwards in football terms, while crowds went up sharply. We weren’t consistently selling out in 1993/94 or even in later 1992/93, which if you attribute too much to the return is hard to explain.

Stadium development is often a driver of higher attendance, perhaps because it shows ambition or people respond to better facilities, not just the availability of more seats. There was a job to do in the 1990s to show that it wasn’t the old Valley, with limited cover and overflowing toilets, etc.

Coach services began in 1992 and of course we wouldn’t have attracted very large numbers of people to travel in L1 - my point is rather that in the mid-2000s the Valley Express offer filled seats with paying attenders which we knew would either have been empty or given away. One of the reasons for Valley Express was to mitigate the late dumping of thousands of tickets, particularly for games where the visitors couidn’t sell the JS Stand. That extra revenue had little relation with results. VEX’s best ever season (with 40,000 return journeys) was 06/07 - the club’s worst on the pitch in the PL.

It would be silly to pretend that results don’t matter; they do. The recent upturn in attendances is formulaic and can be seen in previous campaigns. It has little to do with marketing. But other things do have an impact, particularly fan engagement as well as price, and selling extra tickets is always vastly more significant in the short, medium and long term than, say, nonsense like half and half scarves or pretty much anything else. The idea that ONLY results drive attendance is a lazy excuse for doing nothing.

DOUCHER · May 5

the coach / valley express idea was a great initiative - it made it easy for and helped rekindle a lot of our latent support in kent - gillingham were pissed off but nobody forced anybody onto a bus and i'm pretty sure the likes of arsenal's support comes in from hertfordshire and the like

fenlandaddick · May 5

Hal1x said:

I see that a $4.5m overloaded boat full of bikini clad "influencers" sank in Florida yesterday with all said "influencers" thankfully safely rescued, some clutching expensive tequila bottles and designer handbags, free to continue their really vital role of wasting air and spreading bullshit.

Would it be possible, I wonder, to replicate this on a much larger scale with ALL influencers (including Mr Bazball above) invited onto a much larger overloaded boat, and just send them gently floating towards Antarctica. Alternatively just like Katy Perry was, offer a free jolly on some of Mr Bezos rockets......headed directly towards the Sun.

Oi that's my job!

Woodwork · May 5

DOUCHER said:

i'm sure a lot of it is unrelated but i've got to say that the home crowds over the last month or so have been beyond what i was expecting and i've seen a lot more groups of foreigners attending this season - every little helps as they say but the fact that with just a little bit of success on the pitch we can suddenly start to virtually fill the ground, despite the years of crap we've endured, is very pleasing. The owners must be thinking the same - in november they must have been thinking they were flogging a dead horse but the last few months have shown we're far from dead - get it right on the pitch and the support is there - even under sandgaard when we were absolute pants we sold 10,000 tickets for the man u cup game in a day - if u was a rich investor, why on earth would you be pumping money into the likes of stockport and wycombe? no disrespect to them but with the potential we have, its bizarre how the big money keeps on missing us.

Conversely, I have always wondered why a serious billionaire (ie proper, as I know some chancers have been around these already) doesn’t go for some of the following too:

Notts County - prestige of owning oldest professional club (fuck off Palace). They do share a city with the more successful Forest, but have a good hardcore fanbase already in place & with a Wrexham style takeover could have really grown. In fact, a much better Hollywood fairytale story imo.

MK Dons - not a likeable club for us English fans, but very attractive for Americans who are happy with franchising. Decent stadium already in place. Great potential for growth. No expectation from historical success to beat owners with. Every success will be theirs.

Derby County - proper one club football town, hence the big gates even when rubbish. Pretty much a whole county to themselves, bar Chesterfield. Great history. You’d be credited with returning the good times & restoring Brian Clough’s legacy.

Coventry City - another big, one club city ripe for a resurgence.

Gillingham - Medway is a big urban area & can provide the club with solid working class hardcore base, along with north and east Kent. Plus, have a whole county to themselves, with affluent areas to tap into to the south of them. No expectations, so can again be the hero finally delivering a decent team.

Bristol City / Bristol Rovers - Bristol & southwest is perfect for a top 10 PL club in modern era. Huge catchment area with great mix of working class & affluent support to tap into.

Woodwork · May 5

Airman Brown said:

Woodwork said:

Airman Brown said:

Sad that the people paying the bills are evidently taken in by this nonsense.

There are things you can do proactively to increase attendances. That's why we started Valley Express and on occasion had up to 4,000 people travelling on it and paying both the fare and buying match tickets. The nature of the PL meant that we could even do this in 2006/07. It works in a neutral environment not just an improving one, but if you're chasing the promotion it's highly unlikely you need consultants to boost sales to existing fans.

The biggest factor in the Target 10,000 days, long before social media, was the existing fans working as volunteers.

Moving back to The Valley was emotionally huge for the fanbase. The capacity was limited (8,337). The team were improving. Then promotion to the PL was achieved. Gradually building crowds wasn’t some impossible task.

