Quote MattyB="MattyB"I think we should be discussing the elephant in the room when it comes to attendances. They gave it out as just over 11k last week when in reality it was clear there was no more than 7.5k sat in the stadium. That's a massive difference, now if the club have 3k-3.5k who have paid for their season ticket and for whatever reason they are not attending then that's one thing. I don't think the club are making it up but I do think they possibly handed out a couple of thousand cheap kids season tickets at the start of the season when they promoted the rugby sessions and these kids are just not turning up. It's quite worrying, actual attendances are the lowest I've seen since we've been at the DW.
When was the last time anyone was there and thought, wow... this is a decent crowd (ie. over 15k physically in the stadium), definitely pre-covid. Early 2019?
Edit - Just looked back, Good Friday 2019 we got 22k, we also got 21k against the Sydney Roosters early 2019. Other than that it was 12k against Wire.'"
Done on tickets sold and not tickets used. Every single sporting club in the country does it this way. I always remember Arsenal announcing 60k one night when there was a tube strike a huge storm and the ground was empty.
If we announce 7k because 1k ST holders didn't turn up then the taxman would be all over us when we tell him we made £x on that game. For the same reason, nobody would inflate their crowds because they'd pay more tax and lose money.
Thursday night crowds will always be announced higher than the actual numbers because a whole host of people don't/can't come. At least 6 ST holders missing on my row last week for example.
Free tickets I imagine also need to included in the figure whether they are used or not because there'd be no other way of distinguishing between the two at the turnstile.
On the point of whether or not they turn up and how many are at each game, I'm not really concerned. Fans don't win trophies. The worry is when the number of tickets sold comes down but there are many contributing factors to that which will be impacting every single club.
