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What needs to be done to grow the support and attendance


Dylan
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Well, it is the off season and we do know that city staff do look at this forum. So I think it might be a useful exercise to discuss how we could potentially grow the support base as I think it is fair to say that our support and attendance is pretty disgraceful thus far. 

This would probably be better than those useless surveys we get from time to time. 

So if you were in charge, what would you change to increase the attendance?  My suggestions...

- I used to be against this but now I have changed my mind. Id start to create a more geographical identity for the club. ie the north of Melbourne given that we have been based at Latrobe since the heart days. So start developing relationships with all local clubs in the area by providing support,  like coach and medical training for their staff and also open up CFA for local club use. I actually dont like the model that Sydney and WSW have by having lots of age groups. Id rather the club support local clubs through coaching to develop talent and then when they are older they can come into our youth system.

- Build a small stadium (something like Epping) so all youth and womens fixtures are played out of there and some preseason games. Also allow local club use of it for finals and for games where there has to be a ground change.

- I think the constant links to CFG will in the future actually hinder the growth of the supporter base so I would take steps to become more independent from them at least visually.

- Ticket prices. The club seem to focus on trying to get people to buy memberships rather than attending games. Need people to attend first and then 

-  I genuinely believe the use of a red heart as a symbol for the club would be perfect. Put it on the home kit, use it on merchandise, use it as a club nick names ie 'The Hearts' or something like that.

- We need our own unique home kit. Majority white with city blue rather the other way round. 

Discuss

 

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Decent post @Dylan.

As I see it key issues are:

*city share  their home venue with a better performing rival

* the main differentiator between teams is that city are owned by another club. To 95% of people, that’s a negative

*To highlight that negative, city emphasis it as much as possible with badging, branding etc etc.

*A League crowds are poor across the board.

——-

1. Ok to me we’ve been around long enough to know what brings in people. When we had a player straight out of the La Liga Champions hey presto upper tier open. Even a clearly over the hill Tim Cahill put bums on seats.

No one is coming to AAMI Park (or anywhere else) to watch a bloke who has just been released from some random club in Poland. These days in a few seconds of clicking you can get live football from the best leagues in the world, most people want to watch thst, not guys who if in say the Uk would be squaddies in the 4th Division.  This to me is at the heart of the matter. So the club needs actual names and better footballers. A genuine marquee and not an accounting note.

2. My gut feeling is that The people of Melbourne want to watch live sport in a central location not out in the burbs (though I’d find Epping convenient myself)

3. The club is getting more negatives from the man city cloning than positives. You’re right about the jerseys changing but they can’t go to white. They need to do what they should have done Day 1 (still, never too late) is go red and white at home and sky blue away. It’s more about showing that the club has a Melbourne identity than about “Heart tradition” and the change can’t happen soon enough, as the only ones who think that Man City kit will bring in Aussie supporters are the unworldly types in the marketing department.

Until the leadership is prepared to address these fundamental issues, crowd numbers will be a problem for them.

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Absolutely sick to death of.........

-being refered to as "the Manchester City owned Melbourne City" 

-right now feeling like a feeder club to fund Man City, which all clubs are in a way but to have it shoved in my face like Marwood and co do is pissing me right off now. 

-being under SCOTT MUNN'S leadership FMD. Its been yeeeeeeeears and nothing changes each year, we need someone that is not a yes man to the sky blue overlords and he needs a spine to want to take charge and change the back offices.

-being expected to renew each year when we dish up the same crap each year. And while im at it going in a competition to go and watch Man City play.

-being CFG scouting test dummies, other than TUNA they have got it way wrong!!!

-CFG putting ACL ahead of Aleague trophies, this to me spits in the face of what league we play in and i even i got sucked into the hype of being in the ACL.

-having so many negatives to get off my chest. 

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It would be good to see some renewed focus on the actual match day experience. We are never going to have the level of players the European leagues have but our match day experience could be something rival leagues AFL/NRL could not ever emulate. 

One major issue is all the over policing/security ruining the experience. 

