part time football is a hobby - terrible
Lads I don't think Full time football is the problem here. A Full time team could be run of a budget of roughly 10k. The problem lies with clubs offering ludricrous amounts of money to their players. I think full time football can be sustainable if it is managed properly and a wages spiral doesn't happen again. The likes of some players on 1 or 2k a week should never be a loi wage. If some players want that then go to england by all means.
Long Live King Kenny
My opinion is we don't currently have enough money in the Irish game to sustain a full-time league. The only way the league is going to grow is by consistent promotion and advertising, and the only way this is going to be achieved is if clubs stop spending ridiculous amounts on wages, at least until revenue starts to climbOriginally Posted by marinobohs
I'm curious as to why you see a causal link there. There's only so much you can do to promote an inferior product, which is what you get if clubs jettison full-time football.
A leading authority on League of Ireland football since 2003. You're probably wrong.
For me seeing how chasing Europe nearly finished us off completely I think for the forseeable future teams should go part-time. It's all well and good competing in Europe until it doesn't pay off.
Ok with part-time football the standard won't be as high and it'll be hard to attract fans, but it's not as if Europe has helped domestic attendances. And if everyone was part-time it would make for a much more competitive league. And if and when it becomes more sustainable then make the step up and worry about Europe without breaking the bank.
Survival comes first over european football.
Maybe there are parallels with current thinking from Scotland?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/foot...ne/8213764.stm
Page last updated at 09:49 GMT, Friday, 21 August 2009 10:49 UK
Brown warning for full-time clubs
St Johnstone chairman Geoff Brown believes full-time football outside the Scottish Premier League is not viable (continues)
Well, spending 50% of the income on wages will give a decent mix of semi-pro players with some amateurs. It won't mean the league will become completely amateur.
Limerick proved earlier this season that effective promotion does work in raising attendances. By targeting local schools and football clubs, they almost doubled their average attendance for one game, if I remember correctly. If you can advertise effectively enough to increase attendances by 15%, you're back to your original wage bill within a year.
I think we can all agree that professional football on it's own has failed to increase the gates significantly, so maybe it's time to try something different. Scale back slightly on the wages, and invest in league promotion.
How many of these are freebies, or heavily discounted group schemes? All well and good having bums on seats but if very few of them paid in, what's the point? Are these kids going to start paying in the gate in 10 years' time just because they got in free as a kid?
Sorry to sound so cynical, but having seen these groups at various games, the interest they have in what's going on on the pitch is minimal at best.
There were over a thousand people at the home game against Waterford. We handed out a load of free kids tickets in the hope that they'd drag along adults with them. Also, I suppose the income from food and drink sold should have increased also.
But apart from getting a decent figure for attendance, I'm not sure how successful it was. We had a load of kids with no interest in the game, and I'm not sure how much better than usual income was that night.
Similar thing happened when we were in the Premier playing Drogs and the FAI chose that game to promote under the CPO scheme. Loads of free tickets handed out with kids to be accompanied by an adult and there was 1800 or so there I think, but the money taken on the gate was actually down on Drogs' last visit and there was just loads of unsupervised kids running around. The very next home game it was back down to the 600 or 700 we were regularly getting. Don't think the shop income was all that much different either.
Upwards to the vanguard where the pressure is too high.
An interesting article. When it mentioned Brown warning, I thought that was colour-coded for Fear.
" I'll go right up to here,
it can't possibly hurt.
All they will find is my
beer and my shirt."
To provide further perspective, St. Johnston had an average League crowd of 3,516 over 18 games (63,294 total) in their promotion winning season of 2008-09. Despite this, they made a pre-tax loss of £225k for the season.
Curiously, they made a profit of £296k the previous season on a lower average (perhaps transfers explain the difference?)
Anyhow, whilst in the Scottish First Division, their crowds compared reasonably favourably with those of LOI clubs, yet still their Chairman reckons full-time football is not feasible at that level.
St. Johnstone FC 2007-08 average attendance:
The average league-game attendance at McDiarmid Park for the season 2007–08 was 2,913, which is 27.29% of the 10,673 capacity and up 3.59% on the 2006–07 season.[14]
Previous averages:
* 2006–07: 2,812 (26.34% of capacity; +5.43% compared to 2005–2006 season)
* 2005–06: 2,667 (24.98% of capacity; +10.48% compared to 2004–05 season)
* 2004–05: 2,414 (22.61% of capacity)
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