Preston North End as many football clubs in the nationwide league face the problem of attracting football fans to their grounds. Reasons behind that could be listed a plenty. Television coverage makes it easier for the fan to watch everything from the comfort of his sofa; an admission price are quite high and in some cases unaffordable at some occasions in complete contrast to what is being offered on the pitch. Premiership is where all the glamour is, as well as most of the money making it easier for several premier league clubs to offer lower ticket prices to attract fans to their ‘spectacle’. In the next few paragraphs, involving a couple of articles I will be providing an inside look on views as well as facts from everyone included in the world of football business (clubs and fans)
Article 1: The fan’s insight
Football clubs often say that the club is its fans. On that note I thing that in a subject such as that it is important, if not the most important ‘angle’, to see what the fans think. I will be looking into forums, websites for stats et al and using a few multi media tools in order to build up that story.
A quick look at PNE’s official website http://www.pnefc.premiumtv.co.uk/ is enough for someone to realise how poor the attendances have been this season. The Deepdale football ground has a capacity (whilst a new stand is under construction that will increase its capacity) of 19,675. Yet the highest attendance so far this season has been 17.807 in the local derby against Blackpool with only the game against Burnley coming close with 16,149.
With an average attendance of just over 12,000, making it just 65% full on most match days, someone can easily conclude that a club that has been successful at this level and been close on making it on that elusive Premier League it is just not good enough.
A game that was cause for a lot of discussion was the FA Cup 3rd round tie at home to Scunthorpe. For the football purists the FA Cup is still a highly coveted trophy, as well as the most exciting cup competition in the world. That game attracted just 4,616 the lowest of the season which was a good indication of the problem. Football forums were bombarded with opinions and debates, some of them stirring controversy. A good example is illustrated at http://boards.footymad.net/mboard/fmb.php?tno=426&fid=204&sty=2&act=1&mid=2129882376, although local rivalries sometimes can confuse a debate like that. Of course there are a lot of forums out there to give the fans a voice that was not available in years gone by and sometimes they can be a bit controversial, whether by language or by adverse opinions, like in the example above
A lot of clubs have had problems attracting fans to cup games (as shown above) whether it is FA Cup, Carling Cup or for some clubs European football-UEFA Cup. Bolton Wanderers for example for almost their entire European campaign, which was long and included some good European names charged £10 for general admission and yet in most games the stadium was half empty. An indication that most households cannot afford 2 or 3 games a week financially a problem that clubs face constantly.
Recently I went to a Wigan Athletic game against Chelsea wanting to absorb the people’s opinion on that subject. I ve met 8 people in the JJB and funnily enough none of them were Wigan fans. Most of them were Liverpool fans that could not afford to go to Anfield and chose Wigan (who usually charge £15 or £20) to go and watch some football. One of them was a Preston North End fan and as well as the financial reasons, he claimed that the placement of the football ground does not help fans to go there. Deepdale is mainly a British-Asian community and not close to areas such as Ashton, Penwotham and Fulwood were a lot of the locals live.
Article 2: The club’s view
To get an insight of what and how the clubs face situations like these I spoke to Preston North End’s marketing director Andrew Pomfret. Part of the interview is included in the multimedia part of the story. Football clubs have to find innovative ways in order to attract customers to the product they are selling. The difference football has to other products and services on the market are that the appeal to its customers depends on performance, thus results. No matter what a club does if the team plays abysmal football likelihood is attendances will be low.
In order to create some kind of comparison I have taken a few other local (North West, Lancashire) clubs to provide other case studies as comparisons. A clear outcome that someone can easily reach is that most football league clubs have more or less the same prices. No matter if you watch Bury in mid-table of League 2 or Burley pushing for a playoff spot in the Champiosnhip most clubs charge around £12-20. Unfortunately different clubs have different marketing techniques but as Andrew clearly states in his interview the main focus of most clubs is getting down to grass roots and attracting the young generation, what in their eyes is the next generation of fans.
This clearly shows that for quite a few clubs surviving financially is a very difficult task, one they strive to achieve at all costs. That is where Premiership clubs such as Wigan mentioned above or Blackburn Rovers with a yearly income a few times higher from lower league clubs can sometimes afford to sell their tickets for less with a view of making sure they are filling their stadiums. Teams such as Wigan Athletic which 20 years ago were wondering in the ‘wilderness’ of leagues outside the nationwide leagues resort to such strategies to develop a nucleus of fans for the next generation and try to achieve growth as a company.
Multimedia/Interactive
Sources-Contacts
Interviewee: Andrew Pomfret, PNE Marketing Director-Interview was conducted with Marantz Nov 2007 (for some reason it will not upload, I will try it later)
Video was made using my own mobile phone (use this link if it does not display http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FANJMksnU6A)
Photo story was made from pictures of some of the websites below
http://www.pnefc.premiumtv.co.uk/
http://www.scunthorpe-united.premiumtv.co.uk/
http://www.lilywhites.net/
http://www.rivals.net/FORUM/
http://www.prestonlancs.com/
http://www.flickr.com/
http://boards.footymad.net/
I used various football clubs websites just to compare ticket prices (Crewe Alexandra, Bury, Morecambe etc.)
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Sunday, 20 April 2008
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