i have a season ticket and thats what it roughly works out for meQuote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
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i have a season ticket and thats what it roughly works out for meQuote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
My point is that they can structure tickets in a particular fashion based on the circumstances on a game by game basis. Quite a lot of fixtures are decided months in advance, so getting the correct structure would make things easier.Quote:
Originally Posted by paul_oshea
I'm not saying JD should be responsible for people coming to the stadium. That's ridiculous. But he is responsible for removing the barriers that people use to not come. The underpass was a great start..... ;-)
The season ticket was originally €350 for 9 games but there was money given back.
I still think it is a great deal.
I know many would love a deal where they are guaranteed tickets for big games but don't want to go to friendlies and qualifiers v Andorra etc but
it doesn't work like that.
It does look like you'll be able to pick and choose your games like it was pre 1988 but this can change quickly. It probably won't but please don't come on here moaning in a couple of years saying I go to all the games and now can't get tickets for the game v England....
Lots of regular fans were caught back then.
My own opinion is that when economic times are tough, sports that derive the bulk of their attendances from families suffer the most.
In my opinion, gaelic games and soccer would have a higher proportion of families in the crowd under normal conditions.
I know plenty of people that bring hordes of kids to football, hurling and soccer games, be it their own kids or kids from the juvenile section of their club.
But it's getting harder for them to do this with ticket prices, petrol prices, food etc. biting hard.
Now when the camera pans around the stadium at a rugby international I see lots and lots of adults that are there in pairs or small groups.
Sure, there is a schoolboy section but even those tickets are pretty expensive.
Lets be honest here, if you took the average wage of a rugby, soccer or GAA crowd the rugby fans would be a good bit higher.
I know plenty of guys that go to rugby games that have never played the sport and have no desire to do so.
They are not involved or affiliated with any club.
Going to a game of rugby is a social event for them.
It's almost like networking in a way.
A lot of them would work in banks and there is a strong rugby school culture in our financial institutions.
This is why the Aviva will always be full for 6 nations rugby games regardless of how the team is performing.
I know a good few women that go to the games that know nothing about rugby.
And I mean NOTHING.
They wouldn't be caught dead at a soccer, hurling or football game though.
So it's not just performance that affects attendances.
I said a lot of that earlier too jinxy the age group is a big factor and the fact that loads of women like rugby, i can understand the same way men like looking at porn.
Fair enough. So then you're paying two LoI season tickets for eight games. Still expensive enough. (And while it's a better standard of football technically, I think the LoI makes up for it in excitement)Quote:
Originally Posted by jbyrne
the irish rugby team is full of mingers tho(no homo)Quote:
Originally Posted by paul_oshea
its 9 and you are not comparing like for like really. comapring the LOI to international matches is like comparing AIL rugby matches to the rugby internationalsQuote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
lads, ye are gas :)
Football....good....rugby...bad....
How dare the Irish Public desert football and now prefer Rugby! How dare they!! DENY DENY DENY!!!
People who go to Rugby know nothing about Rugby, NOTHING....People who go to football could all tell you the name of the Bray Wanderers Keeper! Hell most of them could tell you where Newcastle West AFC played their home games in 1987!!
Rugby is evil and will never usurp football NEVER NEVER NEVER....... its only really popular in limerick and the soutside like...yaw....thats it...nowhere else......:D
Ye are petrified of rugby's higher profile and fanbase therse days. Paetrified!
Lads, ye are gas. :)
Well now im not either but id say the likes of james heaslip, david wallace, horan, kearney, fitzgerald, bowe, trimble would all do alright for themselves. Besides big and burly men running around the women love it. They really do. THey might say - many of them - they aren't turned on by big muscles or big muscley men but they most certainly are. They liieeeee!
Ceannaire i can admit it. I was giving reasons for it. Some just look to try and deflect and deny not all though. And just because it is better supported at games national and international doesn't mean it should be :D
Btw starting and finishing with the same sentence really reinforces and emphasises the point.
9; fair enough.Quote:
Originally Posted by jbyrne
Don't think your comparison is valid though. The international football games are far lower-key than the international rugby games (because no-body plays rugby, and we're relatively very good at it). And I'd reckon - though I'm nearly completely ignorant or AIL rugby - that the LoI is higher-key than the AIL. And while you can argue it's a results game, the international games can't compete with the LoI for excitement at the moment. The international games have gotten quite dull really. So I do reckon the international season ticket is over-priced.
Paul's first paragraph has got to win POTM!!!
Well now im not either but id say the likes of james heaslip, david wallace, horan, kearney, fitzgerald, bowe, trimble would all do alright for themselves. Besides big and burly men running around the women love it. They really do. THey might say - many of them - they aren't turned on by big muscles or big muscley men but they most certainly are. They liieeeee!
Its funny how 10 years ago I wouldve done anything to get on the block booking in LR. I could get tickets for friendlies easy enough but competitive games were tough. By and large id eventually get one but still it was a struggle.
Last year the FAI wrote to all of us on the BB list and basically told us to fcuk off. That they have moved something like 39 people from the WL to the BB regime as a result of the increased capacity. 39!! and now i recall the letter was sent the week of the playoff when many of us were saving to go to Paris. That seriously p*ssed me off.
Then a few months later we all get a letter telling us wahey season tickets for one and all!!!
Now i live in Dublin, i love going to Ireland games above all else and will almost always make every home game. So the block booking/season ticket suits me fine. The option of choosing a cheaper ticket in upper tier over the lower tier also suits me.
