Glad to see someone can see the point being made. Sunderland had 11,000 applications for tickets here, one of the best away followings in the league, average about 38,000 when not doing well. And this in a city and catchment area where they are the nearest club with less people than Hull in an area where the jobs and wages situation is just as bad as Hull. Yet some of our fans disparage the club and their fans. Sunderland is a place where the whole city buys into them, including the media. Unfortunately our city and the media doesn't. My post was an expression of disappointment as years ago I thought success would bring about something similar and sadly it hasn't.
You're building slowly. The right way. Your promotion under tango man was testament to that. Slowly building is the best way to grow.
I expect us to sell out, the point Castro was making was more about the fact that we still only just sell out for most games and for cup games the attendances are really poor.
Sunderland are very well supported and well done for selling out but didn't they get something like 14000 against Southampton in the last round? We had 14000 go missing for our cup game going on league attendances. They had about 25000 go AWOL by my reckoning, there was a thread on their board about it. This isn't meant as a dig at Sunderland but some of our lot are w**king off over how great they are support wise but those figures show their fans were apathetic towards the cup as well.
People need to realise that we have THREE teams in this city that divide peoples loyalties (and cash) I know two of those are Rugby League sides but they have had some successes over the years, while City have been struggling. What competition for fans do the Mackems have ? Things can quite easily change, if and when City are an established Premier League side. Apart from that, the capacity at the KC denies us any chance, at the moment of increasing the crowd size.
I agree with this. Sunderland fans are class, despite all the ****e they've had to endure. In the past, we used to get attendances in the 30Ks, even 40Ks (best being over 50K). And we weren't particularly successful. Those won't return, but mid 30Ks will be brilliant. We've had generations decide their footballing allegiances lies with teams outside of Hull, because we were woeful & other teams were close by and successful. Unfortunately, the start up of the Premier League didn't help that. And we're still making up for that. We need to stay in this division or at least accomplish something, so kids will remember Hull City being successful. A lot of those are lost and won't support us, so it's important we look to the future generations. The promotion at Wembley, this season, & a cup final (well you can dream) will help. Success on the pitch is the only thing that brings the fans in, and packs the place out. It's returning to a decent level, but it needs to stay that way. A lot of Sunderland fans will remember winning in 73, and the various other cup finals they've been to. Also, they were in the top flight (division 1 & premier league) more years than us. It all has an effect. It's engrained up there.
We've only been a literally a few hundred tickets from filling the home end on the handful of times we have failed to sell out. Having checked the ticket site regularly throughout the season most games have sold out atleast a week before the game. They announced yesterday that Newcastle is close to selling out when the reality is there was actually TWO tickets left with less than a hundred single tickets remaining this time last week. Next home game against Man City is still 18 days away yet despite the £35 tickets there's only 400 left. Little doubt in my mind we'd be getting 30k+ almost every game if the stadium was big enough.
Its very strange how once we went to the KC we had fantastic crowds for a team in division 3 then 2 and championship, going into the premier league for the first time we had over 20.000 pass holders plus a waiting list then once we went down crowds dropped down to around 15000. I think because in the past at boothferry park weve had crowds of 40000 and in the third division at the kC 20000 plus then we thought we would get 40000 now if it was possible to get them all in. Lets not forget many clubs have great traditions and won cups ect but what have we ever done. Its not been as easy getting in the big crowds as we thought however keeping in the premier league for a number of years is a good start in fact its the only way to bring in many youngsters who otherwise would be playing on there computers. Some of these bigger clubs have had dads who take sons in large numbers because they are brought up to top class football from been young we have not had that. We all know there is now a lot more interest and i would imagine most of Hull will watch us live on tv in the quarter final because how often have we been on itv live, this all creates interest but getting another 5 to 10 thousand through the gates is another thing. Having said all this i have seen that some other premier league clubs such as Stoke are not always full if you look when watching match of the day they often have empty seats which they didn't have in the past and other teams such as west brom, Cardiff and Palace get similar gates to us. Lets not forget haven't we sold out our last six home games i know fans want waiting lists ect but its a different era now we have other sports in the City and we are slowly trying to build a new younger fan base which is not easy in this day and age. Hopefully with success we will slowly build and get bigger but like many i would have thought a city of this size would have easily got 30,000 a week
Sometimes it helps having a close passionate rival too - the fact Newcastle get big crowds and have passionate 'live for the weekend' type support too probably fires people up in Sunderland to show the same and vice-versa.
With regards to why we never fill the stadium, you only have to look at the City's demographic. Roughly 25k are student (of which I would say 20k of that are from another city and therefore have no interest in probably going, however, some have as its cheap premier league football). Those that live in the City 'Urban' area are of a certain wage bracket which in most instances probably can't afford to go to a game (especially at £30 minimum) and as a result of the rugby being A) cheaper and B) the priority to a lot of people due to heritage they will probably pick FC or KR. It's a shame our catchment area is huge if you include surrounding areas like Beverley, Swanland etc etc but for some reason the club can't quite seem to engage with new fans and as a result rely a lot of the 'word of mouth affect' whereby a dad will take his kid or some mates will go together. The club desperately tries but lets be honest they fail miserably, unless you were a City fan you wouldn't know where to look about getting a ticket. There's hardly any City wider advertisement and has been mentioned there's this derision of Hull City and lot of people only fork out their cash when it comes to the big sides. I would suggest making Hull into what Everton have become, its difficult but oddly achievable. They have to put up with one of the biggest teams in Europe yet manage gates of 30k plus
Actually, they had 16,777, which was 60% more than we had. For league games they have, guess what? About 60% more than we do. Their average league crowd dropped by a lesser percentage than ours did.
That's still a poor attendance. They average knocking on 40,000 for league games so that's still a hell of a lot of fans who didn't show for their last cup game.
Our high crowds have been very few. During Carter's time and then a gap until Waggy and Co but that only lasted for 3 seasons. Since 1967 we had only had 3 crowds prior to the move to the KC of over 25,000 for league games , one by only 91 fans and one against Sunderland who had more fans in the ground than we did. We may get over 30,000 in for some games but unfortunately a lot of them will be tourists, the types who were cheering Gerrard at corners and swooning over Man Utd players getting off the coach.
Their support is better than ours. We use expense as an excuse. They have some expensive trips coming up and have to travel a lot further than we do. The rugby club stuff is a bit of a poor excuse. For years Leicester have had the most successful rugby union team which gets about as many as FC and Rovers ( for a long time until Rovers got into superleague they were getting a lot more) put together. Leiceter is a city with a large proportion of the population from cultures where football plays no part but still manage to get more in the Championship than we are getting in the PL.
Of course that only emphasises how much more support they have on average with a wider catchment area.
Kin Nora. I have said Sunderland have great support and have congratulated them on selling out the cup game. I have never said we have better support because we don't. I was just making the point that the last cup game they played they also had a shocking attendance. You'd start an argument with your own shadow if you could at the moment. Chill out pal, life's too short.
^^This There are whole generations of Dads who support Man U/Arsenal/Liverpool/Chelsea via the telly and who are passing that on to their kids. It'll take a few years at this level to change that - although a bit of cup glory might speed a few along
My thoughts exactly. I've always said we could do 40 50 thousand in Hull if we just had a good team to support but i've come to the conclusion we dont and never will. We've missed the boat now too. With the way online streaming is going people will just go to pub to watch even when its at the KC.
