Is Ireland getting Stadium fatigue?

Tombo2001

National soccer team cant sell out Aviva even for the big games - and yes, Delaney Shmelany but still it was a bit of a shocker how many tickets were given away for the big games recently. Denmark, Wales etc.

Rugby - only 16000 show up for Munster semifinal. Plenty of tickets for Leinster game also.

GAA - attendances down 18% last year.

Are people getting bored of the same old.....?

banie01

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Rugby - only 16000 show up for Munster semifinal. old.....?

An away Semi, in an awkward Midlands UK city that still had a significantly larger Munster attendance than Saracens.

IMO a lot of the current attendance issues across sport is to do with a combo of high prices and Leinster rugby aside, inconsistent/sub-par performance.
Munster will sell out Thomond Park for maybe 6 games a year, the rest of them will be played in Cork.
Leinster have a similar situation with the Aviva maybe will fill it 3 times per year rest of the games in the RDS.

With particular regard to the FAI, the wheels feel off the band wagon a few years ago.
Lack of a decent team, lack of any real stand out players or performance over the past few years and a lot of apathy towards the association and the pricing.
It was common knowledge for years Delaney ran it as a quasi-fief and now the whole governance structure needs reassessment and replacement.

Morrison J

GAA product has been ruined by Dublin's dominance.

Soccer product has never been so unappealing given the years of poor football and lack of talent on that team.

Rugby draws off the bandwagon element quite heavily. We've no problem selling out when it's Ireland playing. Munster rugby has seen better days realistically and doesn't appeal to the day trippers.

Nothing to do with stadiums. Everything to do with the product on the pitch.

Liberta Per Gli Ultra

If you condition supporters to behave like customers and combine it with high ticket prices that exclude a section of society, then this is one of the consequences. It's one of several reasons why market economics is inappropriate and damaging to sport.

walshb

GAA/Rugby have a huge cohort of bandwagon supporters. That never lasts.

Same teams playing each other day in day out. Boring? An understatement...

GAA have many who "support" because it's the Irish thing to do, or be seen to do.

Liberta Per Gli Ultra

It should be mentioned that attendances are generally not at the very top of the list of priorities for sporting organisations. The money earned from broadcasting deals tends to exceed (sometimes far exceed) the income from gate receipts, so a supporter who regularly attends matches may not be as valued as they might have been in the past. This, prioritising TV customers while alienating active supporters with high ticket prices and changing kick-off times, is a financial mistake in the long run and is also immoral.

Franz Von Peppercorn II

To be fair to rugby fans it was hard to get tickets to 6 nations home games when the best Ireland could hope for was to not get the wooden spoon.

Patser

Actually similar to above, Dublin and Leinster GAA games had much higher attendances during the Noughties when Dublin were winning nothing - it was all down to the competitive nature of the game, and games in general.

There's almost too much sport to choose from now, as more and more games, with less meaningfulness get added.

For the GAA it means super 8s or hurling round robins - gone are the days where a small team could catch out a big one, and knock them out. Instead big just got bigger, and more games to practice with.

Football- you now have the nations cup, friendlies played at terrible times in the year and then qualifiers crammed in. Also unglamorous draws haven't been kind. It's hard to get excited about Gibraltar games, and when you're big game is Denmark (again) or Switzerland - you'll struggle to get a sell out. You need someone like France or England (especially) to get atmosphere.

Rugby - 6 nations is a perfect little short tournament, at a quiet time of year, whereby every game is an event and guaranteed to sell out.
But in less than a decade to Pro 10 tournament amongst neighbouring teams, has grown to Pro 12 with then uninspiring Italian teams and now Pro 14 with South African teams. As a spectator a big thing is atmosphere and rivalry, you're not going to get that when no opposition fans show up for South African team games (home or away), or the Italian games.

So across the board, a push for more and more games, often benefitting the bigger teams and reducing the quality of opposition - leading to drop in atmosphere and sense of occasion- means fewer going.

Liberta Per Gli Ultra

https://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/league-of-ireland/record-crowd-sees-burke-end-rovers-gypsy-curse-38453023.html
https://photos.extratime.ie/p878873235

No stadium fatigue for the Dublin derby on Friday night, a record attendance for a league match at Tallaght Stadium. A type of atmosphere that cannot be found at any other sporting fixture in Ireland and reasonable ticket prices (15 euro max) being two of the main reasons behind the large attendances at this fixture. As in most derbies around the world, the supporters are the main protagonists on the night while the football can be hit and miss. This goes against the idea of the passive spectator paying money to be entertained by the players.

If football is just another industry where market economics and supply and demand are the names of the game, then it follows that Bohemians and Shamrock Rovers should jack up the ticket prices on derby day and screw the people who make the occasion what it is and the clubs what they are. Hopefully neither club pays any attention to GAA ticket pricing policies for big games or the policy of a certain LOI club in European competition.

finbarrk

7,000 approximate attendance at Tallaght. I don't think too many would say 'wow' to that. Mayo GAA Football would bring that to any corner of Ireland for a Championship match.

Liberta Per Gli Ultra

https://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/premier-league/fans-forgotten-as-tvs-money-now-runs-the-premier-league-38457395.html

Good article about the damage done to English football by the Premier League and its television partners, turning the game over there into a television show with f*ck all regard for the dedicated supporters who actually attended matches. It wouldn't be the only example of TV money taking precedence over the good of the sport.