Orlando City in the MLS doing amazing things with their match day experience. It would be really cool to work with the FFA/AAMI to replicate this here in the A-League.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-4286546/Orlando-City-open-stadium-safe-standing-flares.html

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The key thing is for everybody who attends matches but is not yet a parent to hurry up and reproduce. That is the only way attendances will actually grow. Sure it may go up or down by  bit season to season, but the reality is we have probably reached the limit of rusted on supporters for this club until people who are taught to support the club by their parents start coming along. If there was anyone in Melbourne who could potentially be interested in supporting this club they would already be attending games.That is the harsh reality of it. But we don't need large attendances to stay afloat as we already have a secure financial backing. Just enjoy the short beer lines imo.

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12 minutes ago, GreenSeater said:

The key thing is for everybody who attends matches but is not yet a parent to hurry up and reproduce. That is the only way attendances will actually grow. Sure it may go up or down by  bit season to season, but the reality is we have probably reached the limit of rusted on supporters for this club until people who are taught to support the club by their parents start coming along. If there was anyone in Melbourne who could potentially be interested in supporting this club they would already be attending games.That is the harsh reality of it. But we don't need large attendances to stay afloat as we already have a secure financial backing. Just enjoy the short beer lines imo.

In other words free Melbourne City frangers distributed to club members, said prophalactics to come complete with holes.

Ability for the condoms to pipe out a rousing rendition of "So Happy Together" upon ejeculation would be a bonus.

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Place all resources into the men, win, and get out of AAMI, support and organise active matchday Tifo's and chants with flares or pyros.

Pretty much steer away from the corporatisation theme of the team and get back to grass roots.

Lastly, prospective members like winners so unless we start to dominate Victory, membership will not grow.

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I think the idea that City are going to step back from the CFG coattails is ridiculous. You take the money and perks (great facilities, your fornarolis and shenkavelds), you take the negatives that come along with it. Our home kit is always going to be City Blue (and I'm more than okay with that).

I think from an attendance standpoint the club did as much as they could this past season. Every second game kids could come free, discounts were readily available through Telstra and the club has posters and social media ad's on all season long. To me it's an issue of the FFA and their mismanagement of our league.

If I could make one request from the club's marketers is that maybe they start embracing 'Melbourne' a little more than 'City'. As far as I'm concerned this is the Melbourne club for the people of Melbourne, I just wish they thought that. Sometimes it feels like the Club is content with being the 2nd team in Melbourne? The Victims are a club FFO domestic abuse and inflated egos.

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The success gap between the two franchises in Melbourne has grown even larger. Nothing substantial will change until it gets s smaller. I agree with @Hanz though, in the meantime, we really need to improve the matchday experience, apart from Active Support, it's soulless and emotionally disengaging

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3 hours ago, bt50 said:

Is this the 2018 off season version of the annual In or Out Bring back Red and White thread? In before Morphine shows up with another long winded i'm done post....

I think it is actually quite a sensible thread, given that according to Marwood we need to show a return on the investment made here, and I'd have thought that more members and bigger crowds would be a part of that.

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48 minutes ago, jw1739 said:

I think it is actually quite a sensible thread, given that according to Marwood we need to show a return on the investment made here, and I'd have thought that more members and bigger crowds would be a part of that.

Tbh I see Marwoods comments as veiled threats to the FFA. 

We have been pushing for a league independent of the FFA, tge FFA are seemingly unwilling to relinquish control so CFG are now making threats publicly.

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5 hours ago, bt50 said:

Is this the 2018 off season version of the annual In or Out Bring back Red and White thread? In before Morphine shows up with another long winded i'm done post....

I could only dream. A morphine rant whilst wearing his New York City FC shirt

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6 hours ago, bt50 said:

Is this the 2018 off season version of the annual In or Out Bring back Red and White thread? In before Morphine shows up with another long winded i'm done post....

Pretty much this.

Every season we get the same suggestions that will change our attendances. 

Change our colours.

Don't change our colours 

Sign more expensive players 

Build our own stadium

Sign Samaras

Sack Munn

Win more games.

Be completely opposite to Victory 

Be more like Victory 

Sell sausages 

Give away free tickets

Sign Samaras. 

But basically it doesn't matter what we do in this city and country.Soccer is a marginal sport (at the elite level) and probably will be for the next few generations.

