New Kings Park Stadium

...there is little doubt that if we survive another season in The PL our groundswell of support will naturally grow. I just hope that the club's owners have the vision to nurture the future of AFCB and really push it into the next phase. Howe is doing that on the pitch but he can only deliver so much given the small ground etc....off the field the club needs to back him and the fans who want even greater success.
I fail to see the point, apart from just taking any profit from the club, in not moving forward with plans to increase our fanbase at games and the extra income and interest generated by better and more spacious facilities even for hospitality and corporate boxes etc...

None of us really know what is in the minds of the owners and shareholders, and that is the worrying thing for us I guess?
 
Thousands in the area want to want to watch the PL live. Thousands want to support AFCB by attending DC. Thousands have given up on ever getting a ticket and so don't bother to try.

I managed to get my 11-year-old to two away games last season, one friendly, one cup game and the England v Latvia U-21 game. He and his friends - and their parents - would attend regularly if given the chance. Most current fans, with STs, can tell the same story about their family, workmates, neighbours.

The conurbation is about to undergo huge growth - the population will be well over 500,000 within 10 years. Build it - and Yes - THEY WILL COME!
 
The size of the ground, we all want to see built, will always be contentious, and is/has been/will be perhaps one of the biggest sticking points in its design... Trying to assess the demand for seats...

We can all spout 20k, 25k 30k etc. on here but the facts are what the club will need to 'largely' base their decision on, and the facts show that we don't warrant anything larger than maybe 20k, at a push.

If you want to gamble on the conurbation, and lets not forget the football tourists etc. then 25k is the absolute limit IMO, but week in-week out, I would have thought we could regularly achieve 15-17k max, and that's with upping the away attendance to a possible 3k. I just don't feel we have the people here that are bothered about us, or footbal in general.... and this isn't a bad thing... I don't give 2 sh*ts that we've got a piss poor following, in relation others...

We're never going to be huge, and I still sometimes travel to certain grounds, having had to park miles away, walk forever, be miles away from the pitch with zero atmosphere, and worse of all, spend an age to get home form the ground again... and I actually think to myself how great the current DC is...

Better to be smaller, with packed 'fans' than huge, with tourists, randoms and shocking atmospheres... IMO of course
 
SteveJonesLegend said:
The size of the ground, we all want to see built, will always be contentious, and is/has been/will be perhaps one of the biggest sticking points in its design... Trying to assess the demand for seats...

We can all spout 20k, 25k 30k etc. on here but the facts are what the club will need to 'largely' base their decision on, and the facts show that we don't warrant anything larger than maybe 20k, at a push.

If you want to gamble on the conurbation, and lets not forget the football tourists etc. then 25k is the absolute limit IMO, but week in-week out, I would have thought we could regularly achieve 15-17k max, and that's with upping the away attendance to a possible 3k. I just don't feel we have the people here that are bothered about us, or footbal in general.... and this isn't a bad thing... I don't give 2 sh*ts that we've got a piss poor following, in relation others...

We're never going to be huge, and I still sometimes travel to certain grounds, having had to park miles away, walk forever, be miles away from the pitch with zero atmosphere, and worse of all, spend an age to get home form the ground again... and I actually think to myself how great the current DC is...

Better to be smaller, with packed 'fans' than huge, with tourists, randoms and shocking atmospheres... IMO of course
Click to expand...
Why does it have to be one or the other? Its better to be larger with fans than smaller.
 
We seem to be good at the Social Media bit around the team.

I wonder if anyone at the club has thought about a new stadium blog/vlog?

I’m sure there must be information that could be drip fed through that isn’t confidential.....

Transparency and Accountability are two words I hear daily in my job. Would be nice to see some of that from AFCB.
 
My daughter just got one for Everton (ex ST holder pre university but low points now as uses other people’s tickets) - had assumed they were sold out so didn’t bother looking. I think a lot of people on low points don’t check as they assume all games are sell outs.
 
I think are best option would be between 25-28k, a lot of the problems at the moment is the way the tickets are sold, I know we need to be loyal to the supports who have been going for years but if you built a big enough ground that does not need to have a system that fans have to wait there turn to get tickets.
Also I think we should have an area where you can sit where you want behind one of the goals to help with the atmosphere,
 
In these days designated seat numbers have to be sold especially as there will be season ticket holders in all home areas.
 
