We are (hopefully) staying up: the opposition

[TANGODANCER]

I think one of the reasons for my comments was what media parlance now calls "footfall". Bolton with shops was a wonderful place to be, busy, interesting and crowded. On match days the place and all its pubs was buzzing. Granted, there was always an idiot element, that's football, but that only lasted till 2-30 or so untill everyone headed for Burnden. At 5-0'clock it all came alive again and the pubs, cafes and pie-shops etc did a roaring trade. It's history, yes, but a far cry from today.

[Bruce Rioja]

I think one of the reasons for my comments was what media parlance now calls "footfall". Bolton with shops was a wonderful place to be, busy, interesting and crowded. On match days the place and all its pubs was buzzing. Granted, there was always an idiot element, that's football, but that only lasted till 2-30 or so untill everyone headed for Burnden. At 5-0'clock it all came alive again and the pubs, cafes and pie-shops etc did a roaring trade. It's history, yes, but a far cry from today.

And everyone had a life expectency of 60 and worked downt' pit, but eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee it were grand.

[BWFC_Insane]

There is absolutely no evidence we'd have higher crowds at Burnden. In fact the attendances show there probably isn't a huge difference related to location. The ground being in Horwich opens up a huge population in the West side of town I guess.

But I just think football has changed beyond what it was even in the mid-90's. Its no longer "spend all day in a pub in the centre and then roll on down to the ground". Even if the ground was on Manny road it still IMHO wouldn't be that. It's expensive, and aimed at families with disposable income.

Every new ground focuses on accessibility for parking and the "matchday experience".

Not saying there is anything wrong with that, its where the money is and where the audience is now. The sky sports generation is being catered to, and there isn't any turning back.

Within that reality I still think that clubs can do things to work with their communities. Little has been done at Bolton to really improve matchdays. Token efforts maybe. But we've still got a tiny mobile phone style screen, terrible franchises serving awful overpriced rubbish and no real attempt to help the fans self organise into some sort of arrangement that might increase the atmosphere. The ground is dead 70% of the time and often it takes some appalling refereeing or cheating or whatever to get things going.

I remember as a kid being taken to football at a few different grounds including Burnden and the game to a large extent was secondary to the experience and atmosphere. Just being in the crowd, even at a team I didn't support like Everton or Man City was a buzz in itself. The game didn't really matter as much. Now, guarantee that at virtually ever major ground you can sit somewhere and within ten minutes some balloon will be screaming at his own players demanding that the manager is sacked or just offering a continuous commentary about everything they're doing wrong. The sky sports/FIFA generation.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

While widely agreeing with you, BWFCi, I'd note that such self-inflated balloons used to exist in the old days. What happened was, you moved away to a different part of the terrace. Now, with specific seats, you could find yourself stationed next to a bad-tempered blowhard for 90 minutes at best, a season at worst. We'll never know, but I wonder how many of the (fictiously embellished?) missing thousands have based their stayaway decision on some herbert they couldn't escape last time?

(File under: customer experience questionnaire, unsmiley-face response to)

[TANGODANCER]

I think one of the reasons for my comments was what media parlance now calls "footfall". Bolton with shops was a wonderful place to be, busy, interesting and crowded. On match days the place and all its pubs was buzzing. Granted, there was always an idiot element, that's football, but that only lasted till 2-30 or so untill everyone headed for Burnden. At 5-0'clock it all came alive again and the pubs, cafes and pie-shops etc did a roaring trade. It's history, yes, but a far cry from today.

And everyone had a life expectency of 60 and worked downt' pit, but eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee it were grand.

Ah, well, I was actually making the point about the usefulness of having a stadium in the town instead of six/seven miles away as an attraction to getting the crowds in, rather than a trip down memory lane, but hey, ho, read it as you will.!.

[BWFC_Insane]

While widely agreeing with you, BWFCi, I'd note that such self-inflated balloons used to exist in the old days. What happened was, you moved away to a different part of the terrace. Now, with specific seats, you could find yourself stationed next to a bad-tempered blowhard for 90 minutes at best, a season at worst. We'll never know, but I wonder how many of the (fictiously embellished?) missing thousands have based their stayaway decision on some herbert they couldn't escape last time?