If the club had built the current 27,000 capacity stadium on the return, & that meant relegation to L1 (Div3 back then) cos of budget, do you think we could have got 15-20,000 gates thanks to the Valley Express in our 2nd or 3rd etc etc seasons back at The Valley? What would a midtable Div 3 game against Bury attract, even with things like Valley Express?

My point being (again), is all this sales & marketing nonsense is often just that. Nonsense. That isn’t having a pop at you & the fantastic work you did. But it is questioning this kind of bullshitter. And the money these bullshitters get paid. For bullshit.

The return to The Valley had a narrative that people could get behind & you helped the club exploit that to the max. But football crowds will always, always be driven by results in any meaningful way. Although I do agree that the area you can make some differences is with floating fans, but if we stay down, lose some players like Small, and are 12th in November playing Port Vale on a Tuesday at home the crowds will be back to 8,000 odd in real terms.

I agree about the narrative and momentum in the 1990s, but the reality is that it was the opening of the east stand in 1994 which enabled different approaches that built the crowds in 1994/5. That was actually a season in which we went backwards in football terms, while crowds went up sharply. We weren’t consistently selling out in 1993/94 or even in later 1992/93, which if you attribute too much to the return is hard to explain.

Stadium development is often a driver of higher attendance, perhaps because it shows ambition or people respond to better facilities, not just the availability of more seats. There was a job to do in the 1990s to show that it wasn’t the old Valley, with limited cover and overflowing toilets, etc.

Coach services began in 1992 and of course we wouldn’t have attracted very large numbers of people to travel in L1 - my point is rather that in the mid-2000s the Valley Express offer filled seats with paying attenders which we knew would either have been empty or given away. One of the reasons for Valley Express was to mitigate the late dumping of thousands of tickets, particularly for games where the visitors couidn’t sell the JS Stand. That extra revenue had little relation with results. VEX’s best ever season (with 40,000 return journeys) was 06/07 - the club’s worst on the pitch in the PL.

It would be silly to pretend that results don’t matter; they do. The recent upturn in attendances is formulaic and can be seen in previous campaigns. It has little to do with marketing. But other things do have an impact, particularly fan engagement as well as price, and selling extra tickets is always vastly more significant in the short, medium and long term than, say, nonsense like half and half scarves or pretty much anything else. The idea that ONLY results drive attendance is a lazy excuse for doing nothing.

I do agree that it isn’t the only thing that drives it. I think it’s important to keep the hardcore & active floating support engaged. They are the fans that keep the club going. Upsetting them & treating them like customers, could lead to sub 8,000 gates & declining.

But I don’t think there is a marketing executive alive that could drive gates in L1 up significantly without on pitch success, no matter what these types of corporate bullshitters claim.

PragueAddick · May 5

He seems to confirm in reply to one comment that Charlton is his “boyhood club”.

se9addick · May 5

PragueAddick said:

He seems to confirm in reply to one comment that Charlton is his “boyhood club”.

Is he a professional footballer from the 1980’s?

CAFCTrev · May 5

DOUCHER said:

i'm sure a lot of it is unrelated but i've got to say that the home crowds over the last month or so have been beyond what i was expecting and i've seen a lot more groups of foreigners attending this season

There were a ton of tourists in the Curbs stand on Saturday, it felt like nearly half of it was filled with them. Even saw a couple of lads in Hamilton Academicals shirts sat in the lower section.

Alwaysneil · May 5

If they are paying tourists they can wear more or leas any sports top except Millwall, Crystal Palace or the team we are playing against as far as I'm concerned

Braziliance · May 5

Haha, diabolical read that.

"I've loved chasing every ticket sale and being forced to be tenaciously hungry for opportunities"

😂😂

DOUCHER · May 5

Woodwork said:

DOUCHER said:

i'm sure a lot of it is unrelated but i've got to say that the home crowds over the last month or so have been beyond what i was expecting and i've seen a lot more groups of foreigners attending this season - every little helps as they say but the fact that with just a little bit of success on the pitch we can suddenly start to virtually fill the ground, despite the years of crap we've endured, is very pleasing. The owners must be thinking the same - in november they must have been thinking they were flogging a dead horse but the last few months have shown we're far from dead - get it right on the pitch and the support is there - even under sandgaard when we were absolute pants we sold 10,000 tickets for the man u cup game in a day - if u was a rich investor, why on earth would you be pumping money into the likes of stockport and wycombe? no disrespect to them but with the potential we have, its bizarre how the big money keeps on missing us.

Conversely, I have always wondered why a serious billionaire (ie proper, as I know some chancers have been around these already) doesn’t go for some of the following too:

Notts County - prestige of owning oldest professional club (fuck off Palace). They do share a city with the more successful Forest, but have a good hardcore fanbase already in place & with a Wrexham style takeover could have really grown. In fact, a much better Hollywood fairytale story imo.

MK Dons - not a likeable club for us English fans, but very attractive for Americans who are happy with franchising. Decent stadium already in place. Great potential for growth. No expectation from historical success to beat owners with. Every success will be theirs.

Derby County - proper one club football town, hence the big gates even when rubbish. Pretty much a whole county to themselves, bar Chesterfield. Great history. You’d be credited with returning the good times & restoring Brian Clough’s legacy.