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FWIW i stopped going because i was sick of losing. im a 5 year member if that means anything. 

why would i waste my time traveling to the city (a 30-40 min trip from work/home) to spend $50~ on shit beer and watch a shit team be shit and frustrating? 

i'd rather stay home, have the game on in the background and lose SR in Overwatch

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I was a Heart supporter from its inception and a member from the 2nd year up until this season where I didn't attend a game, maybe watched 2-3 games on TV and overall barely even followed the club. 

I honestly just think I just couldn't justify the investment as the entertainment value wasn't really there and there were always better things for me to do instead of watching what has forever been an incredibly frustrating team. The matchday experience isn't what it used to be as active support has been completely nullified, VAR is fucking shit, the standard of players in the whole league has declined drastically (where are the genuine star marquees?), playing the same 9 teams is boring, there's hardly any reason to feel passionate about the players since half of them end up playing for other A-League clubs anyway, being a franchise under the CFG umbrella has pretty much destroyed the emotional attachment I had to when we were Heart, and the stakes just never really seem that high. I mean from what I did follow this season we played like shit for the most part and still managed to finish 3rd, but that meant nothing anyway because the league has a final series where 6 out of 10 teams still qualify lol.

Realistically for attendances to rise again the league and its clubs have to invest in better players, the FFA need to sort out expansion asap, VAR needs some serious refining and the league has to be exciting again and generate buzz like it did during the Del Piero/Ono/Heskey days. The semi-finals were good in the sense that it brought back some of that hype with that McGree goal and the epic Sydney FC vs Victory game but then in true A-League fashion, completely shot itself in the foot and fucked it all up with the VAR catastrophe.

As for the club, Melbourne City FC needs to establish some sort of identity and stand for something because at the moment it is literally just a generic franchise that doesn't really represent a specific geographical area so it really is just the inferior football club in Melbourne in the eyes of the general public. It will be especially interesting to see what happens if the Team 11 bid in Dandenong is successful.

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I read over the weekend that the Team 11 bid has secured some pretty serious funding from the City of Casey - something just over 23.8m. IIRC part is dependent on them actually getting the nod to join the League, but Team 11 certainly looks like a serious bid at this stage.

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1 hour ago, jw1739 said:

I read over the weekend that the Team 11 bid has secured some pretty serious funding from the City of Casey - something just over 23.8m. IIRC part is dependent on them actually getting the nod to join the League, but Team 11 certainly looks like a serious bid at this stage.

Honestly their could be about 4 teams that could enter at this stage.

We'll be lucky to get two decent ones, but most likely NIX gone, then South Sydney Cluster Fuck FC and Brisbane 2

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10 minutes ago, Bellos23 said:

I’m from Geelong and travel to most home games! Geelong is such a big city outside of Melbourne! It’s quite easy to catch the train from gtown to AAMI Park.

I only ever see victory coming down this way to market their club to young kids.

 

my question is why arnt we doing this too? Soccer is pretty popular in Geelong why can’t city trying to capture the young kids and youth?

 

or do victory already have a hold over the Geelong area 🤷🏻‍♂️

Maybe it's a case of choosing your battles. I'd say the tards having a hold on part of the market down there may be a factor. 

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The Club really needs to address the problems fast because it is going to be even harder moving forward with a new Melbourne/Victorian team coming in. Whether its Casey's Team 11, or the new Western Suburbs bid announced over the weekend or the Geelong team or the South Melbourne bid. That will further divide the pool of potential new supporters and also run the real risk of losing some of our supporters. Lets face it most of us are or became Melbourne City/Heart fans because we were ANTI-Victory rather than PRO-City/Heart. 

What to do is frustrating we all know (in order for me):

  • Reduce prices - they are a killer. We need to match or have lower prices than the Big Bash or the NBL.
  • Sign a genuine marque - not a mid-range player for a mid-range league. We have never really recover the public's trust the David Villa debacle.
  • Push back against he FFA for earlier game times. Kids are the future fans. Kids can't do games that start at 7:50pm every week.
  • Stop all the Manchester City pushing/branding. This has reduced which is good. But most fans don't care about them or don't like them. Those that do like Man City will support us regardless of any push.
  • Keep a squad together. Its very hard to support a team when the team has an almost full turn over of players every 2 years.
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20 hours ago, Jovan said:

Pretty much this.

