Playoff Attendances

[It's Character Forming]

One of the things I noticed in Saturday's program was the Wolves home playoff game back in 2002; I still vividly remember Malky's header and the atmosphere in the stadium when we turned round their early goal to win it 3-1.  It was close to being as good as this Saturday.

But the big surprise was when I noticed the attendance, which was just over 20,000.  For a playoff semi !  And I do remember back in the early 90s when we were up the top end of the Prem, we didn't use to sell-out most of the time.  In the late 90s I remember a comment from Neil Doncaster saying we needed regular attendances of 16,000 then to break even - which we struggled to do, then being in the 2nd tier.

Interesting that our attendances have gone up steadily since then and when we went down to L1 we were still getting the stadium mostly full.

I wonder what changed ? 

 

[Personal Trainer]

A brilliant marketing campaign by Andrew Cullen leading to a huge database and then the introduction of the interest free Direct Debit payment plan for season tickets. 

Plu, of course, the gentrification of football after all seater stadia.

 

[Moosheep]

Norwich's average league attendances look like this...

1998/99 15,761

1999/00 15,539

2000/01 16,525

2001/02 18,644

2002/03 20,353

2003/04 18,987 Jarrold Stand opened  31st Jan 2004 

2004/05 24,350

2005/06 24,952

There has been a general upward trend in attendances throughout all leagues over the past 20 years which I would put down to an increasing exposure of the sport plus clubs becoming more family friendly. In Norwich's case The opening of the Jarrold Stand seems to have had a pretty major effect. Can anyone remember the ground's capacity when the old South Stand was still up? 22,000ish?

Moo

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

Have a feeling it was 22,072

Was a kid at the time and kids tend to cement numbers. That one was in my head!

 

[It's Character Forming]

According to the programme it was 20,127, either way it's anazing looking back that we couldn't sell it out, now we'd have been able to get well over capacity regardless of who we were playing.