What will we average next season?

[Roger the Rabbit]

Perhaps some weeks we'll average 17k, good weeks we'll average 20k and midweek against Blackpool we'll only average 14k.

But he said the averages will change dramatically every week which is close to impossible.Your average can't drop and increase this dramatic unless you have very perculiar figures which you don't usually get at Reading as its fairly consistent over a prolonged period of time.

I was taking the mean of all the averages.

Makes sense if you do it that way - irons out the seasonal fluctuations.

[Streets]

19-20000 avg.

Not that great away attendances from a handful of clubs and if we're not in the mix for promotion, we'll only pull in 16,500 as the hardcore home support.

16,500 hardcore home support? Thats pretty optimistic, borderline ridiculous. .

No it isn't. Pre-promotion we were hitting avg 18,000 a season or there abouts, and that wasn't with great away support coming to the Madejski each week.

I think it's plausable to suggest we have 16,000 that would turn up almost every week now.

[West Stand Man]

I was taking the mean of all the averages.

Makes sense if you do it that way - irons out the seasonal fluctuations.

Just read that again. It actually says ' I was taking the average of the averages'. That is one very interesting mathematical concept.

If we are going to get seriously statistical about this, which average are we talking about? Do you want the mode, the median, or the mean crowd figure? For those with little or no statistical background;

mean = the number you usually see quoted as the average; ie adding all the attendances and dividing by the number of events.
mode = the most attendance figure. (That might be difficult as we might never get the same attendance twice - so every attendance will be a mode figure0.
median = the middle one if you list all the attendance fiugures in rising (or falling) order.

[voice of reason]

19-20000 avg.

Not that great away attendances from a handful of clubs and if we're not in the mix for promotion, we'll only pull in 16,500 as the hardcore home support.

16,500 hardcore home support? Thats pretty optimistic, borderline ridiculous. .

No it isn't. Pre-promotion we were hitting avg 18,000 a season or there abouts, and that wasn't with great away support coming to the Madejski each week.

I think it's plausable to suggest we have 16,000 that would turn up almost every week now.

Here are the attendances from the first few mathces of the season we won the Championship, e.g. before we picked up too many potentially plastic fans, generated by our success.

Plymouth - 16, 386 (about 3000 away)
Millwall - 14,225 (about 1000)
Swanseas (CC) - 7,603 (about 500 away)
Burnley - 14,027 (about 800 away)
Cystal Palace - 17,562 (about 2000 away)

Any attendances here on after it is incredibly hard to judge weather the fans are watching because the club are doing well and if any genuine loyalty is being created. Before our incredible Championship season we certainly didnt have 16,500 fans that would turn up every week, we had closer to 13K. In the Premiership we had 18,500 STH's and guarenteed 20,000 home fans per game. Judging on how dramatically these figures jumped when we started doing well I am expecting a similarly dramatic fall now that we are not doing so well. If we now have 16,500 fans that will turn up no matter who we are playing and how well we are doing I would be delighted and it would highlight even further the exceptional progress the club has made. Reading fans in my opinion have always been noticibly thickle and this summer will be the biggest test of all as to weather this is still the case or not. I hope your right.

[Streets]

Means bollock all.

Give me the average attendances for the 5 years previous to Premier League football.

Notce a steady and consistant increase per annum.

Premiership football can only help enhance the already groing support here. Yes many will crawl back under the rocks they came from but not all.

[Streets]

[Roger the Rabbit]

Judging on how dramatically these figures jumped when we started doing well I am expecting a similarly dramatic fall now that we are not doing so well.
---------

That is illogical.

I'd guess historically many people start supporting a club when that club has some kind of success. It's pretty easy to imagine that a significant number of the 'new' fans who were initially attracted by the success have now got the bug and will see themselves as fans of the club rather than of the success.

I'd agree 16.5k 'hard core' fans is way too high, but I don;t think all those who have started coming inthe last 2 years will simply walk away and renew their Sky subscriptions.

[SpaceCruiser]

Here are the attendances from the first few mathces of the season we won the Championship, e.g. before we picked up too many potentially plastic fans, generated by our success.

Plymouth - 16, 386 (about 3000 away)
Millwall - 14,225 (about 1000)
Swanseas (CC) - 7,603 (about 500 away)
Burnley - 14,027 (about 800 away)
Cystal Palace - 17,562 (about 2000 away)

Any attendances here on after it is incredibly hard to judge weather the fans are watching because the club are doing well and if any genuine loyalty is being created. Before our incredible Championship season we certainly didnt have 16,500 fans that would turn up every week, we had closer to 13K. In the Premiership we had 18,500 STH's and guarenteed 20,000 home fans per game. Judging on how dramatically these figures jumped when we started doing well I am expecting a similarly dramatic fall now that we are not doing so well. If we now have 16,500 fans that will turn up no matter who we are playing and how well we are doing I would be delighted and it would highlight even further the exceptional progress the club has made. Reading fans in my opinion have always been noticibly thickle and this summer will be the biggest test of all as to weather this is still the case or not. I hope your right.

Oh dear, how awful!!!!

[Northern Git]

They did a couple of YR promotions last season plus the buy one, get one helf price whatever it was. All in all it seems the marketing was good last year given the consistent sell outs.

You can't do Kid for a Quid in the Prem as I believe it is a Football League initiative which requires all clubs to do it - no chance of getting Man Utd or Liverpool to do it ! As such it doesn;t show how hard it is to sell tickets directly, it's a wider scheme aimed at getting kids to games everywhere.

