By GEOFF STEVENSON
Crowds: A favourite debate
Poor crowd figures have hit the news again this week.
I find crowd figures a curious topic mainly because no-one can every really explain to me the importance of crowd figures or what we are comparing them to.
Let’s deal with these separately. I have read article after article over the years telling me that strong attendance figures are good for the game without anyone actually explaining why. Sure, I get the obvious argument that more bums on seats means more people engaging with our sport. But in the technological age no business, be it in retail, entertainment, construction or service provision measures its impact based on how many people walk through their door. Ratings, website hits, re-tweets, water cooler conversations…you get the picture. All of these are an effective way to measuring the impact of a business these days.
The other argument for how vital good crowds are is the income they bring. And yes they do provide decent income depending on what your figures are. But it’s a bit 1970s to suggest a club lives or dies on its gate takings alone. I remember asking someone in the game years ago what gate figure is break even and they said around 12,000. So as of about 2007 all clubs have at least not been losing money.
But again, I’d be surprised, unless you’re Brisbane or or maybe even Souths, that a club is surviving primarily on gate takings compared to NRL grants and sponsorship. And there must be a tipping point where it costs so much money to promote games that it’s not that cost effective to fight for a bigger crowd.
And if crowd figures are important for other reasons, I’d love to know from anyone who they are comparing our poor, disastrous crowd figures to.
My first guess is previous year’s figures. And this year is down by a thousand or so per game. With the finances aside a few thousand fewer per game shouldn’t have too much impact on things such as, say, the atmosphere on the day or night (and we’ll get back to that later).
My second guess would be comparing figures to the AFL, A-League or Super Rugby. Really?!! Are we going to continue to do this? And for how long? My feeling for some time is that as we become more financially stable we should be more willing to run our own race, not care how, what, when and why other sports do their thing. Otherwise our progress is always hindered by the growth of these sports.
So if crowd figures aren’t important, does that mean crowds aren’t important in this technological, made-for-TV age? No. Crowds are important in what they bring to the overall entertainment package.
Looking at crowd figures from around the world, comparable competitions to the NRL include the NBA (17,408), the NHL (17,455) and Championship Soccer- UK (16,168). Do they catastrophise their crowd figures like the NRL does? No. Why? Because the crowds you see are part of the show. They are comparatively modest but are vibrant, energised and well catered for, and importantly packed into modest sized venues.
Listen to the message: filling a stadium with a crowd is vital. Melbourne’s AAMI Park, Newcastle’s Hunter Stadium, Parramatta’s Pirtek, Cowboys Smiley Stadium – Perfect. Even Souths, Bulldogs and Tigers at ANZ are OK. Shoving any more Sydney teams to a three-quarters empty ANZ could be pushing it. Worrying about crowd figures that fluctuate by a thousand or two, yet have been stable for the past decade: pointless.
And judging by the NSW Government’s Multi-Tiered Stadium Policy, at least someone can see the real priorities when addressing sporting crowds into the future.
