Thread by @CashNSport

Happy #YouthDay #PSL football fans, I'm back with another piece of interesting research. So I went back and looked at crowd attendance at #AbsaPrem football matches

Here is what I found. THREAD 👇

#Amakhosi4Life #OnceAlways #DownsLive

It's a known fact that crowd attendance has been an issue for a long time. Others have mentioned price while travel time and safety are also major factors for a lot of fans. I will look at pure attendance numbers as well as jump into some research I found around #PSL attendance

To make things easier, I focused on the top 10 crowd attendance averages for the last 3 years. I then looked at the big three teams (Chiefs, Pirates and Downs) and tracked their average attendance record over the last ten years.

PS, Sundowns are a bit difficult to measure because they have played at both Loftus and Lucas Masterpieces Morepe. Here I will only account for Loftus. Loftus is listed as their official home ground and thus, I will only be using that data.

We begin with the 16/17 #AbsaPrem season where @KaizerChiefs home matches at FNB Stadium topped attendance charts with an average of 13,687 fans. This was followed by Pirates at 10,400 fans and Sundowns at 7,600.

In the 17/18 season, Chiefs home games again topped the charts with an average fan attendance of 18,777 fans followed by Orlando Stadium at an average of 11,872 fans while Bloem Celtics' Dr Petrus Molemela stadium joined the top three with an average of 10,900 fans

In the 18/19 season, Black Leopards' promotion back to the #PSL catapulted their home attendance numbers into the top three with an average of 11,049 fans at Thohoyandou stadium. FNB stadium again topped average attendance numbers but Orlando saw more fans overall last season.

What should be a worry is the average attendance in relation to capacity. For example, Chiefs' average attendance was just 18% of FNB's capacity of 94,700. The Orlando Stadium numbers may look better but that stadium is less than half the size of FNB.

On a positive note teams like Bloemfontein Celtic and Maritzburg United had average attendance records of up to 50% and 62% attendance respectively in relation to stadium capacity.

Now we will look at the big three and their average attendance in the last ten years. We start with Chiefs who, in the 09/10 season, had an average attendance of 21,733. In the 18/19 season, that number reduced to 17,161. Prior to 2010, the FNB stadium capacity was 40,000

Pirates in the 09/10 season had an average attendance of 12,333 fans while that number has increased to 16,067 fans. Note that the stadium capacity was increased to 40,000 in 2009 and the previous capacity was 24,000.

Lastly Sundowns who had an average attendance record of 8,427 at Loftus in the 18/19 season experienced a minor increase from 7,467 in the 09/10 season.

Onto the factors that could be influencing crowd attendance. To look into this I read a research paper published in 2018 by Victor S. Mogajane, Engelina du Plessis and Elmarie Slabbert titled: Assessing the importance of spectators to soccer clubs in South Africa

The first factor they site is commercialization. Because of the advent and increasing dominance of commercialization within the soccer industry, spectators have seen their soccer clubs transform from traditional community clubs into corporate business organisations.

As a result, they, the spectators, as mentioned above, have difficulty in identifying with their club and become dissatisfied. Their studies indicate that loyalty programs, which involve benefits and incentives, could foster loyalty to the clubs.

Secondly, according to the literature, in South Africa, the enormous economic challenges resulting from unemployment and high levels of poverty impact on the extent to which society supports sport. People nevertheless try to attend the soccer games despite these challenges

It was also mentioned that if individuals feel a particular destination is either risky in terms of safety or security, they are most likely to develop a negative impression about the place, resulting in avoiding it. Travel time and the ease thereof is also of importance to fans

Lastly, the marketing and PR efforts of clubs. Good customer loyalty programs not only improve consumer acceptance that is reflected in increased sales but also encourage participation through increased interaction between the business and customer.

These marketing efforts cannot be helped by the fact that fans have access to games at the tip of their fingertips through DSTV. Taking the safety element into account, fans really have no incentive to go to the grounds and that shows in the numbers.

In summary, we have massive attendance challenges. The clubs don't own the stadiums so they can't do as they please in terms of marketing at the venue. In addition, they can't control safety and security in the areas they are located.

Let's talk, what do you think the clubs could do to improve crowd attendance or do you think we are doomed to see dwindling numbers at stadiums?

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