For the last two weeks, the South has been advertised as being sold out, when in fact both times it clearly wasn't. I was particularly irritated by that this week as I left it too late to get a ticket and could only watch on sky.
This made me wonder, are crowd attendances measured by the turnstiles or based on ticket sales?

Yeah fair point on the increase in crowds - was just pointing out that I would expect the averages may drop a little this year given we got a significantly lower crowd for our 3rd biggest game.

Where you manage to source a north stand attendance figure from anyway? Didnt think the club would release a breakdown? Would love to get the same figure for latics games if only to prove to their dilluded fans they average less than 12k home fans!

500 SS tickets have to be left empty as its unreserved - In addition, we can only sell for general sale approx 1k tickets as the rest are ST holders.

Given probably 40-50% are kids in that stand on the cheap ST, alot buy the ST but will miss more games than the average ST holder, - the average ST holder can only afford to miss one game otherwise buying a ST is a loss - For a junior as long as you get to 5+ matches you can miss the rest and still not lose money- Yet the club cant sell their tickets in case they turn up!

As a result there is rarely more than 4,500 in that stand even when it "sells out" - 500 free seats to account for the unreserved seating and around 400 -500 kids dont turn up. Therefore the stand can be sold out but only look 4/5ths full.

The junior ST is great IMO, but we should do something similar to the away junior ticket IMO and make them trade in, say the thursday before the game for a ticket if they are attending. This could even be done on the E=ticket site - That all juniors who are attending have to activate their card electronically at least 24 hours before the game- that way those spare tickets can be sold and the stand will look fuller

you do realise its unreserved so they have to leave seats empty? don't know the figure, but imagine it was fully sold out, and you're the last person into the south stand - how the f*ck would you find your seat?

Some figures I've seen shown an away average of 3200, meaning a home average of 14,400. Maximum capacity for the north stand for a Premiershop game is now below 4500 even with reseved seating.

As mentioned the south stand is unreserved for our games, with the under season 16 ticket holders that may not turn up it will leave the stand around a 4/5th's full at best so the club can put up sold out notices. In all sports the excitement generated buidling up the first big title or cup victory for a while is always the peak attendance wise, even winning year after year becomes the norm and almost unexciting.