Do ticket offers make a difference?
One of the biggest claims I see made on Owls forums over the last few years is “It doesnt matter if we do ticket offers - it doesnt make any difference to the gates anyway”
So I thought I’d do a little research.
Traditionally the biggest gates of a season tend to be the first and last match, and obviously any derby games. Coincidentally they tend to be the first games we look for when the fixtures are produced, along with “Who have we got on Boxing Day?” - although I think thats still a game thats important to us following events some 40 years ago!
The top 12 attendances 2010-19 - games played first/last match or a local derby
So when looking at a list of highest Championship attendances you would expect to see the first and last games, and derbies featuring regularly. And thats reflected in the research. Looking at the highest league attendances of the last 10 years - more than half (12) have been games that fall inmto that category. Often the last game of the season has been a game thats meant something to us or the opposition (or in the case of 2017’s Fulham game - both of us).
So the real test of whether ticket offers make a difference to attendances would arguably mean assessing the attendances that don’t fall into the above categories? (If you disagree with that - then you might be wasting your time reading further :-) )
The remaining 8 highest attendances of the last decade
A look at the remaining 8 highest league attendances of the last decade shows that of the 8 fixtures, the top 4 attended games had ticket offers (in yellow). Two of the games were the traditional New Years Day fixtures which also could be argued positively affected the attendances - but in that case you’d have to also imagine that the club wouldn’t have done a ticket offer if they’d expected a good turnout.
So armed with this information - and with 50% of the highest attendances (the top 4 too) being ticket offer games - you’d have to conclude that yes of course the offers make a difference. Do they make a difference on the cold miserable Tuesday night games in February against unfancied opposition? Well, no, probably not. Night games already suffered as a result of them being on school nights, and with the advent of the Sky Red Button, the attraction of driving to Hillsborough, finding somewhere to park, getting to your seat without a hot drink or pie because they’ve run out already, to see us play 4-5-1 against Brentford probably wouldn’t break 25k if we paid people to come.
But if we manage these offers correctly there is no reason why they can’t be the marketing tool some fans believe they can be - to drive higher attendances and improve the atmospheres we need to drive the team to achieve more in the league.
What are your thoughts?
