Fan Forum - Monday 2nd June 2014 - questions for absent fans

[nebakke]

Guys more than happy to be proven wrong but when they came out and said they are going for 10,000 members this year and really had no plan (or none that was presented) I knew they were just telling the people in the audience what they wanted to hear. I will make a prediction now (and by the way I hope I am wrong) but they won't break 5000 in the memberships this year.

I think we all know that 10000 is an unattainable target, I'm fairly sure they do as well... I don't think that's the point, you set targets to strive for... They could set the target for 6000 and perhaps even reach it (I too, doubt that we'll get to 5000 again, but will be extatic if we do), but eventually people get frustrated and feel unappreciated, because the target would be changing every year.
In stead, you set it high and use it as something to work towards.... If they actually reach it, I think everyone'll be over the moon and we'll have a feast of the flying pigs... If it works, they'll increase on last year, they'll express gratitude to the fans and try to rally everyone around reaching the target next year because "look at how much we've improved this year".
If it doesn't work at all, well then they've tried it.
I much rather want the club aiming high and missing than I want them aiming very low and hitting... I mean, they could've set the target at 2000...
On top of that, it's a signal to send to potential sponsors, to say - we have fans, we're worth investing in.

Secondly the CEO could sell ice to eskimos. Lets now see if he delivers anything.

Wouldn't be much of a CEO if he couldn't...

Lastly, If you are going to have a fan forum you generally have someone there from the football department (maybe the coach).

I'm not sure I agree... The point of the fan forums is supposed to be, the running of the club. This is why I couldn't help but get a little annoyed about the Flores question yesterday. Every fan has their own opinion on how the team should be playing... It's fine to be able to aask questions of the coach etc. but at the end of the day, the player management has to be up to him, not the fans.

They have always lost me when they talk about taking 2-3 games away from the Central Coast. They don't need to do that but they don't know how to make it work on the coast.

I'm not sure I understand why those 2/3 games are an issue, under the circumstances that they outlines yesterday. My concerns around moving games away, is that it could be the thin end of the wedge... I'm still worried about that, but for now, I'm reasonably happy to hear that they will only even do those two, provided there's a significant financial boon to be made from it and the members tickets/transport is covered.

It sounds silly, but to me, it was a step in the right direction, that he went out of his way to point out that any conversations about moving to Tassie, Canberra, Melbourne etc... Were part of the normal flow of offers and requests that a club gets, not serious consideration of doing stuff there.

 

[nebakke]

Sounds like an interesting night...shame I couldn't make it. Was there any talk on strengthening the squad for next season? 10,000 members is a big ask but then again if they can market it really well then I think its a possibility. There are a lot of people that get to half a dozen games a season and the 3 and 6 game memberships are the ones that will appeal to the casual punter (or those that have big family/work commitments).

Not really a lot of talk about the squad, other than repeated comments that the mood in the change room is good.
I think 10000 is a very big ask... I have no doubt the market is there, but to double the membership in one season, and after a relatively average season at that, is a VERY big ask I think.
Stalder commented that he had 12 memberships handed to him, standing at the exit after the Phoenix thrashing. Granted, he reckoned they'd all come back, more-or-less... But I think this proves that there is a definite set of member out there, who is significantly less than rusted on, to put it nicely.
So we're bound to lose some because of Flores - people seem to take it VERY personally - and we're bound to lose some because of the season we've had. In my mind, making up for those losses, would be an enormous win, any gains from there, would be quite impressive too.

 

[Einstein]

How did Brisbane Roar perform off the park ie financially etc under Bruce?
Just kind of answered my own question!! seems he was the MC and put the flags out at home games!

http://theroarforum.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=ceff196037dbdb8384039efe04c00933&topic=6810.20

 

[localpom]

Not really a lot of talk about the squad, other than repeated comments that the mood in the change room is good.
I think 10000 is a very big ask... I have no doubt the market is there, but to double the membership in one season, and after a relatively average season at that, is a VERY big ask I think.
Stalder commented that he had 12 memberships handed to him, standing at the exit after the Phoenix thrashing. Granted, he reckoned they'd all come back, more-or-less... But I think this proves that there is a definite set of member out there, who is significantly less than rusted on, to put it nicely.
So we're bound to lose some because of Flores - people seem to take it VERY personally - and we're bound to lose some because of the season we've had. In my mind, making up for those losses, would be an enormous win, any gains from there, would be quite impressive too.

Thanks, and yes I agree 10,000 is a very big ask but still possible. I know people get passionate about their team but to hand back memberships after a bad loss is beyond me. That is what supporting a team is all about and anyone who doesn't think we will have bad games and seasons is fooling themselves and missing the point. As long as we keep our culture (which is what sets us apart) developing young players and staying competitive against teams with much more cash than us then I am happy. Oh and staying here on the Coast as well, no more than 2 games a season in North Sydney.

