Haha. It's been one of the bairns topics in history during home schooling. I've learned more about the Vikings now than I ever did!
I don't think I learned about them in school but having spent a fair whack of my childhood in York, and with numerous trips to the Yorvik centre, I love the ****ers. I can understand their religion for more than "ours". What a great addition to our gene pool.
Hypothetically, of course we could. But in any version of the real world we won't. 49,000 is more than enough.
the northeast does attract massive numbers of tourists (pre covid) to its attractions, and we're surrounded by university cities with huge numbers of foreign students, surely we could tap into that market with a bit of joined-up thinking?
The foreign tourists in the NE tend to be up the Northumberland coast in camper vans, rather than doing city breaks. You'd need to do something a bit different to attract them in to see the game. A lot of clubs in England, outside the obvious few, are all very similar, a sort of homogenous, grey bunch of also rans, in similar dull, modern stadia, from an external perspective. All it would take would be one club to step away from the norm and accentuate its unique characteristics, to corner the 'cult club' market in this country.
If we know anything about English football clubs it's that they have absolutely no sense of brand whatsoever. They are all just sheep in a herd. Being shepherded by premier league and sky money. Dortmund do well with it, their famous stand, fairly different looking strip and recent recruiting philosophy do that. Bilbao and Barca leverage their region's cultural identity really well. In England you only really have the Kop off the top of my head. United's brand broke when they stopped winning.
They seem to be pretty good at it in Germany- St Pauli and Union Berlin as well as Dortmund. Strangely, its lower down the pyramid in England that clubs work on this kind of thing. Forest Green are notable for the vegan/eco-friendly, Corinthian-Casuals have their history and links with Corinthians Paulista that leads to loads of Brazilians turning up for their games. Dulwich Hamlet attract big crowds due to their anti-fascist, pseudo-St Pauli political stance. Fisher FC are also considered a 'trendy' club on the non-league circuit. Then you've got the very manufactured, made-for-YouTube Hashtag Utd. I don't like their model but at least they have a unique identity. I really don't think it would be hard for a league club in England to take some cues from these foreign and non-league clubs.
off on a tangent a bit here, but once Manchester Airport started taking direct flights from China, the tourism bosses from York rolled out an initiative to capture a slice of the incoming tourist money. They employed Cantonese speaking tour guides and PR people, and launched a huge translation exercise among hotels / restaurants and shops etc., to produce chinese websites, menus, adverts and transport timetables all geared to welcome the Chinese tourists , it had a fantastic effect on luring these tourists into yorkshire, and York in particular was flooded with these new visitors. It just shows what rewards a bit of initiative can reap. I hope somebody within our club will explore the multiple various ways we can raise our profile to a greater audience as and when we ( hopefully) progress upwards through the leagues, With the power of social media and the finances to appoint some high calibre promotion staff, I'm sure we could maximise our 'pulling power' and our geographic customer area to our advantage. It looks like Sunderland town centre is now getting it's arse into gear on the regeneration front, we should be buying into that big-time, I'm sure it would be mutually beneficial for City and football club.
We need to make going to the match like a big day out. We need: Pop up bars Tidy up the bars inside, and provide better drinks. Entertainment in and out of the stadium We need to generate a big atmosphere so to move away fans back down. Another thing is to utilise Wise men say more. It be nice if there is more of a fuss made of it, so maybe guest singers before the match, and put the words up on the screens so the fans can sing as most don't know the words!! Wise men say should be our YNWA!!
I remember seeing Margate announcing they were sponsored by the band The Libertines. I thought that was ****ing brilliant. So niche and with proper ties to the community.