woeful attendance

[Hookeysmith]

I have mentioned this a few times previously - a few years ago to find a pub that showed live away games was afeat in itself and most would keep it quiet. Nowadays almost every pub advertises live villa games.

I always grab a quick pint before the game before i have to go on duty. Last year at the first home game vs West Ham i was in the Aston hotel and it was advertised the game was on. There were a lot of fans in there in shirts and everything that had planned to spend the day in the pub and watch on tv - 250 metres away from the game live!

I know money is a huge factor but the same folk will not think anything of spending the cost of a match ticket in a pub

We have been brainwashed via sky that football is now a tv sport and the fans are merely a sound backdrop to the production - even that is claimed to be dubbed for foreign tv companies to add to the excitiment of the prem.
I know a Manchester based United fan and for years you could not get match tickets on the day without paying touts a ridiculous sum - even those days have gone as you can pay on the day at United.
Are Man city getting sell outs every week - no their not

It really is not just us but a statement of the times both financially and more worryingly how the game has been hijacked for tv

[LeeB]

I've never understood how bars are able to so openly show games at 3pm on saturdays. I thought it was illegal?

There is a European Court Judgment this week that may well do that. A landlady in Portsmouth has gone to court to retain the right to show PL 3 pm Saturday games via a Greek satellite, the argument being that she should be freely able to purchase the rights anywhere in the European Union.

I hope she wins. Maybe then the clubs will realise they can't take ridiculous sums of TV money and still fleece the fans as well.

[Dante Lavelli]

We have been brainwashed via sky that football is now a tv sport and the fans are merely a sound backdrop to the production - even that is claimed to be dubbed for foreign tv companies to add to the excitiment of the prem.

Good point.  I was thinking that I would always prefer to watch the match in the stadium as you get to see the bigger picture - formations, players' movement etc - but you are right I am probably in the minority.

It's a scary thought as I was going to post that the income from people attending is decreasing as a % of turnover to the point where dropping the ticket prices might not make a huge difference to turnover (i.e. more people attending but paying a smaller amount each).  However if the elasticity of demand does not exist then Villa/football maybe better off fleecing the minority and having empty stadiums.

Maybe it's time for the sugar daddy of football, SKY started advertising and encouraging joe public to attend live matches as ultimately it is their product that looks bad if there are empty seats.

[Nev]

There is a row bubbling along in the Black Country via the E+S after comments made by Moxey about TV games at three affecting attendances at the Wolves.

He sounded like he was having a right old whinge, and has provoked plenty of comment mainly pointing out that the prices are too high.

This is a situation bought about by the games greed and avarice and rather than moaning, clubs should be pro-active in addressing the situation.

[LeeB]

There is a row bubbling along in the Black Country via the E+S after comments made by Moxey about TV games at three affecting attendances at the Wolves.

He sounded like he was having a right old whinge, and has provoked plenty of comment mainly pointing out that the prices are too high.

This is a situation bought about by the games greed and avarice and rather than moaning, clubs should be pro-active in addressing the situation.

Spot on Nev, they seem so detached from the reality of it all, not just the players as we'd expect but the administrators too.

[avwebby]

I've never understood how bars are able to so openly show games at 3pm on saturdays. I thought it was illegal?

There is a European Court Judgment this week that may well do that. A landlady in Portsmouth has gone to court to retain the right to show PL 3 pm Saturday games via a Greek satellite, the argument being that she should be freely able to purchase the rights anywhere in the European Union.

I'm a pub manager and the woman had a sky box and a greek card.

Nowadays the pubs get a european sky box German italian french or spanish and these show the 3pm matches. Sky for my pub is 950 a month euro sky 175 hate doing it but sky are pricing me out of the market

[eastie]

I had a season ticket for the best part of 20 yrs but due to work commitments and varied kick off times its no longer worth my while-i must admit that paying £2 to watch the game on the internet is also an attraction in these days of spiraling costs and that the quality of football on most occasions has been pretty poor .

The game has changed a lot in recent years and its a case of the rich getting richer-we are becoming more like the spanish and scottish leagues where there are only only 2 or 3 teams in with a real chance of winning it and this coupled with the ridiculous wages paid to players has added to my apathy towards the game nowadays.

Oh, how much i miss the football i used to love in the 70s and 80s!

[andrew08]

I agree with a lot of the above, but I'm still getting excited by the thought of a good rearguard backs to the wall display at city in a couple of weeks. I can see gabby and bent snatching something on the break. A jammy one nil away win IS still possible for us against the big 3.

[Percy McCarthy]

It's a scary thought as I was going to post that the income from people attending is decreasing as a % of turnover to the point where dropping the ticket prices might not make a huge difference to turnover (i.e. more people attending but paying a smaller amount each)

I'm hoping that one day it will end up like most TV shows, where they let the studio audience in free.

For years we've been told that the TV money is the most important, and the paying spectator (and our money) is becoming less significant. So they won't miss us then will they?

[Phil from the upper holte]

If it wasn't for sky would the games be cheaper or more expensive? Surely if Sky are pumping money in then they are bringing down the game to game cost?

[Marlon From Bearwood]

If it wasn't for sky would the games be cheaper or more expensive? Surely if Sky are pumping money in then they are bringing down the game to game cost?

This should be the case but what we've seen instead is the increased income from Sky being used by clubs to increase player's salaries rather than reduce ticket prices.

[pauliewalnuts]

How many of us use dodgy streams to watch the match?

TV licensing deals like Sky's with the PL are getting nigh on impossible to police.

I watch streams via an Apple TV (which I've hacked a bit) attached to my telly, and connected to liveonlinefooty.com, and to be honest, the quality really isn't that far off Sky broadcast quality.

Also, Sky have never been quite so bothered about protecting the territorial nature of rights deals when they're selling their subs to expats abroad, in national markets where other companies hold the rights. My parents lived abroad for 10 years and had Sky the whole time, as did pretty much everyone they knew. Simply having access to a UK postal address was all you needed, and Sky never, for example, gave a toss that the calls from teh box to Sky HQ - or indeed from users themselves - were coming from overseas.

They'd quite happily turn a blind eye to it, so long as they were making money.