(File under: customer experience questionnaire, unsmiley-face response to)

Aye indeed. But they were drowned out by the general noise and also far more likely to be told to button it. Nowadays people suffer in their seats in silence.

I'm trying not to look through rose tinted glasses, everything is more exciting when you're a kid, even when now you realise Bolton were going through the absolutely doldrums back then and a lot of folk were royally fed up, it just didn't transmit as it does today.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Like your financial investments and favourite teams, walk-up attendances could go down as well as up. The average league gate at Burnden in 1993/94 was 10,498. You'd imagine the natives might have been enticed down Manny Road by the first second-tier campaign in a decade, especially alongside a profile-raising run to the FA Cup quarter-finals, but look at the fluctuation on these figures:

Screen Shot 2018-03-26 at 14.44.56.png (100.91 KiB) Viewed 2815 times

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Like your financial investments and favourite teams, walk-up attendances could go down as well as up. The average league gate at Burnden in 1993/94 was 10,498. You'd imagine the natives might have been enticed down Manny Road by the first second-tier campaign in a decade, especially alongside a profile-raising run to the FA Cup quarter-finals, but look at the fluctuation on these figures:

Screen Shot 2018-03-26 at 14.44.56.png

Never having held a season ticket, paying each match at a time, (and therefore unable to determine whether season tickets even existed then) can you tell me DSB what number of season ticket holders there were for that season.
I'm intuiting that a lack of season ticket holders (because it wasn't the cultural norm in the 'olden days' - if that's what the nineties were) might well contribute to the yo-yo fluctuation seen in those figures.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Never having held a season ticket, paying each match at a time, (and therefore unable to determine whether season tickets even existed then) can you tell me DSB what number of season ticket holders there were for that season.
I'm intuiting that a lack of season ticket holders (because it wasn't the cultural norm in the 'olden days' - if that's what the nineties were) might well contribute to the yo-yo fluctuation seen in those figures.

I cannot, for I do not have those figures. They tend not to be publicly available beyond the odd vague proclamation in the local paper.

You might be right. ISTR we now have c12k ST holders; evidently that's more than in the season we beat Everton, Arsenal & Villa in the cup, unless the ST holders then were incredibly choosy.

(Small historical fact: back in the day, Bolton Wanderers were taken to court by a fan who was asking for a return on unused ST stubs. The club won, it became a test case and is now the reason once you've paid, you ain't getting your shekels back no matter how shit the team or idiotic the manager.)

[BWFC_Insane]

Like your financial investments and favourite teams, walk-up attendances could go down as well as up. The average league gate at Burnden in 1993/94 was 10,498. You'd imagine the natives might have been enticed down Manny Road by the first second-tier campaign in a decade, especially alongside a profile-raising run to the FA Cup quarter-finals, but look at the fluctuation on these figures:

Screen Shot 2018-03-26 at 14.44.56.png

Never having held a season ticket, paying each match at a time, (and therefore unable to determine whether season tickets even existed then) can you tell me DSB what number of season ticket holders there were for that season.
I'm intuiting that a lack of season ticket holders (because it wasn't the cultural norm in the 'olden days' - if that's what the nineties were) might well contribute to the yo-yo fluctuation seen in those figures.

Lots had season tickets back then. It was useful for priority cup/Wembley tickets.

The move to all seaters of course has made that more prevalent.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Interestingly, given recent crowd-size discussions on here, to hear Chairman Ken quoted in Marc Iles' fascinating interview:
http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/sport/wa ... oad_ahead/

Our away followings have been fantastic but I think if we’re going to compete with the big clubs in this division we need to make the stadium as intimidating as humanly possible. It certainly isn’t easy. But if we could get the crowds up to the levels they were at the end of last season, around that 20,000 mark, then you’re talking about £3-4million extra, which if you invest wisely on the right players could make a huge difference.

