A comment left on my Pitch Invasion article about the conflict between Melbourne Victory supporters and the Telstra Dome sparked my interest:
“The conflict between the organised MVFC fans and Telstra Dome seems to have eased somewhat, but it has significantly slowed (or somewhat undone) the momentum of support for the club generated from Season 2. A mistake for a club that, being in its infancy, should be trying to attract as many supporters to their games as they can.”
Without a doubt, attendances did drop quite noticeably last season, from a season average in 2006/07 of 27,728, to an average of 26,064 supporters per match in 2007/08. The season high of 31,884 paled in comparison with the previous season’s high of 50,33 (both were home fixtures against Sydney FC).
But was the conflict between the supporters and the Telstra Dome the biggest reason for this drop?
Or are Melburnians fickle and only interested when their team’s at the top of the table?
Or perhaps it was the style of football Ernie Merrick and his band of 11 were churning out that kept the crowds away?
What do you think was the biggest reason Melbourne’s home attendance dropped last year?
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8 comments ↓
It is the reason why i dont go to watch richmond in the AFL, i think people are getting sick of the same old same old and lack of creativity from Merrick.
Last year we were flying high and i think thats what attracted our crowds for this year, although they were significantly down. This year we were in a state of optimism about where we were heading and people came to watch…
now this begs the question, if indeed melbournians are fickle… lets watch next seasons crowds, due to our poor performance in this years comp and to an extent a somewhat mediocre ACL.
if we progress through the ACL and get noticed in asian watch the crowds come back… if not then watch it slowly decline.
Another problem is the lack of media drive, especially for memberships. We watch AFL teams spend big on advertisements and sometimes they work, i think with the right media campaign and good “exciting” recruiting, we will get members and attendances up!
i would love to watch a Victory ad campaign on telly especially ‘free to air’ telly.
Your figures fail to take into account that in our last season we only 10 home games compared to 11 home games in the season before. Also the 11 game season contained two Sydney and Adelaide home games which will always get a bigger crowd.
True, if the 11th home game had been a Melbourne-Sydney affair, that may have kicked up the average somewhat. The Adelaide fixture actually only attracted 22,000, compared to 32,000 the year before. Likewise, the Sydney fixture attracted 31,884, compared to 50,000+ the year before. The drop in attendance at those two fixtures definitely shows that attendance went down last season.
And not to forget, the 2006/07 season average would have been higher had all the games been played at Telstra Dome. Three games were played at Olympic Park.
Crowds will always rise and fall in relation to performance on the pitch, that’s natural. I think a major problem is lack of advertising and media coverage, it makes a huge difference. If I wasn’t a Victory fan I would not even know that there is a huge Champions league game here in Melbourne on Wednesday. They really have dropped the ball in promoting the game. The crowd turns up anyway which is a testament to how strong the product is. How popular do you think AFL will stay if you took away the media saturation and free-to-air TV? The numbers would drop considerably.
Yeah, what I find interesting is that the crowd figures never deviated from the mean too much. Whereas the season before saw about a 35,000 difference between max attendance and min attendance, this season only had about 15,000 between them. I get the feeling that part of what caused numbers to drop is that the novelty factor wore off for many people after season 1. What you have left is the passionate fans – the core, so to speak. The club’s main aim should be to keep the core happy, which the conflict with the T.Dome certainly didn’t do.
well i would be happy with over 22,000 hardcore fans? for a club in its infancy
this is tricky, clearly the support base is there and they were coming, they just werent bringing there friends and family perhaps.
if anything i would say it was due to the fact not only were melbourne not winning, they were not winning terribly(if that makes any sense), there was a sense of lacklustre during some of the games. i think the problems caused by lubo went alot deeper than anyone really realised and sent alot of negativity throughout the players off the field which had an impact on the field.
i agree that advertsing is a big thing, i hear a radio add now and then, not much print or on tv though, its there but with obviously the biggest budget of any of the a-league clubs you would expect to see alot more. i think this falls to the ffa as well cause alot of people i speak to still dont really realise there is a melbourne victory or have heard very little about the team and league in general.
the important thing is for the current fans like ourselves to create interest within your own social network, get people to come to games with you, expose them to it and then they do the same, talk about it with there friends and so on, i dragged 14 people to the victory v chunam game afew weeks ago, they are all keen to go when the league kick starts again:)
No luck and no wins in the first 5 rounds, an overweight super-import Hernandez for half a year, Lubo and Archie dramas from the Adelaide caning, ongoing Lubo drama, playing boring, one dimensional, unimaginative football for at least 16 rounds, supporter trouble with Telstra management (i think the supporter were bored too and wanted something to get excited about), its surprising we managed a 26,000 average at all. I dont think the support was fickle at all, I am amazed at the resiliance to keep coming and watch some of the rubbish that was served up.
Thankfully the last 4 or 5 rounds of the year proved what we can do when we strike form and we finished the year off with some sense that it wasnt all a waste of time.
We can only hope that 2008/09 isnt full of stumbles on and off the park and the support will hold up and grow.
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