Why is LoI failing to attract fans.

_blank_

Raskolnikov wrote:

Things are getting better but there's a lot of room for improvement.

Can't disagree with that tbh.

_blank_

psi wrote:

Here's another aspect to look at.

I go to baseball games in the US. I hate baseball, it's boring, it's crap and it's like watching paint dry, or even worse, cricket.

I and thousands who feel as I do, still flock every week. Why? Atmosphere. It's marketed as a fun, family day out (with beer!). The stadia are designed as such, the match atmosphere is set up as such.

Go to an LoI game, hell go to an RoI game and it's nowhere like that, you get herded and treated like cattle at the RoI games and the LoI games are like watching at the side of a park.

Community events at half time, crowd participation, good set up and management and it doesn't matter how bad the game is.

That's ll well and god, but while the national papers continue to denegrate the LoI in a bid to push sales, then I'm afraid the league is going to find it hard to shake off the image. As I've already said ad nauseum at this point, that viseo taken outside the Hill16 pub of the Bohs and Rovers fans was used on three seperate occasions by the e*****g h****d, months apart, to blacken the name of the eL.

_blank_

Actually, and I'm sorry for all of these double posts.

Seems, in fact, attendances ARE on the increase.

http://forum.shelbournefc.ie/chat/viewtopic.php?t=8738

The figures are based on the first 13 weeks of the season as released to clubs recently.


Season totals
2007 Total attendance 187,896: 150 matches: Average 1253
2006 Total attendance 120,121: 124 matches: Average 969
Increase 29.31%


No breakdown per club has been published.

Last years figures weren't published before AFAIK.

Last season under the UEFA Licence, clubs had to report their attendance to the League on the night of the match, as they do this season. Not sure how scientific and how accurate the figures might have been last season in the first year of this new initiative.

If the attendances were published club by club in the media each and every week, for a couple of seasons, then a credible and scientific analysis and trend could be established.

GuanYin

seansouth wrote:

That's ll well and god, but while the national papers continue to denegrate the LoI in a bid to push sales, then I'm afraid the league is going to find it hard to shake off the image. As I've already said ad nauseum at this point, that viseo taken outside the Hill16 pub of the Bohs and Rovers fans was used on three seperate occasions by the e*****g h****d, months apart, to blacken the name of the eL.

But in fairness that happens in all sports and I think most people realise that. The same people who shy away from LoI matches because they think its full of thug fans, still go to the same park to see the Sky Dream Team play every year and the crowd has 70% of the so called thugs among it.

I do think LoI first and formost needs a face lift. Honestly, the first thing that I'd look at if I was on a board there is looking at changing the image of the game off the field. Look at selling the players, selling the community and selling the atmosphere. Make TV3 put on a proper show with personality and get players as household names.

The game itself, despite some rather uneducated claims here, isn't that low in quality. The League Image is though.

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psi wrote:

Make TV3 put on a proper show with personality

Sure haven't they got Mr Personality himself Osam?

eL Weekly with Paul Osam, guaranteed to send the chronic insomniac into the deepest of slumbers.

Big Ears

The Muppet wrote:

What are you rolling your eyes for? I have seen enough L of I football to be capable of forming an opinion about it. If you don't agree with that opinion thats fine by me.

Now Muppet your reason why it doesn't attract much fans is quality , and okay that may be a big issue why some prefer to stay in front of the tv and watch football . But would you concede that attendances aren't big enough for the product that is on offer ?

The League is never going to be bigger than the Premiership but it should be bigger than it is(imo) and we're here to discuss the reasons why it isn't reaching it's potential and I have to say quality is probably a secondary issue in that concern . As PSI has pointed out about baseball , there is far more to selling a product than just the quality of play .

Jonny Arson

Raskolnikov wrote:

That's only a half truth.

Three or four teams are playing decent football on a regular basis. I won't start naming names, you know well who the culprits of shíte football are.

