Norwich “top attendance” for second tier club.

[Mr. Raumdeuter III 77]

Just saw on Twitter that NCFC, or “we” have the “one of” the highest average second tier match-day attendance in Europe. 

Got me thinking, imagine we had a larger ground, what do you think our limit is? How many fans do you think we could get consistently into a stadium?

Discuss, please!

Because I have no idea. Yet, I’m rather intrigued. And I know there’s folks on this forum, with far greater knowledge of our club, who’d be able to provide feedback with a better intuition than I. 

[GodlyOtsemobor 2,459]

30,000 - 35,000 in the PL

Champs? For an extended period? No more than we get now. 

[Capt. Pants 4,334]

I would assume that average isn't net of empty seats 😉

[Well b back 3,310]

We cant fill what we have now. 
Appreciate we are not having the best of seasons, but whenever I can’t go, can’t give my ticket away.

Of course if we are in around the playoffs as we approach our last two home games, and certainly if we reach the playoffs there will be many saying they can’t get a ticket.

If we reach the playoff we will sell our 35,000 but to be fair, there will be plenty available for any regular, with the last few thousand going for a day out.

[shefcanary 2,504]

1 hour ago, Well b back said:

We cant fill what we have now. 

I see this statement a lot on here from the naysayers, so will nail my colours firmly to the mast.

Before Brighton had the Amex, they barely reached an average attendance of 15,000, now they have little change out of 30,000. Same for any club that has expanded their stadia in recent years outside a few that slump back to League 1 or 2 struggle. And as the Binners have proven (Sunderland before them), even in League 1 for an extended stay with a bit of hard work on the marketing front and the giving away of cheap tickets to potential new fans, you can recover the attendances. Look at Bradford in League 2, with average attendances that many a club with an underdeveloped stadium in the Champs envy (well also in the case of B'**** in the EPL too!).

Replace the City Stand, allow a few of the ageing Lower Barclayites to re-capture their excitement through the new development and facilities they bring by allowing them to relocate to the new City Stand to eke out their dotage, heavily market their old seats at a new audience and 32,000 becomes the new norm!  All this pissing about becoming an established club is becoming the ultimate chicken and egg argument, where I strongly believe investing in the stadium will bring the sea change on here in the club's fortunes that we are all craving for.

When Attanasio does finally take over and makes the replacement of the City Stand a priority of the club through the wider access to cheap finance he will bring, within two to three years even the naysayers on here will say why didn't we do it earlier, and will criticise the old regime for not taking advantage of the Colney Bond success and the low interest rates that existed prior to this year, for not doing it sooner.

 

Edited March 27, 2023 by shefcanary

[Commonsense 676]

I really don’t understand why so many people are wary of this. We consistently have the highest or second highest %  of capacity in the championship. When we are in the Prem there is an excess demand for seats. If we don’t think we can fill an extra capacity then almost no-one can. Don’t forget that many newer supporters coming to the ground will want to sit with friends, yet it is often impossible to buy 2 seats together, with many of the available seats being scattered singles. New stands tend to generate extra support as well. We really need to get on with a project that has been talked about for years. 
I realise that now is not a good time financially ( assuming we don’t go up!) but I think it would be worth the club investigating a bond issue of the type that worked so well at Colney to help with funding, although if there’s an American hanging around with some spare cash that would be helpful too.

[Red Lion Canaries 9]

1 hour ago, Well b back said:

We cant fill what we have now. 
Appreciate we are not having the best of seasons, but whenever I can’t go, can’t give my ticket away.

It must be a single ticket then?  There will always be some single seats for sale.

We can't attend a weekend game but have been to every other home game this season and would likely have made none of them if we did not have a home membership.  To be clear - that's Tuesday and Wednesday midweek matches we would not have obtained tickets for.  Oh and we did shut the pub for lunch and bolt up to the Burnley Saturday game since it was a 12:00 k.o. but also bought these weeks before the day in a moment of new manager madness.

I think you'll find by now, as it has been all season, there's not even 2 seats together in the restricted view upper tier of the Joma for Sheffield, these are probably all that's available at this stage for Rotherham already if that and again, as it has been all season, the entire Block H in the South will gradually vanish within the next few days for the Swansea game as they have done all season. 

Not saying that's any sort of argument for another 5,000 Championship seats.  Just telling how it has been all season this year for us and don't think it unreasonable there's maybe a few or several hundred seats that might have been sold at times even this season had they been available.

