The "atmosphere" in the Aviva Stadium

The clientele who go to the Aviva and who went to the old Landsdowne Road are very different punters.

Sport now is for the rich. Its lost its soul.

The prawn sandwichers....

I guess enjoying sport doesn't have to mean roaring for 2 hours?

Sport for many at the Aviva now means walking back and forth constantly to the bar.

If you are really there for a football or rugby match, surely you can sit and watch the action for 90min without needing a pile of drink?

Soccer fans just didn’t buy into Stephen Kenny and his teams.

brand of football has been awful, the manager out of his depth, in every manner… tactically, man managing players and in his dealings with the media and fans he has been consistently completely disingenuous….6 wins in 29 under him. 20.69% is our win rate under that fella… around 1 in 5 matches won playing turgid shîte and him spoofing to us…

I live in Dublin but I would not invest 4 hours of my life getting over to Landsdowne, queuing to get in, watching pure crap, queuing to get out and trudging home again, too expensive to buy a ticket and make a reasonable effort to invest watching that rubbish and to listen to Kenny talk them up after, he was 3 years plus in that job 😅…

Now the FAI have us in a situation where we have an interim manager…. But no permanent man announced even though Kenny is gone 4 months almost to the day.

ultimately fans goodwill and support only goes so far…. Kenny and the FAI have sucked both the fun and goodwill out of us…. The fans tried to motivate but the team but Kenny and FAI demotivated everyone….

The problem is that these kind of people make up the majority of attendees at the games.

The strategies they've been using to create atmosphere in the stadium have been terrible. Fake crowd noise, overplaying a handful of tunes. The real problem is the clientele and the fact they've created a 50,000 seat pub.

Atmosphere will return if they ensure people interested in the game get tickets. They need to get more young people at the games, maybe a singing section and stop people bringing back pints to seats.

They are lucky this is happening while the team is good because if/when performances drop the bandwagon will move on and the stadium will not fill.

Given that LOI grounds only hold a few thousand, by definition most of the 45,000 or so there were bandwagoners (me included) who don't attend LOI games

Really? Why would someone from say Cork, Sligo or Limerick be arsed to go up to Dublin to watch two Dublin teams play each other?

The 5/6 nations games have sold out going back a century or more.

I don't think they need to worry about the crowds not coming.

It is genuinely dreadful for Rugby matches. Even for the England grand slam game last year it was very bad. The team deserve a lot better.

The clientele at the games is very old. Any time they pan to people in the crowd they are in their 50/60s. It must have the oldest average crowd at any sporting event, maybe even up there with bowls 😂

The only thing I can think of is to turn the South and North stand into a terrace. The seating can be removed and put back in for concerts/football matches, with crush barriers put in. They do this at Bayern Munich for the league and champions league games, which have different requirements. It allows groups that know each other to move beside and a create larger groups.

Secondly, ticket distribution. IRFU are being constantly accused of abandoning the club game. Without club distribution, memberships would probably dry up and there will be revolt. When the stadium was built we missed a trick in that the government should have demanded that the % funding on the stadium should leave tickets to be put on general sale. So for example, if the public funded 33% of the stadium then 33% should go on general sale. The same with other stadiums.

That was back when actual rugby fans and people invested in rugby attended the games. These days, games are a jolly, a focal point to build a day out for pints.

A huge proportion of people at the games clearly have absolutely zero interest in on the game. It a place to be and be seen to be. When the team goes through a lull, which it will, those people will move on to something else. Those tickets for overpriced and dull games won't sell themselves anymore

100%

Best day at the Aviva I had since Ireland New Zealand back in 2013. My two young fellas loved every second of it.

It sums up rugby as a spectacle that so many people are there for the piss up rather than the game itself. And Croke Park don't allow ya to bring your pint into the stand- then again, everyone there are true fans. Pre-match pints, sit down to actually watch the game then.

You’d miss the smell of the pipe smoke, alright, but the hard wooden bench and old lads píssing anywhere they can in the concourse, not so much.

I’d say I’ve only missed a few home games in the last 30 years, I’m just not seeing this fuss around people up and down like whack-a-moles. I’ve sat in various parts of the stadium for Ireland, Leinster and Munster matches and while you might be up a handful of times it’s not something that you’d notice. Haven’t heard the old cry of ‘SIT DOWN!!’ In a long time.

What I have noticed is that if a game isn’t a good contest the crowd start talking and not really paying as much attention, can hardly blame them. Also, for an Italy, or Scotland, match on a Sunday you’re not getting a serious crowd. It’ll be lots of wives/girlfriends bringing the kids for a day out. This applies for a weaker touring side visiting in November or for a World Cup warmup too.

The next “problem” would be the fans that have accrued during Irelands ascendancy in the game don’t remember that it wasn’t too long ago that we were getting hammered year in year out and anything short of perfection isn’t good enough for them. They, also, don’t seem to understand the game very well, at all.

I’m not saying that if someone didn’t tog out for their school, or local club, they couldn’t know the ins and outs, some of the most knowledgable people on the subject I know never played, but these guys are the most vocal. You see them at the matches roaring about the wrong option or at the TV in a pub, they have a way of quietening down the people around them and are almost always wrong.

I don’t think closing the bars or not allowing drink at the seats will change much, Lansdowne is decent venue when a match is good regardless of bar service or influencers taking selfies. There’s just too much money to be made from food and drinks sales, sponsorships and corporate ticketing. I guess we should be thankful the gambling industry hasn’t set up shop in the venue.

I was at one of the warmup games last year. There was this guy behind us chatting insistently to a fairly disinterested looking chap. He was even talking about his favourite horror movies. Eventually a very irate man in a Connaught jacket beside us turned around and told your man to “shut the fück up”.

20e for the hurling and no one going in or out every few minutes to get pissed. 12e for League of Ireland and same score.

Don't write off all sports.

The 6 Nations and some other big pro rugby matches have stopped becoming sport and have started becoming "and event" much like the way the English go loopy for Pimm's and strawberries every summer for a sport they don't give a fuk about for 11 months of the year.

Aviva ticketing strategies are all about the corporates and the secondary ticket market. These are far too lucrative to allow for those who volunteer or play at their local soccer/rugby club to have much chance of getting a ticket.

A lot of people just want to get involved in the whole D4 rugby thing. Few drinks in a pub on Haddington Rd before the game, take a few selfies.

We've been an abysmal watch this 6 Nations though and the football is a national embarrassment.

If most people have 4 before and 4 during then thats about 10 trips to the toilet during 🤣

Rugby clubs selling their allocations to sponsors doesn't help a huge amount. I get why they do it is to pay the bills and keep the gates open and showers hot, my own club does it but doesn't really admit it.

This.

Have a relative who married into a rugby family. She wouldn't know the difference between a sliotar and a basketball and never paid the slightest attention to rugby before she met the husband, but now practically a season ticket holder at the Aviva. Would never miss an opportunity like that for Insta content.

This is a big part of why so many big events now are overpriced and demand is crazy. People who aren't fans, just going to boost the socials.

I'm a member of a club and I haven't heard it called Lansdowne much at all in years. I do like it being called Lansdowne but it's dying away for sure

Absolutely. Doesn't happen in Thomand.