Well if the standard has only dramatically increased just for 3 or 4 clubs then is the Premier Division still very competitive. I don't see 3 or 4 clubs consistently running away with every game against teams lower in the table season after season. The general competitiveness of the top tier is broadly in line with with previous seasons. 3 of the current top 4 as in Pats, Rovers and Bohs have been nowhere near the summit for the past 3 or 4 seasons. All clubs on average are improving and that has been reflected in the European performances over the past 3/4 years (ssshhh aside from Longford and their adventures in Wales! ).

there is a product there
there is good football being played and there is sh!t football being played as in any league in Europe - If you watch 2 Premiership matches, on average one will be great and one will be a crap, it's no different to here at home!
it is competitive as any other league in Europe, no one or two clubs are running away with everything
no one is trying to say the football in the eL is of a higher quality than the Premiership or La Liga or anything crazy like that
BUT the eL is undoubtedly not getting the reasonable credit it deserves, and there is a fascinating correlation between the harsh and unjustified critics of the eL and people who never go to matches, hmm wonder why.....

''the eL is sh!t'' argument is not only a myth, it's a downright lie and some people just can't bare to accept that our own domestic is actually ok

The Muppet

Big Ears wrote:

Now Muppet your reason why it doesn't attract much fans is quality , and okay that may be a big issue why some prefer to stay in front of the tv and watch football . But would you concede that attendances aren't big enough for the product that is on offer ?

The League is never going to be bigger than the Premiership but it should be bigger than it is(imo) and we're here to discuss the reasons why it isn't reaching it's potential and I have to say quality is probably a secondary issue in that concern . As PSI has pointed out about baseball , there is far more to selling a product than just the quality of play .

Quality is only one of the reasons I cited, IMO there is a significant number of potential fans that will never have anything to do with football as long as the current clowns in the FAI have anything to do with it.



Quality is the other issue and I,m not just talking about the game itself , The GAA dont appear to have any problems attracting an audience to their games.

In the late eighties to early ninties there was a glorious opportunity to get League Soccer established in this country and the chance was squandered by those with the power develop the game. Don't blame those of us that have become totally disillusioned by what happend then, The blame lies fairly with the FAI.

The Rooster

Jonny Arson wrote:

If, Irish football ''supporters'' bothered their own holes to go and support their domestic game clubs in this country our clubs would more effectively nurture many of potentially rejected players leading to a stronger domestic league and guess what?! A stronger Irish national team! - What I have explained is the critical distinction between genuine Irish football supporters and Irish national team followers and why the pathetic attitudes of Irish national team followers are the major critical problem and barrier to football in this country fulfilling it's potential.

This attitude of just blaming the people who don't go will only help maintain the status quo

shane86

ntlbell wrote:

I'm a football fan, I like football, I like to watch teams who play good football. I'm not interested in touching willie's with Ryan Giggs in a bath after a football match............ players didn't personally come off the pitch after a match and jerk you off for being such a knowedlege loyal fan, would you stop supporting them?

ROFL

tbh with so many new billionaires in this country Ive always wondered why one of them (or a consortium of a few of them) didnt take a gamble, pump close on a billion into a club like Shels, maybe in the beginning buy in big name players approaching the end of their career (Beckham, Giggs, Makele, seeing as we arent too far from England/France Dublin would be an ideal spot for northern based/raised English players to commute in their final years) and maybe have it as a force to be reckoned with in European football within 3 years.

_blank_

Well, Roddy Collins brought Carlton Palmer to Rovers.

Does that count?

ntlbell

The first team I saw as a young kid (8 or 9) was boh's, which was odd as I was from Tallaght, but I loved every minute of it, It was my frist time in a stadium the fans were great and didn't even throw any comments at my grandfather for allowing me to wear a united jersey at the match.

Why was I even here? to watch man utd of course!!

I still go to the odd boh's match but it's just so hard to watch, the basic mistakes, not been able to make a simple pass of a ball which you would see been made in the dodder at school boy level every saturday is heartbreaking and just too hard on the eyes.