 

[Big Al]

Bilo - Is obviously aligned with a group who are not satisfied with the running of the club & would like to have ago themselves. So his judgement may be a little blinded but doesn't make him wrong.

That said what can you really do at a presentation. They are not going to tell the fans how they are going to run the business (could be other club spies or things leak straight to forums twitter etc).

The important things are acknowledging they have handled moving games poorly but they still persist. Stating 11 games a year at BT is good. Gives a base. It is a little like the NRL where ANZ subsides the teams to play out of their stadium so obviously looking for something like that out of these games.

I don't like the idea of having these games included in my membership - I'd rather just pay for the 11 & be done with it. NSO will be interesting this year as how many members went to check it out. The place is a dump & atmosphere pathetic. Unless the missus wants to revisit for centimental reasons I have no intention of going back.

In selling the games is it game day sponsors who will cough up to make it profitable or the stadiums? If sponsors why won't they come to BT?

The presso was never a football department presso. Was clearly stated about club direction from MC & Bruce.

How was MC recevied?

At least with a 10,000 members shirt i might get off the underside hem of everyone's arse.

What everyone think of the logo. It's alright. I like MV's.

Kappa back again? No more rashies please.

 

[Big Al]

What's the go the with the FFA cup. Anything interesting or will it be an away game to boost the pockets of an NSL club. Are there any benefits of winning the thing (why wouldn't we just play a youth side etc).

 

[iEatHands]

Why not have a fan forum closer to the Sydney members? Then we can voice our opinion on whether or not we want matches moved to NSO/BO.. As far as I'm concerned either move the bloody team for good or leave the fecking thing where it is. Moving the match to NSO and constant speculation and talk from MC regarding moving more games, his very public feud with Gosford City Council and looking for more opportunities in Sydney had an immediate and obvious effect on numbers through the gates for the remainder of the season.

The damage has been done, you're not going to get those people back by moving 2 games in a normal season and telling people that if we get 14 home games they'll try and move 3..

The membership drive will be an embarrassment, save some face and make the target 6,000 or something. Making the target 10,000 after the season we had with some questionable management of players and staff is just nonsense. I can't see the club retaining the +6,000 members from last season let alone signing new ones up.

All of this is a shame because the team and back office staff put in such a huge effort when you look at the other teams in the competition with x5 the support staff running he show.

 

[dibo]

Moving on from my standing disgust at the idea of moving games away, there are some things I consider to be pretty promising from what has been mentioned.

Adding more staff and chasing harder on the community engagement side and chasing harder on the corporate side seems to me to be a profitable and likely better-than-self-sustaining enterprise.

Having additional bodies able to drive the corporate services will help.

Working with the venue to ensure that the matchday experience for the corporates is crucial too - work out what they want and ensure they leave feeling well fed, well watered and well loved.

Community engagement is what will really drive it though. It's about putting a halo on the club.

There's a lot of upside in having people like Adam Kwasnik take on community work. Down the track, hopefully when McBreen hangs up the boots he comes and gets involved too. People want to be involved with that, around that, with their logo on that. They want to tell people that their business supports a community-minded organisation. It's having a halo over what we do and having business wanting to share some of the glow.

If we get a W-League team going, the community roles can be a way of supplementing income for the players, and same might apply for the NYL kids. Take the FFA's schools strategy and run with it.

We can take advantage of our monopoly position in the market as the only local professional sporting club and drive it hard. Work with CCF to get kids playing and then ensure that we work with CCF to convert players to supporters.

At the moment our support is a mile wide but an inch deep. Moving games will at best make it two miles wide, but it tarnishes the halo so while wider, the support might only be half an inch deep.

With great community engagement, we can make the support deeper and stronger, claiming an inexorable hold on the area as *the* sport and *the* club.

 

[midfielder]

Just on away matches which seem to be the main issue and certainty was in the room last night... anyone who thinks it was not discussed at length and with lots of information is wrong .. it was not glossed over ..

Meaning the club has through long and hard about this decision .... if nothing else they deserve credit for that ...

The reason for the move is two fold, first to make money and the cost is $ 200, 000 per game ... second is to grow BT crowds and the moans and disbelief coming from some on the forum on this without listening to the plan ... maybe at one of the next forums you make the effort and ask the question yourself..

The growth at BT with the away games as best as I can summarise is this... many football folk at park level in the Northern beaches 18 K players was quoted .... the idea is to market into this group to come to BO and the hope is some of the people who turn up to BO will also in time travel to BT...

