OK yesterday was freezing cold and the Reds have few travelling supporters but the crowds are puzzling this year. The numbers annouced seem to tie in with the look of the terraces which has not always been the case.
I would have thought given our rise from the dead, our position in the league, the fact we are playing some of the best attacking rugby for years and have a good sprinkling of home grown talent would have put some extra bodies through the gates. Have we lost support to Huddersfield or Fax? Are people struggling to find the gate money - though if we did sell 7000+ season tickets we must have very few people paying on the gate. Sure OK must be wondering as well. Anyone else have any thoughts as sooner or later this will start to hit the bank account.

Thought the same especially vs Hull KR a game which is always high scoring we only get 8k through the gates, where is everyone.

The cold isnt a good enough reason, if it was hammering it down with rain fair enough but abit chilly, but a thicker coat on.

We will see what happens agiants Wigan who will bring over 3k fans i would think, we need to at least have treble that of our own, 12-13k attendance i will be happy with, and would swell the coffers agreat deal.

Are people forgetting the increase in season ticket prices? Simple as that I think, people will now be picking their games, rather than feeling obliged to go because they have a season ticket.

According to the T&A, we sold 6,458 season tickets for this season.
So yesterday's attendance of 7,503 means there were circa 1,000 people who paid on the gate/travelled across from Salford.
I'd say that's about accurate, and all you can really hope for given the fact that people are generally skint and the weather is as lousy as it is.

I don't think it is any secret that the club were expecting more season ticket sales than the 6k or so that they have apparently sold. Perhaps they also hoped to see a significant increase in walk up specctators given not every man and his dog will have a ST this year. It doesn't seem to have happened though and it is disappointing given the heroics we're seeing out on the field.

I don't often venture into Bradford but for those who do, what has the marketing been like? I do listen to the Pulse sometimes and I tend to hear more about the Giants more often than not. With the exception of the 80's gig I've heard very little about our next home game etc. Are the club getting into schools and doing offers for parents and kids? Perhaps the marketing people have a plan, perhaps they just aren't receiving a big enough budget to market the club how they'd like. Who knows, but the players are doing their bit out on the pitch, we just need the suits to work out how to get the people of Bradford back out there supporting them.

hope in summer when it gets warmer the attendances start to boom or Khan will wonder what he has bought into.

We are playing a lot better now with a team we can be proud of, and who seem to be putting their bodies on the line for the cause, we really need to get as many people into the stadium as we can manage.

The weather will have a big draw on the attendances. People are not going to bring kids especially when the weather has been as cold and wet as it has been.

Add into the fact that we've had a Saturday Sky game (never a well attendend game), a game shifted left and right v's Saints due to City getting to Wembley and you've got 2 games there that would have drawn a greater attendance had they been 3pm Sunday afternoon.

The attendances from prior years will have been inflated by the cheap offer. I know of 2 people who bought cheap tickets and only ever came to the Leeds and Wigan home games. The club can by law announce those people as "in attendance" even though they never turned up.

Bradford is one city that is struggling more than most in this recession. I don't think that this fact should be ignored. It's not cheap for many families to purchase season tickets when they could be spending cash on other more important things like heating and fuel. The cost of attending a single game for a family of 4 isn't cheap either when you add in a few drinks, a programme and a bite to eat. It's not a surprise people are picking games.

The number of travelling supporters hasn't been great either. Again, the problems of fuel costs excacerbates the cost of a trip to a game. This has no doubt had an effect as has the ill feeling many other clubs fans possibly have towards us in the mess that occurred last year and a reluctance to see us given any more money from their pockets.....

I may be wrong as I've not had a proper look at comparison figures with last year, but the feeling from other peoples comments on social networking sites is that many SL teams are suffering from the same problems in the lack of numbers turning up to games.

Generally, from a personal point of view I would say that the product of SL is not that of prior years. For a start, we are not seeing the likes of a "Volcano", a Jamie Lyon, etc in the league that would draw fans into going to a live game.

Although we have new owners, there is stll a lot of ill feeling into the mess of last year. I know a few people who fell out of love with the game after the shenanighans we all went through. This will take time to heal.

Do they count all season ticket holders in the official attendance or just those that turn up?

I always thought they count them all, sure football do but could be mistaken.

Did anyone read the programme notes yesterday? Apparently we have far fewer home league games in July and August because of the Challenge Cup so it's a lottery as to whether we'll have much income from gates when we have the best chance of a good crowd.

Do we move the Challenge Cup back to it's original slot?

As for marketing I don't go into Bradford much at all either but I would say that there is a large proportion of fans that don't either. Many people live in the suburbs and work elsewhere nowadays. As a result the club has to be imaginative with its marketing. I must confess I rarely look at the club's website or twitter feed. I do look at the T&A online though that's it. The bottom line is that many people couldn't afford the big price hike for season tickets and so are picking their games.

There's little the club can do about the general economic situation. Just hope they have some luck in getting all the TV money for 2014.

One thing would seem certain though, if our Sky money is witheld once again next season and the crowds don't improve the club will have to budget accordingly. Unfortunately those cuts might well be to the 1st team squad.

Those who did not go missed a very entertaining game yesterday. Although obviously a lot of people will have been away on holiday of course.

What really struck me yesterday, though, was the relative dearth of young people at the game. Certainly in the so-called "Family Stand".

Maybe the club seemingly concentrating its marketing efforts through twitterings and facebook and other virtual media is an attempt to focus on the younger generation; maybe its a reflection of cost constraints or maybe for other reasons. But I can't help but observe that almost every youngster (and I include teenagers and into early twenties in that) I see seems to be forever glued to and staring at some mobile device, seemingly entranced and oblivious to almost everything else going on around them.

We never had all this virtual universe stuff back in the original Bullmania days. Back then, I suggest youngsters spent a lot more time interacting with the real world, and with real people - including watching the Bulls - than they seem to now. I very much suspect this step change in behaviour is a contributory factor to disappointing attendances, although maybe being a miserable grumpy old gìt means I just don't "get it"...

But disappointing crowds, at a time when you might expect them to improve, is nothing new. Remember Caisley's tirade against the people of Bradford in 2004, in his annual report? Albeit at crowds twice the size of now. I think it is also a reflection in part of the economy, after years of illusory boom built on debt that in any case largely bypassed the city. And of the wider malaise of the pall of apathy that anyway seems to bedevil this city nowdays.

The bloody freezing shìt-awful weather is hardly helping, though. I had God knows how many layers on yesterday, but was still frozen by the end.

Well I went with some family to the Leeds game on Thursday and the comment that stood out was how "it's so much better live than on TV". This season as a group we've gone from 5 season ticket holders to 1 (me). That's been down to a combination of expense and changing circumstances. 4 of us went yesterday but the contrast in the quality of the game and atmosphere was pretty stark compared with Thursday.

Once people get out of the habit of going it's harder to get them back, games the quality of the Leeds match help but games like yesterday less so.

I don't have any answers and aren't a marketing guru but it seems to me that you can't simply rely on the same people coming year in year out. There needs to be a big effort made to bring in new fans every year. The bring a friend for a fiver is a decent idea, nothing new, but ok. The problem was that I was unaware of the offer and I doubt I was alone in that. That can cause a decent idea to fall flat.

It seems to me that if the club wants to attract a younger audience they need to do it via schools, college, university and social media.

They're trying at the uni'. There's been a couple of half price with a NUS card deals this year, and they're advertising it through the Student's Union's Facebook which has a pretty wide reach across the student body.

Could they offer them a free traffic cone with every ticket or something?