Anyone know where I can get that info from, or would I be as well working it out myself? Just curious is all...
There is something knocking about but its b0ll0cks. It uses the town population of 75k rather than the metropolitan borough which is c 200,000-250,000. Good luck with trying to do it yourself like, because its hard as **** to do a club like West Brom, who have a small metropolitan area as West Bromwich but a vast area of Birmingham to pull from so the numbers will be skewed.
Yeah that's what thought, do you use urban pop, metro pop? How do you split it when there is more than one team in an area... Seems like a fookin minefield...
I think the generally accepted way of doing it is to use whichever figures, town only or whole borough, suit your argument more. So when someone says we don't have the population to attract more fans, they'll quote "we're only a small town of 90,000 and Sheffields population is 500,000+ ". But when you want to argue the opposite, say "nah that's rubbish mate, Barnsley's population is 200,000+, sheffields is only 250,000".
Every town has a catchment area which includes nearby towns. Burnley always come out on top because I don't think they have a Metropolitan borough which would include towns like Nelson and Colne. Only way to do it is to take the town or city population and ignore the catchment area. It will always be skewed in favour of places like Newcastle and Plymouth anyway due to relatively little nearby competition. Barnsley metropolitan borough includes Hoyland, Penistone, Royston which are catchment areas for Sheffield and Leeds.So using the town population of 75000 would also put us near the top which I assume is what he's after.
No, I'm not after trying to put us anywhere, I'm after solid, objective data for my own curiosity. But my job does revolve around stats and reports so I'm well versed in how to make data say anything you want it to!
Barnsley has areas in it's metropolitan population that lie as close to other towns with football league clubs which needs to be factored in. Doncaster and Rotherham obviously but also areas to the west that are as close to huddersfield (not highly poulated but catchment areas nonetheless). We have a small urban town population which is surrounded by small towns that grew around the mines. It's only a couple of miles from the suburds of south barnsley to the suburbs of north sheffield too, hence the obscene sight of odd looking fellows wearing sheffield wednesday colours round those parts.
Agree. It can’t be done. But - you can look at the catchment area and have a guess at the potential. Barnsley Football Club has a huge catchment area - much bigger than the metropolitan area - because basically its a large town immediately surrounded by other large towns. It’s not for example like Scnuthorpe a town that is isolated from other towns. In Barnsley you can drive through one housing estate into another and not realise you’ve crossed the district boundary. All Barnsley needs to do is be the most attractive football club in the area - which means that they have to be more attractive than their competitors, the Sheffield and Leeds clubs. If they can do that, and with these new owners I think they can, then attendances will soar.
Should base it on catchment area, bearing in mind the catchment areas of other clubs (the size will be driven by the status/league of the club) and the distance to travel to Oakwell. You then want to calculate what proportion of people in the catchment area attend matches.
http://population.city/united-kingdom/barnsley/ Don't know if this is any help to you vesp . Since 2001 Barnsley's population has increased 10% , I wonder if this represents an increase in reds attendances ? I'd say over the last 4/5 years there's been a noticeable increase......
Leeds 725,000 28,000 Sheffield 530,000 Wed 27,000 Utd 22,000 ave 49,000 Bradford 485,000 18,000 Doncaster 290,000 6,000 Pathetic Rotherham 255,000 10,000 Barnsley 225,000 13,000 Huddersfield 215,000 20,000 Population to gate ratio give or take Sheffield by a mile Huddersfield, Leeds and Bradford, Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster averaged over last 5 seasons ONLY INTEREST = BIT OF INFO BEFORE THE - ME, MYSELF AND I, BRIGADE START AVIN A DIG
In England, 5% of the total population of a catchment area is considered good. Therefore an approximation got Barnsley FC, would be @11,500. Home support around this figure is quite good, I believe we have been around this figure in recent seasons. Clubs and supporters will always want more but 5% is a good guideline.
Conversely - If you're isolated like Newcastle, Sunderland, Plymouth etc - there's no rival team to support so everyone in the area supports one club. Problem with Barnsley is that there are about 20 football or rugby teams within a 30 mile radius.
http://www.myfootygrounds.co.uk/AreaMap.asp?view=ENGLAND That theory can work both ways though . A quick look at the map above you d think peterborough/Cambridge would have far larger crowds ......... More isolation means less local derbys which in turn leads to less local interest .
For my A level Geography assignment, back in the 80s I researched “The sphere of influence of BFC” . Looked into population, nearby clubs, popularity and success of clubs nearby, other factors eg Miners strike etc. Used something called Break point theory that indicated the limitations of the pull of BFC due to their local competition. Can’t remember much about the findings other than outside times of the strike BFC faired pretty well in terms of the influence to atttract supporters per population and othe influences.
In past research I did to submit to Radio Sheffield as far as the crowd size per capita is concerned, we came out in first place every time. I did it to counter Brian the Blades and 2-1 Kens constant verbal diarrhoea on Radio Dee Dar that we are a poorly supported Club. I compared Rotherham, Doncaster Rovers, Barnsley and Wednesday and United as two separate entities. I had no way of measuring any possible cosmopolitan support and so had to use figures published for a full seasons declared attendances against population counts from figures taken from the Local Government Association annual statistics. Presumably, those figures are gleaned from Census records ( accurate every ten years) and the figures gathered from the annual Electoral roll returns.