Will The Gates Be Higher This Season

I think almost all clubs will see a small downturn in attendances next season regardless of their performance on the field.

The shocking rise in the cost of fuel both for transport and the home will see to that, and of course increased transport costs equate to increased food prices also.

My son won two free tickets to the Emirates Stadium for tomorrow - the Emirates Cup featuring SV Hamburg v Real Madrid followed by Arsenal v Juventus. Two games for the price of one, but that's still £80 worth of tickets that I could never contemplate paying the price of should he have been asking me to take him there, bless him!

Let's hope he's still star struck when I take him to the Glassworld Stadium next week when I will still get change out of twenty quid even with his little sister coming along too.

Even if the Gulls start well, I reckon there will be a small drop in the starting figures from last season; that's the very nature of the percentage of "fans" disappointed over last season's ending and places even more importance in the improved facilities put in place over the summer that will undoubtedly increase revenue streams.

It will take a little while for the anti climax of last season to die away and that can only be accelerated through a good start to the season....................let's hope we get it!

I've done so now but it's a habit of a life time mate, won't make me liable for Council Tax in Torbay will it?

As always the form of the team will determine the attendances and with the improvement in the squad I am cautiously optimistic that we will get a good start although 32 points from the first 13 games may be pushing it a bit!!

Although it was a disappointing end to the season it was bloody fantastic compared to the previous. I feel that some good will has been built up over the last year and people can turn up knowing that there is a good chance of seeing a performance.

I agree that away attendances will be hit this year but as far as the Plainmoor gate is concerned, this won't make much difference apart from the loss of the Exeter game(s) and possibly Aldershot, particularly when you take into account their replacements of Wrexham and Mansfield.

Interesting poll Dave, at Uni I studied Economics, and through this was lucky enough to look at the Economics of Football for my dissertation. Within this I studied the determinants which affect live attendances at football matches, and as yourself and rjd rightly say form is a highly influential factor when it comes to demand from home fans. Equally income again will have strong effect on attendances. A 'rational' fan would let income decide their choice over enjoyment, hopefully however Buckle can get the boys playing some exciting football, that despite the fact there are more economically viable activities, people still venture down to plainmoor.

I think we'll be running at averages of about 2.5k-3k this season as opposed to 3.5k, I'm a big proponent of last season's increase in attendances not being anything to do with people who wouldn't usually come to matches being attracted (with the exception of Exeter, Aldershot and the play off matches) and that it was more of a case of those that had been driven away by a decade and a half of Batesonite cost cutting and Robert's loonacy, merely returning to the club seeing it was finally being run in a proper way.

The only way we'll consistently attract the floating fans is via form, playing attractive football (last season was not) and by properly connecting to the community. If the club can sustain a period of sustained success some of those floating fans will convert over to being true fans given a long term association with the club, they don't suddenly become true fans who'll turn up every weekend because the club has shown some ambition, they want results not just talk.

The credit crunch will I feel affect the crowds somewhat especially those that bring their families to the matches, and the fact that we're still in this craphole of a league, but if we start well this season again it should skew the attendance upwards although maybe not to the figures of last season, maybe the club should adopt some old initiatives such as 'kid for a quid' to help offset the credit crunch. Thus without any significant attraction of 'new' fans, the affects of tightening finances on the core fans will no doubt lead to somewhat of a fall in attendance.

Well we averaged 3,125 last season. If you back out the Exeter game, the average for the other 22 was less than 3,000. I know that was in a lower league than we have historically operated in, but against that we had a fabulously successful team. I agree with the theory that fans like to see a winning team and it is by no means unusual for clubs that drop a league to see a rise in gates if they are successful in the lower league. Am I the only one to feel a tad disappointed with our crowds last season? Would Mansfield or Wrexham average 3,000 if either of them had a sustained title challenge this season?

The Board has done a great job in presenting a positive view of the crowds we got last season. I am sure that is at least in part due to having looked in from the outside as fans and got fed up to the back teeth of hearing the club bemoaning the lack of support.

The credit crunch will bite as people have less disposable income. I have been known to bang on about how Torquay is greatly disadvantaged due to the socio-economics of South Devon – so the crunch may hit us even harder than most. My Mrs was reading somewhere that the UK average salary is £26,000 and average house price £220,000. The Devon average salary is £16,000 (Exeter alone is £18,000 – so South Devon must be lower still) and average house price £250,000.

I think I heard somewhere that we planned last season on average crowds of 2,500. General consensus is that we have increased player spend this year. I would have a guess that we may have planned on 3,000 - which would be "ambitious" in a way yet at the same time not unrealistic.

The reason I say "ambitious" is that we would need to be successful on the pitch to achieve 3,000 average – at the very least maintaining a strong play-off challenge, probably maintaining a title challenge. I would hope (as I am sure the Board would) that we have clicked into a "virtuous circle" rather than the old "vicious circle" that we know so well. What I mean by that is we spend more on players, we get better players, we play better football, we get better results, we get bigger crowds, this produces more income, we spend that on better players and so onwards and upwards.

