How come FP's capacity hasnt been increased?

[Macca19]

Yeh, I can agree to a point, but some of the no show figures sound a bit high to me.

Last year the Crows averaged 39,800 to games. so thats about 15k that didnt show up. The year before the Crows averaged 44k to games so thats 10k that didnt show up.

I dont think expanding the ground to 70,000 is going to mean there will be 65k to games. I think realistically about 50,000 would go and there would be 20k seats left unattended. But thats just my theory.

I personally cant see the SANFL agreeing to another expansion until the Crows start regularly getting around 48k to games now.

 

[arrowman]

Last year the Crows averaged 39,800 to games. so thats about 15k that didnt show up. The year before the Crows averaged 44k to games so thats 10k that didnt show up.

I think you have misunderstood Crowked, but I'll leave that to him to answer.

I dont think expanding the ground to 70,000 is going to mean there will be 65k to games. I think realistically about 50,000 would go and there would be 20k seats left unattended. But thats just my theory.

I think the percentage of no shows would be the same so your theory is probably right. However:
1. If it is true that the percentage of no shows is higher in the Members than elsewhere, then an overall expansion might see the overall percentage drop.
2. Financially, it's not the attendance that counts, it's the number of tickets sold. Which brings us to...

I personally cant see the SANFL agreeing to another expansion until the Crows start regularly getting around 48k to games now.

That is a factor, but the really key factor is how many tickets (especially season tickets) they can sell, not how many people turn up. But even then, as I pointed out in an earlier post, Crows ticket sales alone, even if we could sell another 20,000 season tickets, would not justify an expansion.

 

[portentous]

I was surprised to see Category 1 Memberships advertised by the SANFL in the paper. I thought that there was a waiting list for them too. No way they'd expand AAMI while that's the case.

If they empty the jails, then we'd get 54K to our games. Not our fault a large % of our supporter base is locked up!

 

[*PAF]

If you remove the Port games, your average crowd for the last 2 years (including the 1 final) is just 41,450 spectators. Port's is even less.
Not enough ammo there to justify an expansion IMO.

 

[Still Crowing]

Does anyone here know how the NFL in America manages to get full houses for almost every game that teams play. They seem to play infront of stadiums that are 95% full.

IIRC, they have a season ticket reselling scheme, where by a member not attending the game can ring the club, quote a PIN (simillar to phone banking), and then the club can re-sell that persons seats to someone on the season ticket waiting list.

Basically,

Wednesday: Something comes up and my gf and I can't attend this weeks game. Ring the club, dial in my PIN, follow the prompts and put both of our seats back into the mix. Alternatively, we log onto the a secure website and do the same thing.
Friday (for a Saturday game): John Citizen is on the AFC waiting list, he has a PIN. He logs on to the BASS or ticketmaster7 website with this PIN and looks to see if he can find 2 tickets to the coming game. Wow, there are lots to choose from, so he buys them and selects to pick them up at a special window at the ground.
Saturday: There is a 95% capacity crowd at the ground.

Later that season, the club, thankful that they could sell the same seats twice, and thus increase the home advantage, but more importantly could sell more food and drink at the games, sends me a voucher for use when I renew my season tickets. This amount comes from a percentage of the individual game ticket price, multiplied by the amount of times it was re-sold.

If the AFC/SANFL were serious about having full stadiums, they would take this from the NFL too, after all the AFL has already based everything else on the NFL.

 

[outback jack]

If you remove the Port games, your average crowd for the last 2 years (including the 1 final) is just 41,450 spectators. Port's is even less.
Not enough ammo there to justify an expansion IMO.

*PAF its justified if we are limiting our membership because of the grounds capacity. We would get 60,000 members quite easy i think, especially considering we barely advertise at all atm. It might mean that only 45ish turn up, but the extra 15,000 members cant hurt the club, we could increase our strangle hold in SA.

 

[outback jack]

Does anyone here know how the NFL in America manages to get full houses for almost every game that teams play. They seem to play infront of stadiums that are 95% full.

IIRC, they have a season ticket reselling scheme, where by a member not attending the game can ring the club, quote a PIN (simillar to phone banking), and then the club can re-sell that persons seats to someone on the season ticket waiting list.

