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Post by observer on Mar 2, 2015 22:33:41 GMT
I've lived in Notts and Leicestershire. I've always considered Burton to be out on its own. I wouldn't consider it either east or west midlands
One problem with Burton is you have to go looking for it for a reason.
It's not somewhere you pass through.
As an outsider I consider it a pretty insular place.
Would need to be a good reason for people outside of Burton to make an effort to go there IMO.
And isn't it the smallest town in England to have a professional football club.
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Post by brewster on Mar 2, 2015 22:47:43 GMT
I must be one of the rare lot from the other way!! I think as previously said a lot of support comes from Burton starting off as a second team for people but as Prem ticket prices keep going up you may see a small increase in following local teams.
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caley
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Post by caley on Mar 2, 2015 23:24:37 GMT
I can see what you mean with a few of your points Observer but I no longer see Burton as a small town, when you look on google earth it is turning into quite a big population, to the east we are only a couple of fields off Swadlincote and the suburbs are slowly swallowing up villages. I think you are spot on with insular though. But Burton has great transport links and can be reached very quickly from a big population with the A38 and A50. So the question is, should Burton be promoting itself as a town to go to more, shopping, eating drinking etc. then the club will slowly benefit? I do not post a lot on the forum but I think that on this topic we should all chip in with our thoughts/ideas, even if we are way off the mark with some of them. I as we all do, would like to see the club grow, but with rising up the league we will have greater costs.
I may live locally but I currently work near Rushden and Diamonds old ground, I know not all the income is through money at the turnstiles but the more that pass through them the better.
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Post by everard on Mar 2, 2015 23:29:17 GMT
I think Burton is probably neither east nor west and this explains why the BBC and others have difficulty knowing where to put it - sometimes it goes one way and sometimes another. I personally have always thought of myself more east than west, and this has been reinforced over the years, as I have spent more of my life living and working in Nottingham and Leicestershire, while in my childhood, I had a fair few relatives who lived in various parts of Derbyshire and for days out we'd invariably head to Dovedale or somewhere in the Peak District rather than Sutton Park and Balsall Common. I have never felt any association with Birmingham, Coventry, the Black Country or Stoke on Trent.
I'm sure the BBC used to feature the Albion in the East Midlands and there is a logic to this as the town is covered by Radio Derby and not Radio WM, Radio Coventry and Warwickshire or Radio Stoke. Of course, Radio Derby sits squarely within the bosom of the BBCs East Midlands Regional family.
So we have one national state media organisation, serving us local radio from one part of its set- up and regional TV from another. Whichever way you lean, this division cannot be good for Burton in general or BAFC coverage, publicity and support in particular.
I think the TV coverage has much to do with the direction in which most folk have their TV aerial pointing and which transmitter you receive your programmes from - Sutton Coldfield or Waltham but whether this will/should persist as we move deeper into the digital age and get our TV over the internet and not via the clearest signal from a terrestrial transmitter........well it remains to be seen I suppose......
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Post by E7#9 on Mar 3, 2015 7:27:12 GMT
All good points and I don't have definitive knowledge one way or the other. I know that the people of Burton largely follow Derby County (with some numerous exceptions) and Derby are featured in the Burton Mail. However, we are also in Staffordshire, which is a county in the West Midlands. Whichever, East or West, increasing the fan base is about encouraging those interested in football to attend a game or two here and there with friends. As attending becomes a regular social activity, you get a couple more regulars through the gate and often those casuals start supporting full time (even if they have another club like Derby who they follow the results for). The other way is the youth fan base of course.
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Post by observer on Mar 3, 2015 9:26:30 GMT
One thing to say is the TV stations are looking for stories to cover to fill their slots
Wouldn't do the club any harm to actively create an interest story once a month to give the local tv a reason to visit them
Normal football highlights not enough
I used to work for one of the large bookies many many years ago - they employed someone whose only job was to create stories of interest to send to the local media and nearly every month either radio or TV would come down to do interviews as a result
The salary of the guy creating the media interest was judged against the amount of free publicity he created
You could employ someone just one day a month whose job it was to get the media interested in us
Any positive slot on TV is worth a fortune in free advertising compared to what we might pay the guy
Just an idea
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Post by observer on Mar 3, 2015 9:28:36 GMT
He creates the story and then emails it to all the local and national media
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2015 10:42:26 GMT
Advertising, media reports all bring good publicity to the club but nothing will bring more attention to Burton than St. Georges Park. Having a well known player as our manager doesn't hurt either. But how many bums will bring through the turnstiles?