It's good to see him thinking this way, but it would require fresh ideas and implementation because it demands the sort of magnetism we simply haven't had sustainably in this division. The other day I examined 1993/94, Rioch's first second-tier season:

Like your financial investments and favourite teams, walk-up attendances could go down as well as up. The average league gate at Burnden in 1993/94 was 10,498. You'd imagine the natives might have been enticed down Manny Road by the first second-tier campaign in a decade, especially alongside a profile-raising run to the FA Cup quarter-finals, but look at the fluctuation on these figures:

Screen Shot 2018-03-26 at 14.44.56.png

Well, fast-forwarding to the Reebok era, here's 2000/01 – ie the season we went up, on the back of the season we'd reached three semi-finals. We averaged 16,106.

Screen Shot 2018-03-27 at 17.18.55.png (110.95 KiB) Viewed 2653 times

I’ve greyed out the midweek games which can sometimes drag the average down, and indeed the two worst attendances (QPR & Stockport) were on Tuesdays, as was the fifth-worst (Forest). But the overall non-midweek attendance was only 21 people more at 16,082. This is because the other two midweekers were the best and fourth-best attendances: the Friday-night derby with Blackburn attracted 20,000 while the Tuesday-nighter three days previously, against the almost comically uncommercial opponents Grimsby, was watched by 24,000 – attracted to a “family fun night” by £5 tickets, a funfair and so on. (We had to come back from behind twice to fumble a 2-2 draw with Lennie Lawrence’s Mariners.)

http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/604 ... k_Stadium/

http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/604 ... t/?ref=arc

That Grimsby game illustrates that big crowds and good results don’t automatically go hand in hand. We drew that one, got hammered by Blackburn and for the next home game, on a Saturday against Gillingham, we were back down to 13,161. Even when the team was winning, we weren’t cramming them in: when Crewe came in December, after we’d won the previous three home games, and were in fifth place a point behind second-placed Birmingham, we got 12,836. Nor was that unusual: the previous two home attendances (both Saturdays) had been 13,406 and 13,904.

On another day I’ll look at another season, but I’m not finding anything which suggests our base support can be persuaded back for good – not good results (Allardyce), not good football (Rioch), not even both: our average in the 98pt Todd season was 15,826. I would genuinely love to hear the turnstiles whirring, and I note Iles tweeting that "Ticket sales already past 18k for Tuesday night against Birmingham City, I'm told, with a week to go. Should test the theory of cheap tickets = full(er) house. £15 adults, £7 concessions, £1 U18s" – all very promising, but he then noted: "To clarify. Nearly 5k of away fans in this... so the sales from here are what tests the theory." Indeed – because what's 18,000-5,000? It's the same old 13,000 again.

[GhostoftheBok]

a huge town (I think we're the largest non-city in the UK, but can stand correction on that score)

I was always tolkd as a boy we were the biggest town in the country, but nowadays I guess it depends how you cut it with unitary authorities, post-1974 boundaries and so on.

I think there's room for development of our fan base in the medium to long term.

As a trend, I'm genuinely unsure if football attendance numbers are going to rise and stay high. Leisure pursuits are fiercely competitive; we're all consumers now. The kind of unquestioning loyalty fans have demonstrated is now downright weird. Try translating it into any other entertainment sphere - a comedian, a dance troupe, a film director, a pub - and you (not "you" particularly) just wouldn't expect the same loyalty entirely unconnected to results.

In the short term, I do think increased success and better football make a difference in attendances in general and it'd be odd if Bolton were magically immune to that tendency. I mentioned Wolves earlier - they've seen a jump of about 7,000 in their average attendance on the back of their promotion push this term. The trouble with Bolton is that we've not had much excitement generated around the club in a long, long time. We are down by about 2000 by our normal "average" Championship attendance, I think (our promotion season back in 2000/01 saw home attendances around 16500, as I recall) but we are around a 17000 club in this division as "standard" I think. Again, I can stand correction there as I don't have figures to hand.

The figures are under this link – I posted it above but as an inline link, which don't stand out very well these days (could we change the colour of unclicked body-copy links to red, DJBlu?)
http://european-football-statistics.co. ... b/bolw.htm

Screen Shot 2018-03-26 at 10.45.39.png

In Sam's promotion season we averaged 16,106 - 650-odd more than we've averaged this season. In 2013/14 – Freedman's only full season - we averaged fractionally more at 16,141. That's more than we've averaged in every other second-tier season over the last quarter-century, except two immediately following relegation from the Premier (98/99 and 12/13) when enough people hung around to boost it to 18k. Notable that that shrunk fairly quickly thereafter, though – to the aforementioned 16,141 under Freedman (despite having nearly reached the play-offs) and way down to 14,384 in 1999/2000, when Sam took us to the play-offs and two domestic cup semi-finals.