Coventry City - another big, one club city ripe for a resurgence.

Gillingham - Medway is a big urban area & can provide the club with solid working class hardcore base, along with north and east Kent. Plus, have a whole county to themselves, with affluent areas to tap into to the south of them. No expectations, so can again be the hero finally delivering a decent team.

Bristol City / Bristol Rovers - Bristol & southwest is perfect for a top 10 PL club in modern era. Huge catchment area with great mix of working class & affluent support to tap into.

out of that lot i'd probably agree with you on derby and possibly bristol city

AFKABartram · May 5

CAFCTrev said:

DOUCHER said:

i'm sure a lot of it is unrelated but i've got to say that the home crowds over the last month or so have been beyond what i was expecting and i've seen a lot more groups of foreigners attending this season

There were a ton of tourists in the Curbs stand on Saturday, it felt like nearly half of it was filled with them. Even saw a couple of lads in Hamilton Academicals shirts sat in the lower section.

There’s loads every game, many spend more time out back just drinking and most leave early. Overseas trips to London to take in a couple of games is huge now. Get various different stickers in the toilets too every game, like these

Woodwork · May 6

DOUCHER said:

Woodwork said:

DOUCHER said:

i'm sure a lot of it is unrelated but i've got to say that the home crowds over the last month or so have been beyond what i was expecting and i've seen a lot more groups of foreigners attending this season - every little helps as they say but the fact that with just a little bit of success on the pitch we can suddenly start to virtually fill the ground, despite the years of crap we've endured, is very pleasing. The owners must be thinking the same - in november they must have been thinking they were flogging a dead horse but the last few months have shown we're far from dead - get it right on the pitch and the support is there - even under sandgaard when we were absolute pants we sold 10,000 tickets for the man u cup game in a day - if u was a rich investor, why on earth would you be pumping money into the likes of stockport and wycombe? no disrespect to them but with the potential we have, its bizarre how the big money keeps on missing us.

Conversely, I have always wondered why a serious billionaire (ie proper, as I know some chancers have been around these already) doesn’t go for some of the following too:

Notts County - prestige of owning oldest professional club (fuck off Palace). They do share a city with the more successful Forest, but have a good hardcore fanbase already in place & with a Wrexham style takeover could have really grown. In fact, a much better Hollywood fairytale story imo.

MK Dons - not a likeable club for us English fans, but very attractive for Americans who are happy with franchising. Decent stadium already in place. Great potential for growth. No expectation from historical success to beat owners with. Every success will be theirs.

Derby County - proper one club football town, hence the big gates even when rubbish. Pretty much a whole county to themselves, bar Chesterfield. Great history. You’d be credited with returning the good times & restoring Brian Clough’s legacy.

Coventry City - another big, one club city ripe for a resurgence.

Gillingham - Medway is a big urban area & can provide the club with solid working class hardcore base, along with north and east Kent. Plus, have a whole county to themselves, with affluent areas to tap into to the south of them. No expectations, so can again be the hero finally delivering a decent team.

Bristol City / Bristol Rovers - Bristol & southwest is perfect for a top 10 PL club in modern era. Huge catchment area with great mix of working class & affluent support to tap into.

out of that lot i'd probably agree with you on derby and possibly bristol city

Howsabout a club being touted by my brother-in-law and uncle… New 999 year lease on stadium, with planning permission to develop up to 34,000 capacity, plus the surrounding footprint with homes, shops & hotel. Also a new tube station literally next to stadium. In up & coming part of inner-city London, in sight of the Shard & Canary Wharf. Decent Championship squad already in place. Great location for developing local talent.

However, awful brand reputation & volatile supporters.

Auctioned under the description of ‘mini Chelsea before the 1990s rebrand - your chance at turning around the fortunes of an unfashionable club, no-one likes’.

Woodwork · May 11

SporadicAddick said:

On the wonderful Linkedin.

Since starting working with the club in September, attendances have improved by 13% (no baseline provided).

It's all their doing - clearly nothing to do with results on the pitch.

What’s his view on social media promotions 🤔

Hal1x · May 11

Woodwork said:

SporadicAddick said:

On the wonderful Linkedin.

Since starting working with the club in September, attendances have improved by 13% (no baseline provided).

It's all their doing - clearly nothing to do with results on the pitch.

What’s his view on social media promotions 🤔

I think they attend because they can see how much he looks like he's enjoying it

Chunes · May 11

P&G marketers are a strange breed.

PragueAddick · May 11

Chunes said:

P&G marketers are a strange breed.

They are not that strange. As I mentioned earlier P&G piled on the "digital' bandwagon like everyone else, around the time he was there, but then when they did their usual thorough evaluation of ROI, and it didn't stack up, they rowed back, quite a lot, and stuck with TV. he might not have "got the email" before he left them.

It's also possibly an indicator that even after 10 years there his title was still "Brand Manager". May be unfair, but it reminds me of the famous old poster for the The Economist magazine,

It's not results helping attendances - It's Bazballers...

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