Every season we get the same suggestions that will change our attendances. 

Change our colours.

Don't change our colours 

Sign more expensive players 

Build our own stadium

Sign Samaras

Sack Munn

Win more games.

Be completely opposite to Victory 

Be more like Victory 

Sell sausages 

Give away free tickets

Sign Samaras. 

But basically it doesn't matter what we do in this city and country.Soccer is a marginal sport (at the elite level) and probably will be for the next few generations.

Quality post lmao 😂 

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We should definitely anticipate the possibility of a third Victorian team coming in because like has been said there is plenty of backing with Team11, South Melbourne etc and it would would make sense for at least one of them to come in. 

 

It's as simple as this though - win. Winning the league is really the main thing that will bring in a bigger support base as well as obviously an Iniesta type coming in. 

 

Something different must come in next season to generate excitement that's for sure.

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9 hours ago, jw1739 said:

I read over the weekend that the Team 11 bid has secured some pretty serious funding from the City of Casey - something just over 23.8m. IIRC part is dependent on them actually getting the nod to join the League, but Team 11 certainly looks like a serious bid at this stage.

Isn't building a stadium part of their plans?

If so then they are still probably $400M short of the funding they need.

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11 minutes ago, malloy said:

Isn't building a stadium part of their plans?

If so then they are still probably $400M short of the funding they need.

@malloy They won't spend anything like that on a stadium. No-one needs to. You go to the right engineering company and they will build you a modular stadium to the capacity you desire. In Australia and particularly for minor sports such as Football and Union we need to think about what we actually need for the usage a stadium is going to get on a routine basis.

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3 hours ago, Deeming said:

The Club really needs to address the problems fast because it is going to be even harder moving forward with a new Melbourne/Victorian team coming in. Whether its Casey's Team 11, or the new Western Suburbs bid announced over the weekend or the Geelong team or the South Melbourne bid. That will further divide the pool of potential new supporters and also run the real risk of losing some of our supporters. Lets face it most of us are or became Melbourne City/Heart fans because we were ANTI-Victory rather than PRO-City/Heart. 

What to do is frustrating we all know (in order for me):

  • Reduce prices - they are a killer. We need to match or have lower prices than the Big Bash or the NBL.
  • Sign a genuine marque - not a mid-range player for a mid-range league. We have never really recover the public's trust the David Villa debacle.
  • Push back against he FFA for earlier game times. Kids are the future fans. Kids can't do games that start at 7:50pm every week.
  • Stop all the Manchester City pushing/branding. This has reduced which is good. But most fans don't care about them or don't like them. Those that do like Man City will support us regardless of any push.
  • Keep a squad together. Its very hard to support a team when the team has an almost full turn over of players every 2 years.

And 5 minutes after you post this we release our captain to play for a rival!

Oh the irony.

They sure make it hard to support the team. 

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3 hours ago, Deeming said:

What to do is frustrating we all know (in order for me):

  • Reduce prices - they are a killer. We need to match or have lower prices than the Big Bash or the NBL.
  • Sign a genuine marque - not a mid-range player for a mid-range league. We have never really recover the public's trust the David Villa debacle.
  • Push back against he FFA for earlier game times. Kids are the future fans. Kids can't do games that start at 7:50pm every week.
  • Stop all the Manchester City pushing/branding. This has reduced which is good. But most fans don't care about them or don't like them. Those that do like Man City will support us regardless of any push.
  • Keep a squad together. Its very hard to support a team when the team has an almost full turn over of players every 2 years.

These would be on my list too. And of them, my top priority would be to stop the "brand" bullshit. I don't think it's reduced either - the "prize" for winning an early membership renewal draw is a trip to Manchester. Only a few weeks since a bloke in the crowd at AAMI won the same thing. Better to reward everyone who renews early with a discount.

