Just trying to highlight what appears to be a decline in crowds per se.
You only have to look at the empty seats at Old Trafford today (unheard of), and decline generally noticed by everyone - we also only got a 'disappointing' 16k again today.
Maybe a bit of constructive debate might have been asking a bit too much ! A constructive answer definitely was !
Classy.
Hello
If you thought your post had more substance than 'hey look Bolton haven't sold out tonight', that's your problem, not mine.
The Reebok rarely sold out in the Premier League, so using it as an example of a general trend is strange to say the least.
16,202 for Charlton v Hull in the second tier. Disappointing, you say, and that's a fair enough opinion to have.
Some things to bear in mind though. With all respect to the tigers, Hull are not in any way an attractive option for fans who have to pick and choose home matches. Also, the Valley is not an attractive away venue for them (more novelty at Hudds or Pboro, more rivalry with Leeds or Boro), so there were not many away fans there. Bank holiday weekend, people on summer holidays, schools still closed (so no freebie tickets handed out). Plus the general downturn in the economy and fans not being able to go to as many matches as they'd like.
The wider point you're trying to make is that the Olympics have captured the imagination of the public at the expense of football. Meaning that people are stopping going to football and might instead go to events that they had watched in the Olympics.
So how about the Diamond League athletics meet in Birmingham? In what was described as a "bumper crowd", 12,800 turned up to cheer on the likes of Mo Farah, Usain Bolt, Christine Ohuruogo, Yohan Blake etc. I know that's its capacity, but somehow I doubt they turned away 3000+ people.
Maybe come back to this point when the Charlton-Palace game sells around 18k tickets.
Interesting that you didn't respond to Ryan-R