[shefcanary 2,504]

@Red Lion Canaries thanks for contributing so eloquently to this thread as an exile, and congratulations on the work you do in supporting the Canaries diaspora in the smoke and providing such great facilities to support the club there! 

I didn't include the exile version of things in my piece, but having read your response, one of the potential sources of additional attendees are those exiles who are unable to drop everything at home to commit to a whole day out, not just for the prime or tier 1 matches (whatever they are called), but for other matches where they will attend with potentially a car load of friends, when they want to guarantee they can sit together. It is frustrating watching a stream and seeing large groups of unfilled seats when you are told by the online ticketing system that you cannot get four together and your group is spread across five or six blocks if not across three stands, presumably because season ticket holders are the cause of those gaps! 

The percentage of filled capacity would probably have to fall to 85% or so to reduce such millennial problems: 85% of 27,000 is c.23,000; 85% of 32,000 is c.27,000. Given the bigger capacity could provide more scope for increasing away fans allocation as well, these sort of numbers are not "risky" in the extreme. I've argued before that investment in a new stand should not have to impact on the team budget as long as decisions behind the choices made in that respect deliver a modicum of positive results. The hope remains Attanasio can provide the solution when he is finally in charge

Meanwhile time marches on and we fall further behind the likes of Brentford, Brighton and our old sparring partner in the days of the old Division 3 South Southampton. Perhaps people will wake up and smell the coffee once Luton are safely ensconced in their new stadium and are deemed an established EPL club. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[hogesar 9,820]

1 hour ago, Red Lion Canaries said:

It must be a single ticket then?  There will always be some single seats for sale.

We can't attend a weekend game but have been to every other home game this season and would likely have made none of them if we did not have a home membership.  To be clear - that's Tuesday and Wednesday midweek matches we would not have obtained tickets for.  Oh and we did shut the pub for lunch and bolt up to the Burnley Saturday game since it was a 12:00 k.o. but also bought these weeks before the day in a moment of new manager madness.

I think you'll find by now, as it has been all season, there's not even 2 seats together in the restricted view upper tier of the Joma for Sheffield, these are probably all that's available at this stage for Rotherham already if that and again, as it has been all season, the entire Block H in the South will gradually vanish within the next few days for the Swansea game as they have done all season. 

Not saying that's any sort of argument for another 5,000 Championship seats.  Just telling how it has been all season this year for us and don't think it unreasonable there's maybe a few or several hundred seats that might have been sold at times even this season had they been available.

Yeah, some really good points.

What we lack is the seats available together for the casual supporter. The casual fan rarely wants to attend on their own. But if 4 or 5 or 6 of them could all go to the football before whatever the evening entails for them....on late notice too, because Johnny is notoriously poor at timekeeping...etc etc.

32-34k feels like the sweet spot for us.

[NFN FC 1,123]

34000-35000 would work. With a lot of seats taken up by the older generation, the younger often dont get a look in. We need new blood attending games for the future. 

[Commonsense 676]

1 hour ago, NFN FC said:

34000-35000 would work. With a lot of seats taken up by the older generation, the younger often dont get a look in. We need new blood attending games for the future. 

Extra rather than new. Another thing I fail to understand is how some posters regularly criticise loyal fans who’ve been attending for years. The solidity of our support is the envy of many other clubs.

[NFN FC 1,123]

2 hours ago, Commonsense said:

Extra rather than new. Another thing I fail to understand is how some posters regularly criticise loyal fans who’ve been attending for years. The solidity of our support is the envy of many other clubs.

I wasn't criticising the older generation. 

It's just difficult to get seats and younger people are losing out because of that. The only solution is to get more seats in the stadium. 

[daly 518]

Dish up the rubbish we’ve seen this year and we’ll be back at 20K

[Jim Smith 2,365]

20 hours ago, shefcanary said:

I see this statement a lot on here from the naysayers, so will nail my colours firmly to the mast.

Before Brighton had the Amex, they barely reached an average attendance of 15,000, now they have little change out of 30,000. Same for any club that has expanded their stadia in recent years outside a few that slump back to League 1 or 2 struggle. And as the Binners have proven (Sunderland before them), even in League 1 for an extended stay with a bit of hard work on the marketing front and the giving away of cheap tickets to potential new fans, you can recover the attendances. Look at Bradford in League 2, with average attendances that many a club with an underdeveloped stadium in the Champs envy (well also in the case of B'**** in the EPL too!).

