It's a ******** 'official' way though and is bordering on fraudulent. It's deliberately misleading to advertisers and sponsors who are being given a false impression of how many people will view their logos and ads. If you haven't entered the ground you aren't in attendance regardless of whether you bought a ticket or not. I bought a ticket for Peter Kay the other year but didn't go. I can't tell my mates that I went.
I really don't understand the vitriol. There is no proof that anyone has been conned into believing that the official attendance is not the same thing as the number of bums on seats, so calling it fraudulent is not correct - in fact that in itself is a 'lie'. I like to stick to facts personally.
If nothing else, it's a mangling of the English language. "Attendance" and "Tickets Sold" are clearly two different things. To announce 17049 as "attendance" is incorrect. It may be the way it's done these days, but that doesn't make it right. It just makes the figure meaningless and makes announcing it pointless.
Like I alluded to earlier - at the heart of this there'll be a statistician who will explain that the only way of measuring attendance accurately is to count seats sold - there's no reliable way of counting actual attendees (I appreciate people will remember other ways of counting attendance - but they're no more 'accurate'). And that statistician will have a carefully worded description of the number - if other people pretend that it means 'number of attendees' then that's not the fault of the statistician. And BTW it does mean something - because it gives an accurate measure of our following compared to our rivals - as they all use the same (very accurate) way of counting seats sold.
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." All I know is that if I told someone that on Saturday, me and 17,048 other people watched a cracking game at Oakwell, I would be giving them a false impression about the size of the crowd. Personally I thought there were less than usual, and in my own immediate vicinity there were at least 6 or 7 season ticket holders missing. Your last point is a good one, though. It's a useful comparator of a club's fan base, providing we're all using the same method. I just wish they'd call it what it is, instead of what it's not.
Except in promotional material from the club on its commercial website a few years ago it clearly stated the number of people through the doors who would "see your company name" and that number was the official attendance not the actual attendance. At the end of the day, as you like to stick to facts, it's a fact that unless you attend the game you are not in attendance. As such it's a fact that calling an empty seat an attendee is false. Not sure why you defend such practice. As I've said previously it's not a dig at the club but the entire industry.
If people pretend that the word attendance means number of attendees? Wtf? By the way how is the number of people walking through the door less accurate? Generally speaking we don't have many fans throwing a grappling hook over the top of the ponty end to gain admission. The police, by the way, DO know the actual attendance, they have to to ensure the safety of everyone
I There’s no accurate way of counting attendees. The Police don’t know, the best they can do is estimate. Send them an FOI request and see whether the answer they give is completely without caveats. Of course you could try to describe a foolproof counting method of actual attendees.
The penny drops... The daft thing about this discussion is that everyone understands what is being counted, yet people keep trying to use the figure to mean something else to prove its a lie?
The stupidity showed itself at Arsenal last season. So many empty seats but always announced as 60000.
The main issue right now is the north stand. It's a complete an utter farce that a stand that used to house 6000 fans, and once had home and away fans in has now been reduced to 4400!!! For the life of me I can't believe how this has happened! At worst it should be 5000, but I see no reason why we can't sell 5500, that's still 500 less if you don't want it full to the max! We must be throwing away 1000s of pounds when the likes of Leeds & Wednesday come. You go to all of these other big grounds, some of them years old, and they are full to capacity and getting out of them when inside isn't easy at all!
I think you’re being a bit rude on this one. You have a point, he has a point... no need to start lauding it up. You’re right that it’s a good way of comparing, as all clubs use that method. He’s right that it is disingenuous to call the figures “attendance”. As attendance means, “the number of people present at a particular place or event.” I’m pretty sure that not everyone understands that attendance doesn’t actually mean attendance.
Not only that but it's deliberately doing the paying fans out of information for no good reason. When I'm in attendance I'm interested in knowing how many others are there with me. There's no marketing reason for me wanting to know, in fact there's no real logical reason for it. I simply want to know and from what people around me say it appears that they want to too. The club, and other clubs, choose to deny us that information and there's absolutely no reason for it. It's ok saying that other clubs lie so we do for comparison purposes but in reality have all clubs really got moles hiding in the stands listening for a stadium announcement? I think not. Why can't clubs simply announce an honest attendance to the fans at the ground but if they insist on continuing their circus they can then send out the inflated false attendance in their written publications.
Surely the club know exactly how many people are in the stadium at a match? It's available from the ticket scanning system when we go in, although I'm not sure what happens at cash turnstiles. They choose not to release the information however, in the same way that most other clubs don't.
a few points? In the days of standing there was more people in than actually announced. I know as do many others who clicked turn styles once and three people went in. As for how we know exactly how many “attendees” are in the ground, all seating and better turn styles / scanning means it’s not hard to see who is actually in the ground, hence we’ve seen before stats as to how many of the free under 12 season tickets were being used. why they announce attendance when they are announcing tickets sold I’m not sure. Is it because it’s always been that way so it always will be, I don’t get the marketing / tax argument neither make that much sense to me.
Who gives a monkey's what the actual number is. The atmosphere in the ground is what matters and it was fairly good on Thursday. We sold over 17,000 tickets and looking how full each stand was I'd guess there were over 15,000 there. So what,? I'll remember it as a great game against the top side in the division. A game we deserved to win and not a game where the sold tickets were a couple of thousand more than those that went through the turnstile.
So - most tickets get scanned - but not all*, then you add in cash sales, which aren't too difficult to count and you'll get close (is close good enough?) *flag bearers and families, mascots and families, directors boxes, hospitality areas etc etc.
I appreciate there's more than one way of looking at this - my point is that the more people insist on grasping the wrong end of the stick - the more they get upset by the way it's counted. I'm nor Lording* it btw, but I spend my life supplying numbers 'with accurate descriptions' and constantly having to explain that what they 'don't' mean as much as what they do. And (I'm guessing here) football started doing this as it's the method used by other forms of entertainment, where success is measured in income (tickets sold) rather than actual people entertained. *apologies - but pedantry is a benefit in my line of work
Attendance isn't an accurate description for someone sat at home but having bought a ticket though is it? I mean we know that's what they're pretending it means but you have to concede that the word attendance isn't an accurate description for someone who elects not to attend.
It's only the wrong end from your perspective, because you've grasped the opposite end. From where I'm standing, it's you holding the wrong end. I'm not expecting to win you over though, so probably best to leave it there.