ME: joe, It's a disgrace joe a bleedin disgrace!
Joe duffy: What is?
ME: EVERYTHING!!

gustavo

The Muppet wrote:

To answer the ops question the reason the LOI is poorly supported is because of the poor quality of the product on offer and the even poorer management of the game at that level.

Irish people don't have any problem spending money to see good football thousands of them travel to the Uk every weekend.

It's very hard for the eL to compare with the Premiership , they are worlds apart , I presume this is what you are comparing it with when you say the standard is poor ,I think the standard is pretty decent myself, My own team , Sligo Rovers , play very nice passing football which is very pleasing on the eye and I have had some of the best entertainment from watching them this season

gustavo

The Muppet wrote:

Quality is only one of the reasons I cited, IMO there is a significant number of potential fans that will never have anything to do with football as long as the current clowns in the FAI have anything to do with it.

Presumably these people dont support the national team either?

Villain

gustavo wrote:

Presumably these people dont support the national team either?

Teams and League's you can choose, Nationality? well I don't think many people have a say in that.

SectionF

gustavo wrote:

It's very hard for the eL to compare with the Premiership , they are worlds apart , I presume this is what you are comparing it with when you say the standard is poor ,I think the standard is pretty decent myself, My own team , Sligo Rovers , play very nice passing football which is very pleasing on the eye and I have had some of the best entertainment from watching them this season

Agreed on both counts. Not all teams in the eL play pretty football, and the teams that do don't manage to do it all the time. The current Sligo team can push the ball around quite nicely, as can some other teams, including Bohs on our day. But you don't have to migrate too far away from the EPL Big Four to find some sub-eye candy action. And if we Irish have such a cultured palette that we don't want to watch the ball being hoofed around the place, what's the deal with GAA, for heaven's sake?
But comparing the eL to the EPL juggernaut is sheer nonsense. We don't try to compare our army or our navy, our government departments or our industries in this manner, because it just doesn't make sense. If following eL means following small clubs because you live in a small country, and that gives you grief, then that's too bad.
What's most dismaying, I think, is the active hostility of our media towards the home game, and the unthinking criticism that seems to flow from that.

John_C

ntlbell wrote:

I still go to the odd boh's match but it's just so hard to watch, the basic mistakes, not been able to make a simple pass of a ball which you would see been made in the dodder at school boy level every saturday is heartbreaking and just too hard on the eyes.

I'm pretty sure the Bohs would hammer any of Dublin's schoolboy teams.

Mr Alan

i actually would have thought that the media was doing a great deal to help the Eircom League over the last couple of years. Coverage of it seems to have increased 10 fold with some papers having their own pull out, MOTD style show on TV3 and live games on occassionally regularly.

Am i wrong?
(i could well be, know very little about LOI)

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millersangel wrote:

MOTD style show on TV3

You've obviously never watched eL Weekly. If you had, you'd never compare it to MOTD.

millersangel wrote:

occassionally regularly.

What does that mean?

millersangel wrote:

Am i wrong?

Yes.

Now, how about that offer to go to a match?

Mr Alan

I'll go to a EL game during the summer, my boss plays for Bray. so i'll go check out one of their games.

Occassionally regularly was a typo.

Refered to it as a MOTD style program because its the same format, actually watch it a bit, usually half asleep though (that is not a dig at the EL league, just means i work too hard during the day )

As for the offer of going to a match, when are your team playing against Bray?

_blank_

My team is in a different division to Bray, so we won't be playing them.

I support Shels, and we've had a few 'troubles' lately.

ntlbell

John_C wrote:

I'm pretty sure the Bohs would hammer any of Dublin's schoolboy teams.

They can beat a few 9yr olds in the dodder?

I best get back to dalymount so, they've obviously got a lot better.