SlowDownDerek said:
Sure but all this talk of 25k gates is based on nothing more than fans having a reckon. The people who are expected to invest actual money in it will have proper market research and don't seem to fancy it. Plenty of evidence to suggest that our level of support isn't quite what people claim - including actual championship attendances, half-full cup games and the tickets on sale at 1 point as we speak.
Click to expand...

I think this is because those with little or no home points have stopped trying to get tickets for home games as they assume that there won't be any available. I go to away games but NEVER check for availability for home games as I didn't want to waste my time/get my hopes up.

Learning this has been an eye opener for me and if this is the case regularly, the club needs to advertise the availability much more as people do not know this.

Most supporters expect us to fill a 25K stadium based on the large away support we have, taking 34K to Wembley for the Paint Pot final and was it 17K for the play-off final at Cardiff (one week's sale window)?
 
Case in point, West Ham.

Went from 35k to nearly 60k. Crappy old club overshadowed by bigger teams like Spurs, Arsenal and Chelsea (the kids in London all seem to support the bigger teams on the whole with a few white working class kids supporting West Ham. Maybe 1 in 100 at most in the school I worked in).

Weirdly, their main market seems to be those who live in Essex. LOADS of people from Essex bought season tickets. They were even promised it would be easier to get to than upton park as the train station is at Stratford but as we all know, the trains are donald-ducked every weekend so they still have to drive.

Anyway, despite their ground and their team being awful, they still sell a ****************-ton of season tickets so why wouldn't we?
 
simonhpieman said:
Case in point, West Ham.

Went from 35k to nearly 60k. Crappy old club overshadowed by bigger teams like Spurs, Arsenal and Chelsea (the kids in London all seem to support the bigger teams on the whole with a few white working class kids supporting West Ham. Maybe 1 in 100 at most in the school I worked in).

Weirdly, their main market seems to be those who live in Essex. LOADS of people from Essex bought season tickets. They were even promised it would be easier to get to than upton park as the train station is at Stratford but as we all know, the trains are donald-ducked every weekend so they still have to drive.

Anyway, despite their ground and their team being awful, they still sell a ****-ton of season tickets so why wouldn't we?
Click to expand...

They sell them dirt cheap and have a taxpayer subsidised ground. The numbers would add up for us too if Johnny Taxpayer funded it.
 
AFCBade said:
My daughter just got one for Everton (ex ST holder pre university but low points now as uses other people’s tickets) - had assumed they were sold out so didn’t bother looking. I think a lot of people on low points don’t check as they assume all games are sell outs.
Click to expand...

I think the club are reducing the points requirements more aggressively this season hence why Everton has already dropped to one point. Means people need to be quicker in snapping up tickets but also allows low point fans to up their tallies which is a good thing.

On a separate point, I also don't think we can use games going down to one point as evidence of a lack of support. The point of building a new stadium is to attract those on zero points Using the purchasing habits of those with low points as an indication of the level of potential support for those on zero points is unwise
 
simonhpieman said:
Case in point, West Ham.

Went from 35k to nearly 60k. Crappy old club overshadowed by bigger teams like Spurs, Arsenal and Chelsea (the kids in London all seem to support the bigger teams on the whole with a few white working class kids supporting West Ham. Maybe 1 in 100 at most in the school I worked in).

Weirdly, their main market seems to be those who live in Essex. LOADS of people from Essex bought season tickets. They were even promised it would be easier to get to than upton park as the train station is at Stratford but as we all know, the trains are donald-ducked every weekend so they still have to drive.

Anyway, despite their ground and their team being awful, they still sell a ****-ton of season tickets so why wouldn't we?
Click to expand...
They have popcorn ;-)
 
SlowDownDerek said:
Sure but all this talk of 25k gates is based on nothing more than fans having a reckon. The people who are expected to invest actual money in it will have proper market research and don't seem to fancy it. Plenty of evidence to suggest that our level of support isn't quite what people claim - including actual championship attendances, half-full cup games and the tickets on sale at 1 point as we speak.
Click to expand...
The fact is know one knows and one the surveys your suggesting won't help but given our relatively large conurbation, as suggested by the club 22 - 25k will be ok. I agree we will not fill it to start with except for the bigger teams but there's no reason we can't match the likes of Cardiff, Watford, Huddersfield and Burnley long term.
 
...tbh we still technically have a three sided stadium...and that frankly is an embarrassment to The PL...and us being in it!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

;