It's my view that the club will never resonate with the people of Melbourne if it just looks like a branch office of Manchester City. CFG need to learn that ownership does not mean management. Everything needs to appear as if it's decided at Bundoora, even if it is not. And I'm not even sure that CFG is as good at running football clubs that it thinks it is. Manchester City win Premierships only because they have an obscene amount of money to spend. Once the money is limited they are no better than anyone else. As for their much-vaunted scouting network, their only sustained success with us has been Fornaroli. Other clubs such as Sydney and Victory have recruited as well as or better than we have.

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40 minutes ago, jw1739 said:

@malloy They won't spend anything like that on a stadium. No-one needs to. You go to the right engineering company and they will build you a modular stadium to the capacity you desire. In Australia and particularly for minor sports such as Football and Union we need to think about what we actually need for the usage a stadium is going to get on a routine basis.

 It was a an over exaggeration, but my point being stadiums in Aus are expensive to build and would be upwards of 100M for a boutique stadium. Something a new team is unlikely to be able to warrant spending.

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15 hours ago, malloy said:

 It was a an over exaggeration, but my point being stadiums in Aus are expensive to build and would be upwards of 100M for a boutique stadium. Something a new team is unlikely to be able to warrant spending.

I take your point. But if we want to grow the league and get an affinity between A-League clubs and their supporters we have  to build and nurture those connections. I think we have to look for cheaper options for smaller stadiums that actually look and feel like "Home." 500 active supporters behind the goal look good when they're standing on a terrace with a capacity of 1000, but they look shit when they're in a tribune seating 5000 of which at least 3000 seats are empty. It doesn't hurt anyone to walk around to get coffee and a bun at the counter under the grandstand at half-time - you don't need a refreshment outlet aver 20 metres. 

AAMI Park may be the ground on which we play our home matches, but it's not our "home ground" in any other sense. I can't drop by there and get a coffee at "the club", I can't go there for a decent meal at the weekend at "the club" - there's no connection between AAMI Park and me at all.

Also, let me point out that many clubs overseas don't actually own their stadiums, they have long-term leases over them. So they don't need squillions up front to get started.

So in summary I think we need to find the cheaper options instead of the current philosophy that FFA has, which appears to be "bigger is better." I want a home ground that has a soul.

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1 hour ago, jw1739 said:

I take your point. But if we want to grow the league and get an affinity between A-League clubs and their supporters we have  to build and nurture those connections. I think we have to look for cheaper options for smaller stadiums that actually look and feel like "Home." 500 active supporters behind the goal look good when they're standing on a terrace with a capacity of 1000, but they look shit when they're in a tribune seating 5000 of which at least 3000 seats are empty. It doesn't hurt anyone to walk around to get coffee and a bun at the counter under the grandstand at half-time - you don't need a refreshment outlet aver 20 metres. 

AAMI Park may be the ground on which we play our home matches, but it's not our "home ground" in any other sense. I can't drop by there and get a coffee at "the club", I can't go there for a decent meal at the weekend at "the club" - there's no connection between AAMI Park and me at all.

Also, let me point out that many clubs overseas don't actually own their stadiums, they have long-term leases over them. So they don't need squillions up front to get started.

So in summary I think we need to find the cheaper options instead of the current philosophy that FFA has, which appears to be "bigger is better." I want a home ground that has a soul.

Im not disagreeing with anything you are saying, boutique stadiums are fine for Australia, what I am saying is building stadiums, including boutique ones, is well out of the financial capacity of A-League clubs. 

Yes the $24 million is a huge amount, but it is well short of the funding the team will require due to the stadium being part of their plans. 

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We should avoid at all costs trying to make City more geographically specific. It would undoubtedly be welcomed by supporters living in that part of town, but it would potentially put offside many of those who didn't. If that was combined with an out of centre stadium you would definitely compound that loss. For example, if City decided they were a northern suburbs club but stayed at AAMI, as a fan based towards Geelong I'd probably still attend, but I'd feel more than a little unwanted. Play in the north, and my attendance would be in jeopardy, certainly on a regular basis. If a club then opened in Geelong, all bets would then be off. 

We want to be one of Everton or Liverpool, not Tranmere Rovers (fabulous as local clubs like Tranmere are, that's aiming too low, especially when our rivals expect to be one of the big two in the city). I've enough faith in CFG that if Victory are going to be one of those big two, then they aim to be the other. We aim to be a club for the whole of Melbourne. 

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