Wolves have had a jump to 28k this season from a more fluctuating second-tier baseline, judging by their own numbers (click link here). They averaged 20k last season but more like 23k-25k a decade ago in this division.

None of which is to say we can't be a 17000 club in this division...but we haven't been, even with successful teams, except when we've got an overhang from a Premier campaign.

Thanks to Dujon sharing an extensive BWFC database with me I could do a deeper dive into these numbers - like whether they fluctuate within a season, etc - and I can try to answer questions but y'know, there's only so many hours in the day

The club, for me, has failed to rebuild itself as a central hub for the community; basically due to a lack of any real attempt to do that. I suppose that counts as an off-topic rant, so sorry about that - but I do think there's room there to develop the club going forward.

Not at all, as rants go it was interesting and thought-provoking. As you say there's the possibility of outreach into relatively untapped markets but it would be overturning history to suggest there's tons of headroom just for finishing a bit higher in this division.

I should be clear that I don't think finishing 10th vs finishing 15th will make a huge difference in terms of numbers, but I do think the club's general approach to generating fan enthusiasm has been distinctly laissez faire. As you said, we are operating in a competitive marketplace for leisure activities these days and I think we need to look at our outreach and advertising in that context. Having a side doing well on the pitch is necessary, but not sufficient, when it comes to selling the product of live football to more people. When I said before that we've not generated much excitement around the club I do think that's an active, rather than a passive thing. Most people in the town wouldn't have a clue what was going on with the club over a season if we are fighting relegation or just below the play-offs, because they have no interaction with the club aside from the odd glimpse of the back page of the Bolton News.

The media department attitude (prior to the current regime) was essentially that football outside the Premier League was unsellable and that Premier League football sold itself. Like I said before, I think that even if we worked our arses off on the marketing and community side of things we're a club that would max out at 20,000 at this level - but I'm a little more optimistic about what is "realistic" under the right circumstances, in that I think active measures and a decent product on the pitch could get us up to about 18k. It's all hypothetical, though, as we've never actually tried it. At the end of the ED reign we hired a small ad firm to work on that side of things more (radio adverts, posters etc), but we were in a downward spiral on and off the pitch and everyone knew it, so that was always a hard slog.

Derby County began work on a program in 2014/15 after seeing attendances drop off following relegation. They upped their "Family Experience" marketing and then in the 2016/17 extended their Family Area blocks in one stand - in which they offer a full day out for the kids with entertainment, face painting etc. Their "First Time Rams" program is also, apparently, very successful. At the same time they did outreach work to bring in more traditional football fans in other parts of the stadium. They saw something like a 15-20% rise in home gates. Now some of that will be related to your usual fan depression after relegation and then an uptick when it looked like they might go back up - but their average attendance was well above where it usually is at this level and was stable for 3 seasons. This is the first year they've fallen away from that since they increased their marketing efforts, which you have to assume is tied in with their off-the-field issues. The general trend is still to have higher crowds (about 10% above their "trough" period), though, which likely wouldn't have been possible if they hadn't had a promotion push to sell in 2014/15 but must also be tied into the active measures they put in place a few years back. You need positivity around the club AND good marketing and community work to get those extra people in through the door. It also has to be a constant push, rather than just the odd promotion every couple of months. The issue for Bolton at the minute is that there's still not much positivity to be found and there's not going to be much in the budget for marketing - but a boy can dream.

Derby, back in the 90s, used to have fairly similar attendances to us. Their extended run in the top flight saw them double their gates and then they retained their attendances better than Bolton have been able to following relegation. Why that is I don't know, but it'd be interesting to do a deep dive and try to figure it out.

[jmjhb]

I believe a lot of Derby's support is derived from rural Derbyshire. We don't really have that.

[GhostoftheBok]

I believe a lot of Derby's support is derived from rural Derbyshire. We don't really have that.