Up until the year we were promoted we were always a group of 4 that went to matches. We are now at 8 who attend regularly and a couple more attend sporatically. If people tried to bring a friend and they just happened to get hooked the fanbase will increase. But one turnoff for new fans, other than a poor display by the teams, is the morgue like silence in the Pirelli except for the big games like Fulham, QPR etc.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2015 10:48:29 GMT
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Post by claymillman on Mar 24, 2015 14:29:15 GMT
Yet again on tonight's BBC east mids news sport, no mention of Burton. About 4 mins given to Mansfield though. ?? When we played Man u a few years back we were lead story and they were all over us, so its not a regional TV thing. If you watch BBC East Midlands news Burton Albion does not exist. If you watch BBC West Midlands News Derby County does not exist. We are always on the border. ITV Midlands is not segregated like BBC, but covering a wider region I expect leaves us well down the pecking order. (Don't watch ITV news myself).
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Post by claymillman on Mar 24, 2015 14:42:08 GMT
This topic crops up fairly regularly, and I have no complaint about that. I agree with pretty well everything Spence has posted. I do not think advertising the game outside the ground would make a scrap of difference. I do like the idea of the special offers to kids which the club are using, and perhaps could expand on. I also like the way the club is very keen on creating the "Community Club" feel. As Spence says the main difficulty is children follow their parents who were traditionally over many generations Derby (or other clubs) supporters, and this will take years to change. The other good idea already mentioned is to persuade other friends to join you to a game, and this in many cases will reel them in. Fortunately our club compensates for lower attendances with good commercial income. For instance we were at Tranmere on Saturday, a good old traditional football club, but they had as far as I can see no corporate facilities at all, and rely therefore almost solely on the gate receipts, which are admittedly considerably more than ours.
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Post by phil on Mar 24, 2015 14:58:31 GMT
Have to agree with your post about BBC East Midlands News. Living in Nottingham I know quite a few Forest and County Fans take a keen interest in how we are doing and a number of them try to get over to Burton sometime during the season. I am sure others would be interested in hearing of our progress or visiting the Pirelli but the only coverage we get is when we reached the playoff's and the Man United cup game.
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Post by claymillman on Mar 24, 2015 15:29:45 GMT
It is interesting to go back in time. When the Brewers started in 1950. 5000 gates were often obtained usually against Nuneaton our main rivals with bank holiday games. In those days there were no televised football matches, and very few people had cars. As time progressed gates slowly declined, with much more entertainment available on television mainly, including some live TV games (about one a week initially). This has increased to almost wall to wall football at times. The Brewers gates declined to around 700 where they stood until the Clough era began to bite. Gates then steadily increased to around 1600, then on to about 2400 in the later years of the Conference. In the league we struggle to average more than 2900, but overall from our low of 700, you could argue we have come forward some distance. I agree this is nowhere near what the football team needs or deserves, but it does show that numbers can grow, and I hope will still grow in the future. This though also depends on the success of the team on the pitch.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2015 17:10:08 GMT
Sorry to quote myself but...getting back to today and the next match IT IS KIDS FOR A QUID for Stevenage. And the performances/standing in the table/players etc. are all exciting right now so bring the kids, bring a friend do what you can to bring in bums. There is no better time than now to get new supporters hooked...geez even the popside was singing vs Accy and Southend!! COYB!
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Post by mikeyboy on Mar 24, 2015 18:07:51 GMT
It is interesting to go back in time. When the Brewers started in 1950. 5000 gates were often obtained usually against Nuneaton our main rivals with bank holiday games. In those days there were no televised football matches, and very few people had cars. As time progressed gates slowly declined, with much more entertainment available on television mainly, including some live TV games (about one a week initially). This has increased to almost wall to wall football at times. The Brewers gates declined to around 700 where they stood until the Clough era began to bite. Gates then steadily increased to around 1600, then on to about 2400 in the later years of the Conference. In the league we struggle to average more than 2900, but overall from our low of 700, you could argue we have come forward some distance. I agree this is nowhere near what the football team needs or deserves, but it does show that numbers can grow, and I hope will still grow in the future. This though also depends on the success of the team on the pitch. I think at one point Claymillman that we were much lower than 700. 400 would have been seen as a decent gate some seasons and from memory sometimes much worse. So from our lowest point we are actually 600% up if we assume we are currently attracting around 2,400 home fans. But a good thread and some excellent suggestions to continue to improve things.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2015 18:53:08 GMT
I'll put a different slant on the discussion. Why should we expect more people through the turnstiles at the Pirelli?