Basically,

Wednesday: Something comes up and my gf and I can't attend this weeks game. Ring the club, dial in my PIN, follow the prompts and put both of our seats back into the mix. Alternatively, we log onto the a secure website and do the same thing.
Friday (for a Saturday game): John Citizen is on the AFC waiting list, he has a PIN. He logs on to the BASS or ticketmaster7 website with this PIN and looks to see if he can find 2 tickets to the coming game. Wow, there are lots to choose from, so he buys them and selects to pick them up at a special window at the ground.
Saturday: There is a 95% capacity crowd at the ground.

Later that season, the club, thankful that they could sell the same seats twice, and thus increase the home advantage, but more importantly could sell more food and drink at the games, sends me a voucher for use when I renew my season tickets. This amount comes from a percentage of the individual game ticket price, multiplied by the amount of times it was re-sold.

If the AFC/SANFL were serious about having full stadiums, they would take this from the NFL too, after all the AFL has already based everything else on the NFL.

do u think the club would be aware of this?? This would definitely be the next best option if we couldnt increase the grounds capacity.

 

[*PAF]

*PAF its justified if we are limiting our membership because of the grounds capacity. We would get 60,000 members quite easy i think, especially considering we barely advertise at all atm. It might mean that only 45ish turn up, but the extra 15,000 members cant hurt the club, we could increase our strangle hold in SA.

Yeah, that argument has been going on for some time, but an extra 15,000 members to the AFC would mean more money to the AFC and not necessarily to the SANFL as such. What is needed if for Adelaide to fill the stadium week in week out. At the moment the Crows are more than 10,000 short of capacity every week. That is pretty close to 20%.

What is really needed long term, is for Port to increase it's supporter base.
The ratio of supporters to spectators for Port would be as good as the best in the country, if not the best. However the supporter base is low. At the last count, done by Morgans a couple of years ago, it was the lowest in Australia. Lower than the Bulldogs.
That will increase, and probably has already to some extent, but to get it up to "good figures" it will take time.

The more important thing in the short term, is for the SANFL to make it more attractive to go to games. Be that better transport, advertising, facilities or whatever. That is maximise the Crowd that is available atm, both for the Crows games, and for Port games.
And yes, making tickets available when not being used by members (as happened in Port's finals) is also something that should be organised/worked out. From memory, they did release some tickets just before the last final, but a permanent arrangement would be best rather than ad hoc solutions where people cannot make plans.

 

[arrowman]

*PAF its justified if we are limiting our membership because of the grounds capacity.

Did you see this on page 1 of this thread? (I have corrected an error in my original numbers)

The Crows alone can't fund/justify expansion. I don't recall the exact figures but this was discussed at the time the new stand was built - it was something like $11m for the new northern stand, which has 7,000 seats(?) (not allowing for the subsequent reduction in capacity in the rest of the stadium when the bucket seats were put in).

So that's about $1,500 per seat. If you made a $5 profit per game (say - I have no idea what the real figure would be, quite possibly less than that) it would take 300 Crows games, or about 30 years, to pay off.

It can't really be done without some serious input from sponsors and/or government. It will be done, eventually, I am sure - but not in the short term, not until the last expansion is "old" and the government and other parties can justify further "gifts".

 

[Steve Dore]

Does anyone here know how the NFL in America manages to get full houses for almost every game that teams play. They seem to play infront of stadiums that are 95% full.
.........

It's got a lot to do with population. There are 32 teams in the NFL and the population of the 48 contiguous states of the US is 289,000,000. The team I follow in the NFL has a stadium that holds 64,000 people yet the state alone has a poulation of 5,000,000 and several neighbouring states don't have teams in the NFL. NFL is far more popular than soccer and rugby barely rates a mention.

There are 16 teams in the AFL and 20,000,000 people in Australia 4,000,000 of whom live in Sydney where most people follow the NRL.

Tickets to NFL games are more valuable than gold and anyone who has a ticket and can't make it to a game suddenly finds they have 100 friends they didn't even know they had queuing up for their ticket.

 

[Steve Dore]

*PAF its justified if we are limiting our membership because of the grounds capacity. We would get 60,000 members quite easy i think, especially considering we barely advertise at all atm. It might mean that only 45ish turn up, but the extra 15,000 members cant hurt the club, we could increase our strangle hold in SA.