We won't match them for raw numbers, no.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

The Derby example is interesting, thanks GotB. Attracting interest among The Kids has long been a business strategy. Back in the day, when the only live football on telly was the Cup Final, the idea was that if you got 'em young you had 'em for life.

When I was a young teenager, and it cost me £3.30 at Paddock turnstile (and all round here was fields, etc etc), our fellow third-tier promotion-seekers Bury did kids' STs for a tenner. They were far from the only team to target that “market segment”, for good reason. The younger ones might drag their parents (or be dragged by them) and demand chocolate, crisps and happy-shop shit; the pubescents would discover the delights of following their team around and acting hard behind a nice big fence. Nowadays, they’d just have to make sure they’ve got good WiFi…

One quibble: you mention “usual fan depression after relegation and then an uptick when it looked like they might go back up” – that might be the experience at other clubs but it’s not ours: we tend to retain a rump of higher-division supporters for one season, who then don’t come back until we’re back in the higher flight. This happened in the late 90s:

97/98 24,352 (relegated from Prem under Todd)
98/99 18,240 (6th under Todd, lost at Wembley to Watford)
99/00 14,384 (6th under Allardyce, three semis, lost to Barry Knight)
00/01 16,106 (3rd under Allardyce, promoted at the Millennium)

Note how the numbers didn’t rise significantly for that last season, despite being in the thick of a promotion chase all term. Now obviously we haven’t been that good since the last time we came down, so we can’t directly compare, but the tail-off has been similar this time:

11/12 23,670 (relegated from Prem under Coyle)
12/13 18,034 (7th under Freedman)
13/14 16,141 (14th under Freedman)
14/15 15,413 (18th under Freedman/Lennon)
15/16 15,056 (24th under Lennon/Jiminho)
16/17 14,934 (promoted from third tier under Parky)
17/18 15,427 (so far)

While I’m digging: there’s a long-floated theory that good football brings fans, often expressed as “I’m not going back until Manager X bogs off, and thousands of people are like me, they’ll all come back, you’ll see”. The most recent citation of that was Anti-Football Dougie. Going back to the start of his abortive last season, Freedman's final five home attendances were:

16.08.14 15,753 D 2-2 Forest
19.08.14 13,847 L 1-2 Middlesbrough
13.09.14 15,799 D 0-0 Sheff Wed
16.09.14 13,630 W 3-2 Rotherham
27.09.14 15,006 L 0-2 Derby

Lennon’s first five were:
25.10.14 14,811 W 3-1 Brentford
04.11.14 12,961 W 3-0 Cardiff
07.11.14 17,282 W 3-1 Wigan
29.11.14 15,924 W 1-0 Huddersfield
13.12.14 15,186 D 0-0 Ipswich

The five-game average crept up from 14,807 under fag-end Freedman to 15,233 under exciting new winningy Lennon – and had that derby against Wigan attracted the same crowd as home games later that season against Fulham (12,790), Reading (12,795), Charlton (12,994), Brighton (14,115) or Millwall (14,719), even that rise of 426 would have disappeared.

[GhostoftheBok]

The introduction of safe standing might help bring more traditional fans back in. Some MPs are currently pushing for it and I think lobbing local MPs could probably get that through. A proper youth drive, with one section of the East Lower becoming a true family area with entertainment etc might tie in well with the development of a "Kop" end with safe standing. That'd give you two groups of cheaper tickets and allow the club to bring kids and teenagers in. Like I say, it's all hypothetical; but if you try nowt you get nowt.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

I believe a lot of Derby's support is derived from rural Derbyshire. We don't really have that.

That's why they're called Derby County...

[Bruce Rioja]

I believe a lot of Derby's support is derived from rural Derbyshire. We don't really have that.

That's why they're called Derby County...

Yes well, they're currently losing at home to Sunderland 2-1, having scored the first for them and putting Sunderland through one-on-one for the second. Wankers.

[Athertonian]

I'm fecking sick of my team making the opposition look like Real Madrid. Almost every away game.,Those fans deserve a medal for putting up with these away performances.

Derby have been battered tonight yet when we go to Derby they'll be word beaters.
Football, I fecking hate Football.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Seven games to go and five points in safety. Not looking quite as secure as two weeks ago. We need to nail Birmingham... proper six pointer.