O/T Why is Rotherham's fan base (weekly average) below 10k?

[Joka91]

What annoys me, is that there 257,600 (RotherhamAdvertiser, 2012) people who live within Rotherham, and our fan base is not exactly huge. I understand completely that it's due to local teams, i.e Wednesday and The Blades, but that just irritates me even more.

Around 25% (64,400) of the residents of Rotherham are 60+ years old. Even if only 5% of those football fans support a team, and attend the matches, that's 3,220 fans somewhere.

Around 18% (46,368) of the population are under 15. If only 5 percent of these younger generation attended games that would be 2,318

That leaves the population of between 15 and 60 (146,832) - Once again I'll use 5% as an example. If 5% attended football games that's 7,341 people.

Meaning if we only had support from 5% of each section of our population, we would have 12,879.

And they're low estimates for football followers. I'm 22 now, but when I went to school and college: within your class of 25 or so people; you'd have at least 10 kids who enjoyed,

[CAMiller]

5% might be a bit optimistic. Here's something for comparison:

Greater Seattle area population 3.5M
Average NFL crowd 67,000 (Sell out) - nearest rival 800 miles
Average MLS crowd 44,000 - nearest rival 160 miles
Average MLB crowd 20,000 - nearest rival 800 miles

All these crowds seem to have a far greater percentage made up of women/children/families than I remember at football games.

NFL being the most popular and selling out every game but I doubt they'd get 5% (175K) even if they had a stadium big enough. 1M did show up though for the parade after they won the Superbowl.

Every major league sports game is televised live and I often wonder if that helps the crowds and fuels the enthusiasm for the game rather than reduces the crowds as many think it would.

[stevemiller]

Your questions:

1) No. A fair bit does happen around schools as regards coaching sessions etc. ( we have weekly football club at our school run by RUFC in the community ) but RUFC is not pushed to this captive audience.
Isn't the halftime kids football sponsored? It would be the Rotherham United Junior Cup for me.

2) No. Not everyone reads the Advertiser.

3) Yes.

4) Yes.

Over 16,000, assuming stadium extension, we could possibly have had 3-4 16,000 crowds since the stadium opened due to away demand, but, 16,000 Millers? Not without a lot of hard work on the above points.
The crowds have doubled but, keep pushing the club to the town via a dedicated developement manager and who knows.
It's also a surprise to me that TS has not done this.

[stormmiller]

Very nice stats that mean nothing people have very little money to spare they spend it on the things they need is football a need? no
Rotherham for many years have been bottom league journey men with nothing to offer a damanding public so why would 12 months of success change peoples thoughts built from years of experiance?
On another note we were struggling to put three thousand into dvs we are now getting eight is the extra five thousand not enough for you?

[Svenskamiller]

I think most of your reasoning is pretty sound except, without checking out the Advertiser statistics, you maybe need to accept that not everyone loves football. Therefore if we assume 50% of the population aren't football lovers and we accept that 5% of the remaining population is a reasonable target - you end up with 8000.

What worries me slightly is that it appears that the additional people attracted by NYS also seem to be the same people that would be attracted by a successful season - and maybe for that reason we aren't selling out despite being as good as we have been for many a year.

This to me defines the future limitations.

[millavanilla]

Only 11 thousand odd to watch the final game in the 80/81 season,..9000 odd 89/90..ive watched rotherham for 40 odd years..i used to listen to people saying things like "oh we used to get a lot bigger gates"..well if the truth be known, not a lot bigger...fair enough weve had the 23,500s a few times in derbys and cup matches..and i think 25000 once or twice..but the stats,over the last 50 years or so, dont tell lies...look them up..14000 or so for league games the odd time..people talk about the cup game at hillsbro against arsenal years ago with a massive crowd..those were the days when all sheffield would turn out to watch a local team..by the same token rotherham fans would go to see sheffield wednesday hopefully beat tottenham etc..
Imagine that now ? Its not about yesterday anymore, itsabout doing something weve never done for a long time and sustaining it..its a long shot but now, we hope, weve a chairman who will deliver..promotion at some stage and 17 seasons in the championshi

[S8_Miller]

Build it and they will come ... well sort of.

You can only get so far by having a nice new stadium and decent team attracting from the local population. You have to accept that not all people think like us. Saturday is not just about football there are many other competing attractions.

One of the strategies for getting more bums on seats has to be marketing our match day experience to corporate clients. Businesses like to be associated with success and as we get further up the league more businesses will want to be part of a winning brand.

Increasing exposure will fuel increased interest within the community and that will in turn fuel increasing crowds.

[deano_83]

Perhaps people expect far too much too soon.

The amount of youngsters now wearing Millers shirts compared to when I was at comp and the piglets had the likes of Carbone and Di Canio in their ranks is huge.

Generally I think more lads born in Rotherham are starting to follow their home town club. Also a lot of fans lost to the DVS move and '5 years of hurt' are slowly starting to drift back.

I don't have any kiddies but from what I can gather the effort over the last 2 or 3 years to get youngsters to the match by the club has improved greatly.

I'd certainly move from the North stand to the East stand and take up the offer to take my Under 8 for free if I was in that position. Our lass is planning to take her godson next season to his first match now he's 4.

Like Storm has mentioned, no matter what you do, there's a market of people that will never be interested in going.

[kempo]

I've been pleased to hear a couple of Asian descended people phone football heaven.
I f we could attract the Asian community into football that would be a major boost.

[ScarboroughMiller]

We actually don't do that badly, look at your stats again but rather than using Rotherham look at Leeds. We are a far better supported team than them in that respect, also add to this that supporters busses go to Leeds from all over Yorkshire not just Leeds based and you'll see that they're home support is ****.