For years we have had people bellyaching on that what I’ve put above is bleeding obvious and that all it takes is a little bit of common sense to spot that an “ambitious” approach is an obvious “no brainer” way to go. What that blinkered view ignores is the existence or not of a plan B. If plan A was to chase promotion and average 3,000 plus to cover the wages, what is plan B – i.e. the team doesn’t gel, we struggle and gates average 2,000? You can work out the kind of losses that build up pretty quickly.

That’s when it comes down to what it always comes down to – finance. I know that last season when the new regime took over they put up the money to buy the shares and clear the pressing debts AND committed to setting aside a sizeable chunk of money to cover that eventuality. They knew that if they just took over with no cash backup, they could not afford the luxury of being “ambitious”. If they had been “ambitious” with no cash backup and if the team had not done well, they would have been staring financial meltdown in the face. Although the season ultimately ended in disappointment, I am sure that the cash revenues (derby games, Play-Offs, FA Cup, FA Trophy) left the “safety net” funding untouched – leaving us free to go for it 100% again this season.

That's all well and good. If we had to average 3,000 next season to avoid going bust, I would think that the plan was too risky.

“Ambition” is not just an easily achieved state of mind. It needs financial backing. Another point to bear in mind is that it is easier to be “ambitious” when you are below your natural level – it gets much tougher and much more expensive if you want to push on above that level. I give you Plymouth Argyle as an example. The current regime took over from Desperate Dan with Argyle not one but two leagues below their natural level. I think they did a not too dissimilar job to what we are seeing at Plainmoor. They went about things professionally, had “safety net” funding in place to get the ball rolling forward and moved up two leagues. Now there are cries and moans of “lack of ambition” because they are not pushing on to the Premiership. To compete strongly at the top of the Championship, Argyle would need to budget on an average of over 20,000. If they were top of the league they might get crowds like that. But the chances of failure would be very high, and the cost of failure would be to undo all of the good work of the last seven or eight years.

Tony Kempster’s site has some great stats on crowds for the last five years. Out of interest, last season the 20th best crowd average (so let’s say the minimum needed to sustain Premiership football) was 23,500. The 44th (say Championship minimum) was 12,300. The 68th (League 1) was 5,300. The 92nd (League 2) was 2,600. The 116th (BSP) was 1,100. Those to me are the rough benchmarks. We can and should get back into League 2. Getting to League 1 and staying there would be one hell of an achievement – but not impossible with excellent management and significant “safety net” funding in place. Championship is a pipe dream – at least until the South Devon economy is revitalized and another £10,000 added to average salaries.

The other interesting thing if you look at TK’s crowd stats is where we have finished in the last five seasons –

2003/04 – 90th
2004/05 – 86th
2005/06 – 89th
2006/07 – 90th
2007/08 – 87th

92nd fish repeated the old myth that we have only recently descended to that level due to “Batesonite cost-cutting”. I’m afraid that is not true. Barring those few heady years in the late 60s, we have always been towards the bottom of the attendance league. “Cost-cutting” was every bit as evident in the 70s and 80s as in the 90s and 00s. The last time we were really “ambitious” was the last time we had serious “safety net” funding in place – the plug was pulled on that on Arthur Milner’s death in 1971.

Ending on a positive, we have now the best Board we could possibly hope for. So let’s get behind them all the way. We can be sure that there is every chance that the club will achieve its maximum potential over the next few years. There hasn’t been a better time to be a Torquay United fan since the days when I was in short pants and Merse was a not grumpy young man.

COME ON YOU YELLOWS!

I agree with you totally Dave. There is a strong possibility that gates will average less than 3,000 and we will lose money and even a possibility that we will average nearer 2,000 and lose pots of money.

But if you look at last season's figures, FIVE teams averaged over 3,000. You will probably get a big team (Oxford last year) who will massively underachieve and a little team (Burton last year) who will overachieve, but in general you would expect clubs to achieve success in line with crowd levels. So really you would have to budget on 3,000 to "expect" to be in the top 5 i.e. the play-offs. If you budget on less, you would be hoping to overachieve rather than expecting to achieve.

So judging how risky or how safe a strategy to employ is far from easy.

Because the Board have committed to underwrite losses, they can afford to take an "ambitious" approach. They don't want to lose money. They don't expect to lose money. But if things go wrong they are able and willing to cover our backs without becoming a "club in crisis".

If they were not able and willing to do this, you can bet they would have taken a more cautious line - they would not gamble the club's existence against success.

Some Torquay fans have always laid "lack of amition" at one man's door. That is nonsense. Tony Boyce was very ambitious from 1965-71 precisely because he knew he had backers to cover any risks - just as Alex Rowe does now. From 1971-84, Tony Boyce ran the club in what some would call a "Batesonite penny-pinching" way - not because he wanted to but because he had to. He understood the risks of assuming that "speculating to accumulate" was not an easy one-way street, and with nobody prepared to underwrite a riskier strategy, he made the most of what he had.