Replace the City Stand, allow a few of the ageing Lower Barclayites to re-capture their excitement through the new development and facilities they bring by allowing them to relocate to the new City Stand to eke out their dotage, heavily market their old seats at a new audience and 32,000 becomes the new norm!  All this pissing about becoming an established club is becoming the ultimate chicken and egg argument, where I strongly believe investing in the stadium will bring the sea change on here in the club's fortunes that we are all craving for.

When Attanasio does finally take over and makes the replacement of the City Stand a priority of the club through the wider access to cheap finance he will bring, within two to three years even the naysayers on here will say why didn't we do it earlier, and will criticise the old regime for not taking advantage of the Colney Bond success and the low interest rates that existed prior to this year, for not doing it sooner.

 

I completely agree. Failure to improve the stadium will be looked at in hindsight as another of the major failures of Smith and Jones ownership. They have missed huge opportunities to grow the club with their small time “little norwich” attitude. 

[Jim Smith 2,365]

[Jim Smith 2,365]

Thought the above was interesting. Actually shows that some other clubs out perform us quite considerably given the population at their disposal and the relative success we’ve had on the pitch in recent times 

[Mr.Carrow 380]

34 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

When you consider the lack of competition within our "polygon" it becomes even more stark.

[Red Lion Canaries 9]

19 hours ago, shefcanary said:

@Red Lion Canaries thanks for contributing so eloquently to this thread as an exile

Thanks for the kind words Shef.  We're not abroad, we just own a pub and restaurant in Cambridgeshire which messes up our football attending at weekends, and sees us rolling home midweek at unreasonable a.m. from fun places like the Huddersfields and Newcastles.

To what you have said here though I can add we have had Norwich minded campers stay with us from as far away as Finland for the weekend and all of them felt the need to buy a home membership to make sure they got tickets before travelling.  We've also got some now good friends that we see after they've travelled from various Northern parts to go to a home match and have memberships, and most of them just take their chances on a few away games each year, and generally get tickets.   They shouldn't have to buy home memberships to enjoy one or two games a year.   Surely a few empty seats after an expansion wouldn't be the end of the world.

[Nuff Said 5,255]

2 hours ago, Jim Smith said:

Thought the above was interesting. Actually shows that some other clubs out perform us quite considerably given the population at their disposal and the relative success we’ve had on the pitch in recent times 

How is the “polygon” measured though?

[wcorkcanary 4,355]

1 hour ago, Red Lion Canaries said:

Thanks for the kind words Shef.  We're not abroad, we just own a pub and restaurant in Cambridgeshire which messes up our football attending at weekends, and sees us rolling home midweek at unreasonable a.m. from fun places like the Huddersfields and Newcastles.

To what you have said here though I can add we have had Norwich minded campers stay with us from as far away as Finland for the weekend and all of them felt the need to buy a home membership to make sure they got tickets before travelling.  We've also got some now good friends that we see after they've travelled from various Northern parts to go to a home match and have memberships, and most of them just take their chances on a few away games each year, and generally get tickets.   They shouldn't have to buy home memberships to enjoy one or two games a year.   Surely a few empty seats after an expansion wouldn't be the end of the world.

Already seeing Ethics whining about lost revenue. ....and how a few subtle changes would benefit him, his family and friends.

[wcorkcanary 4,355]

1 hour ago, Nuff Said said:

How is the “polygon” measured though?

Youre welcome.

Or did you mean " how is each polygon  defined?

Edited March 28, 2023 by wcorkcanary

[Robert N. LiM 4,667]

On 27/03/2023 at 12:38, shefcanary said:

Replace the City Stand, allow a few of the ageing Lower Barclayites to re-capture their excitement through the new development and facilities they bring by allowing them to relocate to the new City Stand to eke out their dotage, heavily market their old seats at a new audience and 32,000 becomes the new norm!  All this pissing about becoming an established club is becoming the ultimate chicken and egg argument, where I strongly believe investing in the stadium will bring the sea change on here in the club's fortunes that we are all craving for.

Every word of this. If this is all that Attanasio does for the club, that'll do me.

Edit: with reference to the bold bit above hopefully the introduction of rail seating in the Barclay will both encourage quieter fans into the new City stand and make the new Barclay seats more marketable to a younger, vocal audience.

Edited March 28, 2023 by Robert N. LiM

[Commonsense 676]

4 hours ago, Mr.Carrow said:

When you consider the lack of competition within our "polygon" it becomes even more stark.

This is a fairly meaningless stat unless we have an idea of how the polygon is defined. Blackburn is a fairly densely populated town, Norwich draws support from a very wide area. What are the parameters for this statistic?