It is the lads down the country who I can feel for, its very hard to drive up, take time off etc for a mid week friendly.
Then secondly the lads who have lost a job or money is just tighter, it is hard to justify 45-50 quid a ticket to take you and maybe some of your family to a game.
Therefore, I would strongly encourage the FAI promote more family orientated packages where kids go for very cheap and im glad to see that this do indeed appear to have been announced yday. at the end of the day, these kids will be the ones buying adult tickets in 10 - 20 years. Also while i applaud the two tier ticketing structure (Take note gaa/irfu) something needs to be done about this structure in friendlies where the upper tiers are well populated but the lower are not.
Finally all codes are feeling the pitch, gaa numbers are down, particularly in the league. Look at the disaster that the irfu had late last year. They were lucky it was england/france this year, next year they will struggle to sell out the three home games for ticket prices of 95euro plus. The FAI are not alone here but do need to be innovative.
I know the crowds at the hurling are generally rubbish but the football crowds seem to be holding up well in the league.Quote:
Originally Posted by elroy
I've yet to see any comparison of the numbers though.
I suppose we'll only know at the end of the league.
But the fact that Dublin are playing well AND playing in Croke Park should make up any shortfall elsewhere.
If they have a good run in the championship they'll probably be getting 70,000+ every game.
Edit: I'm not 100% sure but I think the 2010 championship attendances for hurling and football were the same or slightly higher than they were the year before.
The attendances were down, but they weren't as low as the GAA had anticipatedQuote:
Originally Posted by Jinxy
I see you've decided to come back having had your Grand Slam TV viewing figures claim comprehensively discredited, without even as much as an "oh, maybe you're right on that point then".Quote:
Originally Posted by an_ceannaire
There's room for rugby, GAA and soccer all to thrive in their own different ways. It wasn't long ago since the football was getting 60K+ for the better games. That interest hasn't just been wiped out overnight. Even our 40k for Andorra was only marginally behind Germany as the biggest crowd in Europe. Football attendees are out there no question. The rugby is doing great no doubt about it and the crowds are there as a result. If the football team was doing great, I think it's a fair bet that crowds would be higher too.
14k versus Denmark 1985. 55k versus Spain 1989. Any 5N game was sold out during this period, and did so during footy's boom years. The sports can co-exist comfortably.
I'm actually disappointed in myself for justifying with a response your ludicrously simplistic and inaccurate summary of what people have been saying above.
I think it's a fair point that in rugby the team is almost always playing a top 8 world team, whereas in the football you might get a competitive game against a top ten team at home once every 2 years minimum, and often longer. At the same time, such a game is only meaningful if it's early in the campaign or if we're still in contention at the end of a campaign - i.e., we have to earn the right to a big night in football. They just come around all the time in rugby simply by way of the rugby calendar.Quote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
Whatever about the AIL vs the LOI, rugby was able to construct a cross-border league quite simply because the gap was there to exploit once the professional era dawned. I know there are big pay cheques available in France, but we're not talking about life changing amounts over what Irish players can earn at home, and the offer would only be available to a few anyway. That's why Magners League / Heineken Cup works.
The LOI I'm sure has many self-inflicted wounds, but the way European football is configured makes it nigh on impossible to have an Irish football team that can employ the country's best players and play against other international standard players in both domestic and the proper stages of European competition. Smaller leagues like Ireland, the SPL and even the Dutch and Belgian leagues are collateral damage from the main European leagues' financial might. I met a football economist last year, Trudo Dejonghe, who has advocated the establishment of regional leagues across Europe to address financial imbalance. I suggested to him that UEFA reconfigure the Europa League so that up until, say, the last 8, is arranged on a regional basis, with the teams that usually get knocked out in the preliminary rounds guranteed some group games against bigger opposition. Needless to say he didn't think it workable!
I don't deny at all that rugby is the talk of the office & the pubs these days. In fact I really struggled to find many people at work who were that fussed about the footy team even under Jack. We were always the quiet minority, though I felt it acutely being one of the rugby school educated financial services guys mentioned above. But the bare facts are that the BIG have always attracted big crowds when successful, and small crowds when not successful. The crowds were there a year ago and they'll return if the footy team gets successful again. That's not to say that paying attention to the 4 P's of the marketing mix won't get more bums on seats in the meantime.
And yes there are women who go to the rugby who are clueless. I know plenty of them! One thing that really struck me after we lost to France at home in 2007 was how not disappointed the people I was with were. I was part of a group of ten, guests of Bank of Ireland. In fact, the talk in the bar after the game was barely even about the game. I was gutted, and furious with the team for blowing it.
When we lose at football, we go for our pints afterwards and can't speak. Abject misery. It's not a representative sample I know, but I think it says something (maybe that I shouldn't take sport so seriously).
Just on the GAA crowds: I was sure I noticed big big gaps at Dublin's Championship games last summer. No? I was watching in the pub. Whatever about the rest of the country I think Dublin GAA attendance is a half-decent bellweather for sporting appetite among the less affluent. In fact I'm not sure I've ever known Dublin Championship games not to be almost full.
Will the Europa League Final sell out, just out of interest?
It depends on the teams I think. Of course it will sell out if they drop the prices but I think they'll have a hard time to filling the stadium if its Spartak v Dynamo Kiev or Porto v Braga.
Alot of tickets will probably be pre sold before the final. Its more a case of will the stadium be full.Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlie Darwin