NSO was more chasing corporate dollars from NS and the club believes you need a match their to help...

The term used was low hanging fruit ... the Mariners have a defacto line drawn with WSW and about where to chase juniors... players and their parents are already engaged in the game and the people in charge of the social park clubs are normally Football folk... by giving the park teams an incentive to sell tickets to our BT matches and NSO & BO the belief is across the northern parts of Sydney it will over time grow our BT crowds..

The plan may work it may not ...however I have always believed selling directly at park level is very clever...

It was also stated we cannot continue to loose money and to keep things as they are would do that...

The club as I posted before said currently they need 11, 660 players to break even at BT ..

They sell only 20% of their corporate seats and and increase in corporate seats would reduce this figure..

For me am I happy we only get 11 games ... No ... do I now understand the reasons ... Yes ..

Am I sure this plan will work ... NO ... however it was explained for roughly an hour and I have to say I tho it sounded good...

As to comments about the room etc ... mate what did you expect drinks and eats served at dinner tables ... the papers lying about as someone said where actually Mariner give away's ...

Finally on the business plan... The CEO said he saw the Roar go into receivership and he never wants to see that happen to us .. we either believe that MC who is not some crazed person and the CEO have used their experience and knowledge and said to make the club subtainable we need to grow revenue... they have the books they have their experience and in MC's case a lot of money invested ... They have said this is the way forward we either believe them or not ...

 

[midfielder]

Mods

The CEO said he would come on the forum to openly discuss issues with us..

I suggest you email him today reminding him of his promise last night and get him on the forum...

I think the mods on this site do an excellent job with things like this in keeping all the chat HHHMMMMMmm well not allow name calling etc...

 

[nebakke]

The important things are acknowledging they have handled moving games poorly but they still persist. Stating 11 games a year at BT is good. Gives a base. It is a little like the NRL where ANZ subsides the teams to play out of their stadium so obviously looking for something like that out of these games.

This is one of the reasons why I came away a bit more optimistic. Going on the history of the last couple of years, I think it's a huge step for them to admit that they handled the move poorly. Also, they aren't actually persisting, that's the point... Well, they're persisting with the games, but the whole point is that they handled it poorly, they want to do better.
I would prefer that we played all our games at BT too, but I do see where they're coming from. It has to be frustrating to be struggling for market share and look downt he road to a major area that noone seems to be caring abour.

I don't like the idea of having these games included in my membership - I'd rather just pay for the 11 & be done with it. NSO will be interesting this year as how many members went to check it out. The place is a dump & atmosphere pathetic. Unless the missus wants to revisit for centimental reasons I have no intention of going back.

It's a shocking place to watch a game, I agree... However, I work just down the road from there and I have to admit, it was kind of nice to be able to get to a Friday game for once, this year. If work hasn't relocated by then, I would probably still go to a NSO game.
One thing I don't quite get though... There are lots of reasons not to go, but I've seen several comments on here, from people claiming that it's painful to get to..? It's what? A 5-10 minute walk up from NS station.

In selling the games is it game day sponsors who will cough up to make it profitable or the stadiums? If sponsors why won't they come to BT?

I gather that, they're hoping to get to some of the sponsors that would be more interested in targeting the north shore, than the Central Coast.
But, with what they were saying yesterday, the general idea isn't just to get people from NS to come to the NSO/BO games... It's to create fans who would consider travelling to Bluetongue as well. I'd suggest that a succesful negotiation with TfNSW would probably go a long way towards that as well.
If they succeed in that, they'd probably succeed in keeping the sponsort at BT as well etc. etc.

How was MC recevied?

Better than I expected actually

Kappa back again? No more rashies please.

They didn't actually say, did they? They just said that the new kit was done in consultation with the fans...

 

[iEatHands]

Attendance numbers are going to be difficult to achieve this year. Was there any talk about pricing? I know our tickets are cheap but the day certainly isn't, families wouldn't be walking away with much change from $150 each matchday.

In season 13/14 we had 2 home games against WSW, Sydney FC and Newcastle! If we go back to only 1 of each again like the previous season we're going to be only pulling an average of 7,000-8,000. We're lucky we had the 2 WSW games which really increased our average this season!

 

[nebakke]

Attendance numbers are going to be difficult to achieve this year. Was there any talk about pricing? I know our tickets are cheap but the day certainly isn't, families wouldn't be walking away with much change from $150 each matchday.

They acknowledged this, it was one of the reasons why they felt that something different had to be tried, like a well-planned game at NSO.
They didn't really touch on pricing, other than that they will be offering the payment plans again, I think it was 6 or 11 month options.

