Some pretty terrible crowds yesterday:
Pittodrie: 6918
Tannadice: 4041
New Douglas Park: 1054
Easter Road: 6056
Caledonian Stadium: 2808
Links Park: 1030
New St Mirren Park: 2312
Now obviously a number of factors are involved:
declining crowds in the game in general declining interest in the early rounds of the cup poor weather even poorer recent form of some of the home sides the fact that almost all games were Big Team v Small Team - an away game at an infrequently visited ground will always be more enticing to fans of "Big" teams than the reverse fixture price of games and the economy in general
I wonder however if one of the biggest effects over the last few years has been the removal from Season Tickets of cup games. Clearly a balance has to made between the financial commitments of cup games where profits are split and encouraging good crowds to these games but surely something should be done.
How about something like adding £20 to the cost of a Season Ticket. With that you get, say, the first 2 Home Cup games included. Now some seasons we won't have any cup games, but then there will be others where we have several. This way decent crowds are more likely for the early rounds and then hopefully in the later stages a decent crowd would be encouraged out anyway.
I certainly wouldn't be averse to such an idea (our STs are as good value as any in the league) but I suppose ultimately it will depend on whether the numbers added up for the club.
So, in principal, would you be happy with a small increase in ST prices to cover a couple of Home cup games?
Or indeed any other ideas to boost Home cup crowds.
As an aside, interesting to think if yesterday we had been away to United we would probably only had a few hundred less fans at Tannadice than we could muster into Pittodrie.