SectionF

millersangel wrote:

i actually would have thought that the media was doing a great deal to help the Eircom League over the last couple of years. Coverage of it seems to have increased 10 fold with some papers having their own pull out

Star, Sun and Mirror give it a bit of a lash, but nothing like the volume that EPL and GAA gets. I'm not saying it should be the same; but it should be proportionate. I also believe Irish media should be actively supportive of Irish football in the same way as it supports arts, e.g. theatre, film, music. Irish 'quality' press -- Times, Indo etc give very mean coverage to the game here, and much of it is either sneering, dismissive or patronising.

MOTD style show on TV3

Better than nothing, but how many wait up until 11.30 on Monday night for a programme with impossibly shoddy production values? We need a proper magazine programme, with better pundits, a decent budget, and decent promotion.
Here's a question: while they certainly don't do it all the time, the megastars of MOTD are not so proud as to consider themselves above making positive references to lower league football, Exeter, Rushdon and Diamonds etc., especially when one gets a cup run. Why is it that Dunphy, Giles, etc. never ever, or hardly ever, refer to Irish clubs?

and live games on occasionally regularly.

Yes, but seen in the context of more broadcasts of live schools rugby or live club hurling, that''s not much of a concession. There's more TV generally. EPL still gets overwhelming publicity on Irish television -- insanity when the public is paying a licence fee and we can get as much EPL as anyone could possibly need on any number of British channels.

Am i wrong?

Yes, but I can see where you're coming from.

Mr Alan

Seansouth: forgot they weren't in the same division (even with my limited knowledge, i actually knew that! But i'll tell ya wat, i'll go to a bray game soon and find ya on here and let ya know what i honestly thought of it. Fair enough?

SectionF : In relation to the shoddy production on the Eircom League show, think thats just a feature of irish sports shows to be honest! Same can be said for 'The Premiership' show on RTE and any football coverage on TV3.
In relation to RTE spending licence fees on shows that are already available on BBC. I guess thats just demand, the people want to watch em on RTE not BBC. Being the National broadcaster, it has to provide wat the people want, in this case, they want the PL. Can't really fault RTE for that in my opinion.

KdjaCL

shane86 wrote:

ROFL

tbh with so many new billionaires in this country Ive always wondered why one of them (or a consortium of a few of them) didnt take a gamble, pump close on a billion into a club like

Someone already has


kdjac

SectionF

millersangel wrote:

Seansouth: forgot they weren't in the same division (even with my limited knowledge, i actually knew that! But i'll tell ya wat, i'll go to a bray game soon and find ya on here and let ya know what i honestly thought of it. Fair enough?

Can't ask for more than that! At least you've got an open mind on it...

Zebra3

psi wrote:

Here's another aspect to look at.

I go to baseball games in the US. I hate baseball, it's boring, it's crap and it's like watching paint dry, or even worse, cricket.

I and thousands who feel as I do, still flock every week. Why? Atmosphere. It's marketed as a fun, family day out (with beer!). The stadia are designed as such, the match atmosphere is set up as such.

Go to an LoI game, hell go to an RoI game and it's nowhere like that, you get herded and treated like cattle at the RoI games and the LoI games are like watching at the side of a park.

Community events at half time, crowd participation, good set up and management and it doesn't matter how bad the game is.

The thoughts of having people going to watch League of Ireland football cos it's a fun, family day out and the people actually hating football, makes me sick. It'd be like going to watch the national team every week. Cretins going to the matches cos it's the "in thing" and dressed as complete and utter tools. I could not stand having people like that beside me at football.

And Seansouth, why not bring people along to watch First Division football? Tuesday's game against Cobh was a fantastic, incident packed match played in front of about 650 people. With an atmosphere that was far better than most of the 100 odd Ireland games I've been to.

It's not just about the standard of play on the pitch or the nice shiny stands or buying a pint of beer in a plastic glass for eight quid. The freedom to move around, to stand up, to wave huge flags, to scream abuse, and to do so for your local team is what cannot be got from following British teams.

And the friendships that go with following your team week in, week out, home and away (and back in the day, abroad) can't be beaten.