I think we all know and pretty much agree on the fact that we have a ridiculous number of bigger clubs within an hour or so of Burton but if you look at some clubs who may face the same problem as ourselves, you might see that we're not actually doing too bad.
Walsall has a population of 269,300. Their average attendance last season was 4,811. That works out at approx 1.9% of their population watches the local football team.
Northampton has a population of 212,000. Last season's average was 4,562. That's 2.15% of their population who watches the Cobblers.
Bradford's recorded population in 2011 was 522,500. Average attendace in league one last season was 14,092. Works out at roughly 2.7% of the population of Bradford watches their MAHOOSSIVE, GIGANTIC football club.
Rochdale. Population of 211,700. Promoted from league two last season with an average attendance of 2,895. That's 1.36%. Granted they've got United, City, Liverpool and Everton within an hour of them, but still...
Hartlepool has a population of 92,000. Average attendance was 3,721 last season. Works out at 4% ish.
The exception I found was Chesterfield. Champions and best team in league two last season. Population of 103,800 and had an average attendance of 6,303. Just under 6.1%.
Burton On Trent. Population is about 68,000 (for some reason I can't find an exact figure) and our average attendace last season was 2,718. That's just under 4%. Bare in mind that's with the fact that we had a repuation of playing a "dull" brand of football which, unfortunately, a lot of people shouted from the rooftops (figuratively speaking) on social media.
Now by all means feel free to pick the bones out of all that lot or correct me on some of the figures because I've just done that in about half an hour fuelled by coffee, creme eggs and an insatiable desire to be boring but the reason I've posted that lot is because I don't think we're doing too bad on the attendance front, all things considered. I appreciate that other factors are to be considered which I may not have mentioned but still, I think that lot can give you a feel of how we actually measure up.
Of course we could do better and as claymillman says, this current team deserves a much biggger audience...but are we expecting too much to think that we SHOULD be getting more people into the Pirelli?
Disclaimer - I'd love a full ground every week and don't see any reason why we shouldn't try. Shoot for the stars, my son...shoot for the stars.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2015 18:58:57 GMT
One that immediately sprang to mind Spence was Yeovil, a quick look - population of 40,000 ave attendance around 5,000. That probably more to do with the fact they are the only club in 200 miles.
I like your point though :-)
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2015 19:17:57 GMT
I think we may see a few more through the turnstiles next season, particularly if Derby continue to implode and struggle next term. They will only be 1 league above us. We will also get more media exposure in league 1. That's me be confident !
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Post by claymillman on Mar 24, 2015 19:20:44 GMT
Obviously the population of a town is a huge factor, along with other bigger teams in the catchment area. Burton though because it is always on a border, i.e) West/East Midlands, Staffordshire/Derbyshire border, the figures become a bit distorted. South Derbyshire and of course East Staffordshire are tightly linked to Burton, and effectively lifts our local population to around 100,000. However, Spence's points are all relevant, and in some respects we don't do so bad. Still we all agree, we must try and obtain more Brewers supporters through the turn-styles. I think what the club are doing at the moment is the way forward, with the rest of us helping as best we can.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2015 20:20:55 GMT
Nice one terraceman, like the way you think!
Why should we expect more people through the turnstiles? Because we are going up and the last 4 home games are going to be very exciting. Because we have some very good, exciting players who are playing a pleasing to the eye style of football. Because we have lost only 3 of our last 22 games, and the associated stats are fantastic...
In out last 22 games: 14 wins, 5 draws, 3 losses, 47pts from 66 (2.14 ppg) a +23GD, 10 clean sheets, and a 13 games unbeaten streak(a club FL record) 35 goals scored, 9 from set-pieces. - we have not conceded more than one goal in a game since Jimmy took over - we have not lost a game under Jimmy when we have taken the lead.
And because it's Kids For A Quid for Stevenage!!
Edit: and having Jimmy Floyd on Skysports tonight for the Luton-Wycombe match (2-3) at halftime...could that help?
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