I think this is part of the reason why they want to try to add more entertainment around the matchday experience too. They want people to get there well early, be entertained, with the game the obvious flagship. I'm thinking it'd generate more revenue for them, but it'd also make it easier to sell the game as an entertainment proposition, rather than just "90 minutes of football".[/quote]

 

[dibo]

Attendance numbers are going to be difficult to achieve this year. Was there any talk about pricing? I know our tickets are cheap but the day certainly isn't, families wouldn't be walking away with much change from $150 each matchday.

In season 13/14 we had 2 home games against WSW, Sydney FC and Newcastle! If we go back to only 1 of each again like the previous season we're going to be only pulling an average of 7,000-8,000. We're lucky we had the 2 WSW games which really increased our average this season!

I wrote a while back about our crowds, our long term average, the affect different teams have and the effect different nights have.

I've done some really sketchy numbers assuming:

• 2 each of Adelaide, Brisbane, Heart and Perth and 1 each of Victory, Newcastle, Sydney, Wellington and Wanderers
• 3 Fridays, 5 Saturdays, 4 Sundays and NYE

You can track how much each contributes and detracts from the averages. All other things being equal, in years where we get double-ups on all the derbies, you'd expect our average to be about 9.9k and next year we might average about 8.9k. That's not terrible.

Assuming you take out one Friday night Perth game and one Friday night Wellington game and play them elsewhere, the Gosford average might come up by 1k or so, but it won't deliver magic, and that's assuming that there's no negative effect from taking games away (i.e. none of the Gosford based fans get grumpy about it and stop coming or don't come as much - the idea that it would boost crowds because suddenly thousands of extra people are going to start coming to Gosford from the northern beaches seems completely fanciful).

 

[midfielder]

D

I don't think anyone wants games moved ... we all remember the Northern Eagles / Manly thing ...

There are some very big differences between what the Mariners are doing and when Manly pushed to go back to BO... if nothing else time we enter our tenth year the NE did not quite make two ... from day one the games from memory were shared ... Manly made it obvious they wanted to both take over and move home..

The plan is for BT to get 11 home games and away matches either 2 or 3... the reasons have been given and targets have been set which can be measured ... they said last night if it does not work they will not be moved again...

I am very taken with the marketing concept of saying to the park teams on the Northern Beaches sell tickets and we will pay you a commission... second by playing at BO they may pick us some fans who in the future will travel up to BT ....

In fact the concept of all our CC clubs and Northern Say Sydney clubs and Northern Beaches clubs being able to sell tickets to our matches and receive a commission for doing so IMO is the cleverest thing I have heard in a while ...

I remember when I was a committee member of my local club ... money was always tight if an extra 2 to 5 K could be made ... it buys a lot of balls and helps pay for the lights ...

I am grateful the club has been upfront and honest and explained their reasons ... I will be the first to say its not working guys ... but that argument is for a latter day...

 

[Jaundice]

I went last night and im happy to say I feel much more confident now in the mariners strategy. Bruce made very clear the 'central coast' branding and being based here is paramount. The simple fact is the mariners are losing money and have done for quiet some time, more so in the past. So if tapping into markets with large financial potential that has been neglected by our neighbours SFC then im happy to sacrafice 1 or 2 games a season for the health of the club.

Bruce also made clear this doesnt mean his given up on the coast. He went through a whole list of plans and engagements he wished to do here. "we need to go around the coast and shake everyones hand again" I think were his words to summarize his ideaology.

I really liked his idea of working with the stadium to make CCstadium ours with a real mariners theme and looking at ways to make matchday experience different to the other codes ie not herding cattle in and out as the sirens blast.

Also like that theyre moving away from 'free ticket' strategies. I always hated this freebie, gimme gimme gimme culture surrounding a lot of so called fans and casuals.

 

[nebakke]

Also like that theyre moving away from 'free ticket' strategies. I always hated this freebie, gimme gimme gimme culture surrounding a lot of so called fans and casuals.

Weren't they actually reestablishing that strategy though? As I recall, it was two free tickets per member, with no limitation
Other than that,

 

[dibo]

MF - as I've explained a number of times, for a number of different reasons I struggle to see how the upside can possibly outweigh the downside.

 

[Jaundice]

Youre correct Nebakke that stuff stays the same, which im happy with. I remember Bruce mentioning something along the lines of improving engagement, matchday experience that brings in people, that actually pay for it and are happy too.

 

[localpom]

I know this is really simplistic as I am a simple guy, but if every member bought one 3 or 6 game membership for a friend or family member as a present then we hit 10,000 right? I'll be buying a couple for people as presents. Obviously there are people struggling enough already with family memberships but there must be a good way to market this as a prezzie buying option?