Since 1970 we have averaged 4,972 for attendance figures. Clearly away support numbers tend to be higher, the higher up the football pyramid you go, but the only season we’ve broken through the 7K average mark was 2003-04 (7,853) and I would estimate an average of at least 1,000 to 1,500 away support. So, the most we have been able to attract is circa 6k fans, playing in the Championship and at the worst we’re probably down to a hard core of 3k to 3.5k.
I had a look at the figs to see if a decent cup run might have had much of an impact on the season’s overall league attendances and correlation seems weak surprisingly.
In the 3 seasons since 1970 we made it to Rd 5 of the FA Cup whilst playing in Div 3, there was only a noticeable boost in 1974-75.
When we made it to Round 5 whilst playing in the Championship (2001-02 and 2002-03) gates were up but not much more than they were under Sir Ray’s 99-00 season and lower than the 03-04 season.
The Milk Cup Liverpool semi final run boosted average gates to over 5,000 - higher than the previous 4 seasons but on a par with average gates in the 70s.
The cup run that lead us to Wembley had no discernible boost on league gates. In fact they were down on the previous season’s.
All those have improved greatly over that time.
On the other hand there’s
Orient 4193
Crewe 4035
Mansfield 3206
Northampton 3350.
These seem, like Walsall overall to be at pretty much the same level, . Wonder what the difference has been.
There have also been clubs like Stockport whose fortunes have declined overall, but had their biggest ever gate for a play off leg, recently.
What happened? Is it really as simple as that the first set of teams had some success that led to higher gates?Was there always a bigger catchment area and potential for them? Or were there other factors?
Of those teams that you mention Huddersfield, Fulham, Reading and Cardiff have all reached the preiership. In the case of Reading backed by big money from Madjeski until he got fed up or out of favour. Fulham had AlFayed to buy their way up the Leagues. Cardiff have the malaysian Vincent Tan.
Brentford have a moneybags owner, we are never going to compete with Birmingham City and Preston have a much bigger cachment area with only Blackpool to compete with.
So it’s basically a mix of hidden potential, vast investment and that a even a brief spell in the premiership bumps up your gates for a long period afterwards? Probably. It’s just frustrating to hear the fans of these " big" clubs talk as if they’ve never been anything else. Like certain neighbours a little to Walsall’s west.
Thanks. I needed to distract myself from a tedious piece of work. It was either do some data analysis and create some charts on this or watch the video clip of Terry Christian being an utter bellend once again! I chose both.
On the figures we can see that even playing at one level below the Prem and with (for us) relatively big name players on the books, we have a natural upper limit to drawing a larger crowd on a regular basis. Whilst there is no getting away from the fact that decent quality football and competing at the right end of the table is key to drawing more punters in, even on an ad hoc basis, I am convinced we missed a great opportunity to be pro-active in engaging the “Wembley crowd” beyond that one off event. Take out fans of neighbouring clubs and family members who may have only been to see us play once or twice (if at all) before and there must be still have thousands from the town who went to Wembley who, with the right incentives, could have been turned into longer term “customers”. It feel like it was the biggest opportunity we had since Liverpool 84 or the 2001 play off final when our club was in the headlines, to tap into the wider Walsall catchment to try and hook prospective fans. Maybe efforts were made but it’s not apparently translated into people coming through the turnstiles.
A nice bit of pie there: Anything is better than watching Terry Christian !!! But I have just realised you watched that(edited 3 minutes after original post:)…
You started with the 70s, and I began attending early in that decade. I remember that Ron Harrison (Chairman) used to write about us needing a break even attendance of 8,000. That seemed pie in the sky, but when you look at your figures for the 1960s, it doesn’t seem so unrealistic for him to have hoped for that.
I focused on the period from 1970 for a couple of reasons -
looking back over 50 years gives a decent timeframe over which to check on any trends and accounts for 20 years at Fellows Park and 30 at our current home giving sufficient info for our pre-Bescot era attendances
I noticed that 1968 seemed to mark quite a change (reduction) from attendances in the previous 20 years and stayed that way. To get a feel for how well we are holding up our fanbase now (and in recent times) it seems more relevant to look at the trends post that 1968 drop but when you check out the attendances in the 1950s and early/mid 1960s then yes, anything between 7k and 12k was the norm.
I am intrigued to know what, aside from the “summer of love”, psychedelia and the assassination of MLK, changed in 1968 that led to a pretty sharp decline (drop of over 3,000) of people coming to Fellows Park?
It gives a ‘position’ ranking for our attendances for each year. So for instance we were 68th/92 last season. I’m not sure if you can plot any trends from this. Interestingly, going on figures mentioned above from 1991 and how we were better off than the likes of Cardiff, Reading and Fulham at that time, we were still only 62nd/92 that year.
The average attendances in the 1950s and 60s were brilliant. Wish we could get close to that now !
Does anyone think that easier transport links these days are the reason for the decline ?
It was the post war boom and the lack of other entertainment options in the fifties and early sixties. Things changed in the later sixties and as I commented above football violence became a topic of interest. I know a number of people who stopped going to games but the real damage it did was to stop youngsters being allowed to go on their own and gates fell.
I agree but times were different and there was no trouble between fans in those ( 50s ) days. There wasn’t many people who had cars or who had the time seeing as Saturday morning was part of the working week. Walsall FC were easy to get to, our local big neighbours were a long walk away.
After having a good read of the link that Pinnacle provided, and seeing the mess we made of last nights game, I think it is fairly obvious what our main problem is - we have never properly replaced Sammy Holmes. Sort that one thing out, and we’re golden.
I am looking at attendance figures up to the Covid intervention. Our average crowd was 4,664, the 8th best in L2 but better than 6 clubs in L1. The lowest average in the Championship was Luton at 10,048.
In our division Swindon, Crewe and Salford saw 20-21 per cent increases on 2018/19, but Oldham dropped by 20 pc and Scunthorpe and Macclesfield by 16 pc.
Anything is better than watching Terry Christian !!! But I have just realised you watched that(edited 3 minutes after original post:
)…