It will no doubt be the case that we'll do what we've done for years and run promotions as often as we can. To think that selling tickets for games against Barnsley, Blackpool and Burnley might be harder than for Liverpool , Man Utd and Chelsea must be a given. Hopefully we'll have loads of schemes ready to encourage people to keep coming to games, and those who struggled to get tickets should now be able to get along more easily.

It will be an interesting test of how much the club has grown.

And by the way, I believe 4k renewals ia about the same as this time last year so don;t think the word'only' applies.

I would love to see the evidence that last season 5 working days before the deadline only 4k had renewed, as that means over 13k season ticket holders all renewed in the last week? If this was the case pretty sure RFC would have been bricking it at the start of the week and the ticket office unindated for the rest of it.

Regardless, the renewal habbits of STH's last season doesn't go very far in accurately predicting their habbits for this. The hardcore loyal fans are always more likely to renew sooner rather than later its the other 10,000 that should be worried about, chances are more of them are going to decide in the last week to sack it off this season then decided to sack it off last season. This year, logically, people sitting on the fence are surely more likly to opt to not renew than they were last season, therefore making the 4k statistic from last season fairly irrelevant.

And either way of 18,500 season ticket holders, having 4000 renewed (less than a 1/4) with one week available in which to renew it makes pretty poor reading for RFC and certainly justifies the use of the word "only".

I personally question this 4k number being banded around, but if accurate certainly doesnt leave me feeling optimistic.

A friend and I renewed on Friday just before lunch and were told just over 4,400 had renewed. Apart from the two of us there were no other customers in the ticket office.

Next door neighbour and the guys that go with him to games (six in total) are all not renewing. Think the eventual number will struggle to hit 10,000

[voice of reason]

Judging on how dramatically these figures jumped when we started doing well I am expecting a similarly dramatic fall now that we are not doing so well.
---------

That is illogical.

I'd guess historically many people start supporting a club when that club has some kind of success. It's pretty easy to imagine that a significant number of the 'new' fans who were initially attracted by the success have now got the bug and will see themselves as fans of the club rather than of the success.

I'd agree 16.5k 'hard core' fans is way too high, but I don;t think all those who have started coming inthe last 2 years will simply walk away and renew their Sky subscriptions.

No its not illogical.

Notice my use of the words "similarly". If I had of said an equally dramatic fall than that would have been questionable as that implies ALL of those that bought season tickets when we won the Championship will not renew, certainly won't be the case. However some won't. On top of that some that started supporting the club before they were successfull will also not renew. Some will also become season ticket holders for the first time this season. However it is my opinion that those new supporters of the last two years that aren't renewing, and those supporters from before then that also arent renwing will heavily outweigh new season ticket holders, hense the dramatic fall in season ticket holders. Logical enough for you? And just to avoid any further confusion, I would define dramatic as a fall of 3000 season ticket holders +

Hope that is all crystal clear now.

[RTFC Drummer]

70 or 80 (on about Reading Town) lower than 15000 for RFC

[Rhys The Royal]

70 or 80 (on about Reading Town) lower than 15000 for RFC

I could nearly get 80 people in my garden shed....

[Row Z Royal]

70 or 80 (on about Reading Town) lower than 15000 for RFC

I could nearly get 80 people in my garden shed....

My garden shed...

[Row Z Royal]

70 or 80 (on about Reading Town) lower than 15000 for RFC

I could nearly get 80 people in my garden shed....

My garden shed...

Is bigger than this...

[floyd__streete]

lower than 15000 for RFC

Wrong as ever, spactard. If we average less than 15,000 next season I will buy a season ticket for 2009/10 at Reading Town FC and double their average gate.

[seahawk10]

lower than 15000 for RFC

Wrong as ever, spactard. If we average less than 15,000 next season I will buy a season ticket for 2009/10 at Reading Town FC and double their average gate.

I am going to say we stay close to 20,000 for the season as long as the team is in the top half of the table. Might dip down in the last month if we stumble.

[warrpp]

if these figures are true, then that's pathetic support

we were averaging 16,500 in the championship before the promotion season (i think ?) with about 10,000 of those st holders

i knew we were going to lose the plastics we gained when we went up,but to lose several thousand of the people we had before we went up is mystifying ?

if a team like norwich who are unlikely to be challenging for promotion this season can sell out 20 odd thousand season tickets for the 4th time in 5 years, then for us to sell under 10,000 is verging on the embarassing.

[CMRoyal]

I think the club will lose a good handful of thousand of ST-holders who no longer need to have one to guarantee a place at the majority of games. I kind of resent this implication that if you are not an ST holder then you must be a plastic. I've always been a 'roll up to the ground and pay on the gate on the day' supporter, regularly and pretty much unbroken from 1983 to '95/'96, then again since my return to the area circa 2001. I only bought STs when we reached the Prem, because I could no longer 'pay on the gate' (or its equivalent, buying individual match tickets on-line) for most matches. And I have to say, I would go back to the old ways if my son wasn't now used to holding down a regular seat in the place. So, renewals aren't the full story and I think we have built some loyalty in the Coppell reign, hopefully to the extent that we can expect a close to capacity crowd for most games even though only about half of them will be ST-holders.

[RG30]

By the close of play yesterday 7,500 ST''s had been renewed.

[Sarah Star]

Every season ticket not renewed means one more seat for me to choose from when I buy mine.