Membership of the AFC is not limited by the capacity of AAMI Stadium. You are confusing club memberships with season ticket holders. There is no waiting list to become a club member at Adelaide or any other AFL club. Adelaide has ticketed and non-ticketed memberships so you can not have a season ticket without being a member but you can be a member without being a season ticket holder. The waiting list is for ticketed memberships only.

For the purpose of AFL membership statistics Adelaide counts SANFL Cat 1 and 2 members as AFC members and Port Adelaide counts SANFL Cat 1 and 3 members as PAFC members. As a SANFL Cat 1 member I am counted as a member of both AFC and PAFC although I am a paid up member of PAFC only.

 

[Still Crowing]

I understand. The team I follow (da goddamn Jets!) is one of two teams that can draw on 22m people (18m of which are in the NY metro area). Jets fans only get 8 home games, and Meadowlands holds 80,000 seppos.

Still, Adelaide (and perhaps West Coast) is the only situation where the NFL example is relevant. Websites are not too hard to design. Even the smallest of retailers can operate a secure website, so why cant the AFC with a turnover of $30m. It is certainly cheaper than building a new grand stand! A little thought is all that is required.

 

[arrowman]

Membership of the AFC is not limited by the capacity of AAMI Stadium. You are confusing club memberships with season ticket holders. ...

You are right of course, but that's just semantics. Outbck is making the valid point that the number of season tickets we can sell is limited by ground capacity. That is true (but it is not true that the additional season tickets could fund an increase in ground capacity).

Sure, there's no stopping the AFC or any other club selling as many non-ticketed memberships as they like, but the practical reality is that there's a limit to how many people are willing to pay for non-ticketed membership.

Therefore, yes, the major constraint on our membership (ticketed and non-ticketed) would be stadium capacity. Unfortunately there's stuff all we can do about it in the next 10 years, probably.

 

[Steve Dore]

You are right of course, but that's just semantics. Outbck is making the valid point that the number of season tickets we can sell is limited by ground capacity. That is true (but it is not true that the additional season tickets could fund an increase in ground capacity).

Yes, I realise the argument in this thread is about ground capacity limiting season tickets which is why I was pointing out that memberships per se are not limited.

Sure, there's no stopping the AFC or any other club selling as many non-ticketed memberships as they like, but the practical reality is that there's a limit to how many people are willing to pay for non-ticketed membership.

Good point and I guess this is where the distinction between "followers" and "supporters" comes in. A lot of people follow AFL clubs but stop short of actually providing financial support. Even when I lived interstate and overseas I was a paid up member of PAFC. Both the AFC (Boundary Line Membership) and the PAFC (country or interstate member) have discounted memberships for people living outside of SA or metro Adelaide which exclude or limit access to club facilities.

Therefore, yes, the major constraint on our membership (ticketed and non-ticketed) would be stadium capacity. Unfortunately there's stuff all we can do about it in the next 10 years, probably.

 

[outback jack]

Did you see this on page 1 of this thread? (I have corrected an error in my original numbers)

your figures are estimated right? eitherway it is a pain in the ass that the vic gov, pumps as much money as it can into sporting events or anything of that nature to help vic. Meanwhile, we have our lot bleating on about the two black holes of health and education. It would almost be guaranteed that the sa gov would put very little in to help it happen, they shafted adel oval a couple yrs back. The cost is always an issue, but if you put it off it will only get more expensive in the future. If it is at all financially possibly, then you just have to go ahead and do it.

 

[kirky]

It's got a lot to do with population. There are 32 teams in the NFL and the population of the 48 contiguous states of the US is 289,000,000. The team I follow in the NFL has a stadium that holds 64,000 people yet the state alone has a poulation of 5,000,000 and several neighbouring states don't have teams in the NFL. NFL is far more popular than soccer and rugby barely rates a mention.

Spot on, Wharfie. I had the opportunity last year to see the Patriots play a pre-season game at Foxboro and how many turned up - just under 60,000 and it was a midweek game and Foxboro is out in the middle of nowhere about and 1 1/2-2 hours drive from Boston.

The other thing is their NFL season is only 16 games (8 home and 8 away). You have more chance getting a ride to the moon than seeing an NFL game. NFL has great passion in the states (like AFL) whereas both baseball and basketball have that many home games in a season (82 for baseball and 41 for basketball) that they lose their punch.