Roll on Limerick away tomorrow.

KdjaCL

Zebra3 wrote:

And the friendships that go with following your team week in, week out, home

Eh? I hate you, i hate Des, i hate joesoap, i hate ronan raven, what you on about freindships


kdjac

GuanYin

Zebra3 wrote:

The thoughts of having people going to watch League of Ireland football cos it's a fun, family day out and the people actually hating football, makes me sick.

Well I just said that baseball is something *I* hate but go to because it's an "event" here as an example of marketing and promotion being more important than quality.

That said, if you only have people interested in football going and not the families and not the families who are disinterested, then how will you ever expand your fanbase? You want families bringing kids, because if the kids start supporting the team, they'll most likely stay supporting team.

You don't want those people at your games, yet LoI fans complain that people don't go to games....

If your mentality is common, no wonder LoI fails.....

Zebra3

KdjaCL wrote:

Eh? I hate you, i hate Des, i hate joesoap, i hate ronan raven, what you on about freindships


kdjac

I was talking about with the fans of your own team.

I have no mates that follow another LoI club. :cool:

And I can't stand that word "hate". It's so, so, so...it just doesn't go deep enough.

"Despise", now there's a word to love.

KdjaCL

Zebra3 wrote:

I was talking about with the fans of your own team.

I have no mates that follow another LoI club. :cool:

And I can't stand that word "hate". It's so, so, so...it just doesn't go deep enough.

"Despise", now there's a word to love.

Sadly another shels fans Slash/Ed summed up me as a "bitter pats fan" when i was whinging about leagues courts and point deductions and how shesl were overspending, i like that bitter pats fan sounds nice:)

But hate isnt a strong enough word, Des used to shout at me when playing for boards and i would mutter "stupid %^$%^$^%$ &^$&^$^& ^&$^&$" then do what he said.

Dictionary needs a stronger word than hate.


kdjac

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KdjaCL wrote:

But hate isnt a strong enough word, Des used to shout at me when playing for boards and i would mutter "stupid %^$%^$^%$ &^$&^$^& ^&$^&$" then do what he said.

:eek:

No, you didn't.

That's why we lost 95% of our games pre-Xmas last season, feckin' defenders not defending.



Your brother's better than you tbh.

KdjaCL

seansouth wrote:

:eek:

No, you didn't.

That's why we lost 95% of our games pre-Xmas last season, feckin' defenders not defending.



Your brother's better than you tbh.

Eh Hello???We won every game i played in bar one and Conceded 2 goals whilst i was playing at the back out of 6 games, granted i may caused both of them but thats irrelevant 2 goals in 6 games cos i shouted at people...and you want that back again

He is a handy player but gets sent off for stupid tackles Scholes type player, still hate you tho


kdjac

Ronan|Raven

And to think I bought a pint! Someone is going on my list of enemies Right under roddy collins.

Zebra3

psi wrote:

Well I just said that baseball is something *I* hate but go to because it's an "event" here as an example of marketing and promotion being more important than quality.

That said, if you only have people interested in football going and not the families and not the families who are disinterested, then how will you ever expand your fanbase? You want families bringing kids, because if the kids start supporting the team, they'll most likely stay supporting team.

You don't want those people at your games, yet LoI fans complain that people don't go to games....

If your mentality is common, no wonder LoI fails.....

I have no problem with people coming down getting into to it and staying, but your first post gave the impression that a lot of people who go to baseball regularly don't actually give a toss about it.

I just find that very difficult to comprehend.

The Volt

seansouth wrote:

ROFL.

What happens to the people who already support LoI clubs? Who do they then support? I could not and would not support Shelhemians.

The way forward is NOT to alienate those people that already support the national league.

Don't you mean St. Shelhemians Rovers College Dublin :L

Big Ears

Voltwad wrote:

Don't you mean St. Shelhemians Rovers College Dublin :L

Actually it's St.Shelhemians Rovers College Wanderers Dublin