11k at Wigan I put down to it being a Thursday, but 13k at Leeds?

How come they're down? Can season tickets be used?

quite poor by Leeds' standards but can't have been more than 200 Warrington fans there

Season tickets are included for the Super 8 home games.
The reason crowds are down is quite simple really. Rugby League is a family sport and we are currently slap bang in the middle of kids school holidays, a time when a lot of parents have no choice but to take their kids away during these six weeks period.

I booked a week away in March knowing the regular season had finished and took a gamble on these Super 8 fixtures which were only released a fortnight ago. I lost the gamble, which meant four season ticket holders couldn't make the Hudds game on Thursday.

One way to resolve this some way would be to show Super 8 / Middle 8 fixtures as a home/away for each weekend at the beginning of the season without obviously disclosing the opposition until completion of the regular season. At least then a lot of people could plan holidays around all fixtures accordingly.

It's on TV

It certainly doesn't help not knowing the fixtures until very close to the games themselves.
I can only make 1 of Trinity's first 3 games due to work - and as it stands can make 2 of the last 3 - but as the Sky fixtures for the last 3 games haven't been announced this could yet change again.

It's pretty frustrating.

Nowhere near 11,000 at Wigan !!
A Wigan fan suggested they'd counted all season tickets regardless of if they'd turned up or not !!

Irony alert...

At Leeds it was primarily the effect of the short notice of the game, with perhaps a slight side-effect of some casual fans paying out for Wembley tickets/travel in the past week giving this one a miss. Plus, ovbviously, there were 500-750 less Wire fans there than for the previous game which got 17,000+ (and I think that is pretty understandable really).

On the short notice, for most Friday games the corporate side at Leeds, up to 2,000 people, is sold out. Last night I'd say around half that were there - giving 8 days notice is difficult on that side, and there is a similar effect on regular fans who might otherwise plan to attend but can't.

So hopefully crowds should head back to their normal levels as everyone has more time in advance of the dates. I'm a big fan of the new system, but this is a weakness - one that everyone sort of knew about but perhaps didn't quite give that much thought to.

come on Daz, as a huddersfield fan surely you know by now your not allowed to comment on anything regarding crowds, winning trophies etc otherwise it's irony, yet Salford, Wakefield fans etc are fine to post.

just a quick one, for a supposed big club, Warrington's support last night was abysmal, certainly worse than our turnout at wigan, considering the home attendances etc, yet we get slaughtered and they don't?

Without being controversial the only way to grow crowds in my opinion is to focus on a new target audience.

I'm not saying family's can't go, we should still promote this. But all too often it's a case of oh well 4 tickets for the family plus drinks is £100 so we couldn't make it. This is absolutely fine by the way I'm not slagging anybody off. However if we focus solely on families we will always have crowd limitations.

We should start targeting people who only have to worry about buying their own ticket, you get a group of 4 mates it's still 4 tickets but a lot cheaper per party so crowds could increase that way I feel.

There's no reason why we can't attract two different audiences.

I was suprised with the Leeds crowd we can get that for friendly fixtures.

Although the missus and I didn't go as we just shelled out 220 quid for wembley

limitations for families?
like when the games are played meaning a big percentage of people with kids can't or won't to games?

we might as well just target the rowdy 18-30's like darts have, if we are to be a night time sport

And there you have it.

Wigan next week will be packed i'm sure.

They were not terrible crowds but not great either.

I was more surprised at the Cas crowd, with them still being within shouting distance for a top 4 spot, I'd have thought the interest in that game would have been higher.

Part of it maybe that the top 3 are pretty much safe already before a ball was kicked in the super 8's and only Cas will probably challenge for a spot in the top 4.

Others like Warrington have left it too late IMO to crack the top 4 with only 6 games left, they will need to win them all.