[Nuff Said 5,255]

1 hour ago, wcorkcanary said:

Youre welcome.

Or did you mean " how is each polygon  defined?

How is the polygon measured, not a polygon Corkie. But thanks.

[shefcanary 2,504]

1 hour ago, Commonsense said:

This is a fairly meaningless stat unless we have an idea of how the polygon is defined. Blackburn is a fairly densely populated town, Norwich draws support from a very wide area. What are the parameters for this statistic?

I would assume the corner of each polygon is plotted as halfway on a line to the nearest league club in that direction, each corner then being joined up to produce the polygon. For Norwich it is a special case because of the Norfolk coastline. So for Norwich, very roughly speaking, halfway down the A140 to the Binners, halfway down the A11 to Cambridge, halfway on the A47ish to Peterborough, the rest of the boundary of the "polygon" being the coast of Norfolk. The image below is roughly what it looks like (the lines are not straight like in a regular polygon in my example but you get the gist). The population within that polygon is the comparator in the table above - although not certain 900K live within that?

Edited March 28, 2023 by shefcanary

[greendoor 16]

5 minutes ago, shefcanary said:

The population within that polygon is the comparator in the table above - although not certain 900K live within that?

That looks remarkably like the outline of Norfolk, which has a population of 918,000 according to the ONS.

In response to the OP, I think the upper limit could fill 45,000 regularly within a few years irrelevant of the league we are playing in. Bringing back the sort of pricing that grows the fan base, kids for a quid and adults in the region of £10. This is how we went from averaging averaging 15,000 to 25,000 in ten years. The average gate for 1997-2001 was about 15,000 and 2007-2011 about 25,000. 

Supply and demand, get the pricing right and there will be bums on seats.

[Arbogast 2]

This is the link showing the polygons.  Each polygon is taken from the mid-point between each league club - i.e. Norwich's polygon is made up from lines joining the midpoint from Norwich-Peterborough, Norwich-Cambridge and Norwich-Ipswich.

If you don't like it, don't shoot the messenger!

https://automaticknowledge.org/voronoi-1to4/#8/52.882/-0.011

Edited March 28, 2023 by Arbogast

[shefcanary 2,504]

Just now, greendoor said:

That looks remarkably like the outline of Norfolk, which has a population of 918,000 according to the ONS.

In response to the OP, I think the upper limit could fill 45,000 regularly within a few years irrelevant of the league we are playing in. Bringing back the sort of pricing that grows the fan base, kids for a quid and adults in the region of £10. This is how we went from averaging averaging 15,000 to 25,000 in ten years. The average gate for 1997-2001 was about 15,000 and 2007-2011 about 25,000. 

Supply and demand, get the pricing right and there will be bums on seats.

Ah, thanks for the comment on my polygon theory, that means my assumption probably works then. 

On capacity I wouldn't want to scare the old boys too much by getting to your figure too quickly, 35,000 is probably adventurous enough with a City Stand replacement. When it comes round to replacement of the River End / Barclay and adding a tier to the South Stand, we can aim for 45,000. The ground record is 43,918, so in theory given the increase in population of the City and its environs, finding another 1,000 or so shouldn't be difficult (or we can rely on faster connections to the rest of the country for increased away allocations to achieve that - may as well milk them as our own fans). 

[shefcanary 2,504]

1 minute ago, Arbogast said:

This is the link showing the polygons.  Each polygon is taken from the mid-point between each league club - i.e. Norwich's polygon is made up from lines joining the midpoint from Norwich-Peterborough, Norwich-Cambridge and Norwich-Ipswich.

If you don't like it, don't shoot the messenger!

https://automaticknowledge.org/voronoi-1to4/#8/52.882/-0.011

Thanks @Arbogast I'm so pleased it matches my assumption! You'd never guess I studied Mathematics at Uni! 😆

[Mr.Carrow 380]

1 hour ago, Arbogast said:

This is the link showing the polygons.  Each polygon is taken from the mid-point between each league club - i.e. Norwich's polygon is made up from lines joining the midpoint from Norwich-Peterborough, Norwich-Cambridge and Norwich-Ipswich.

If you don't like it, don't shoot the messenger!

https://automaticknowledge.org/voronoi-1to4/#8/52.882/-0.011

Thanks for that. Obvious issue with this is "League club" is a very broad term. I doubt whether Cambridge and Peterborough draw much from the West of our polygon, whereas a club like Watford would lose absolutely loads to the London clubs.