I once agreed to go and see a George Michael concert at Wembley with Mrs TuT as a valid excuse to get out of going to a fancy dress party in Lincolnshire. Hopefully the same logic wasn't used here ?
Combination of circumstances. The lower seats in the SEJ are completely open to the pouring rain. The match was televised so some, especially with kids may have preferred to stay dry and watch on telly There was no train service. It looked worse than normal because a lot of those at the front, getting soaked, searched out the empty seats from the no shows further back. No excuses, just stating the probable cause. I came along myself, although I could only get the train as far as Hemel. My seat is on the borderline, I get a bit of rain, but not as bad as those at the front. (I'm in row C).
The whole BBC website coverage is pretty rank. You look at the Watford news page and it will be 5 days of "how will Bagpuss Lawrenson get on in his predictions against the bass player of some grunge band you've never heard of, and how did the sour old goat get on last week against the European cheese rolling champion". Then you get Garth Crooks (who sounds intelligent but is thick as mince, as opposed to Merson who sounds thick as mince and is). On match days you will get team news under a photo of Harry Kane whether we're playing Spurs or not. It's not news about my club! It's self indulgent horsecrap. If you can't be a***d to find out real stuff just write "no Watford news today, but we have plenty of stuff about the top 6 on the main page".
There are 2 reasons why Garth C has a job with the BBC. One is that he sounds articulate/posh irrespective of the fact he spouts garbage. The other is to tick the ethnic minority box. Nothing more.
Absolutely this. Unfortunately if you have a “family club” you tend to get a lot of casual supporters especially when your season ticket renewal is less than £500. However, if you cannot be bothered to find another family member, friend or sell back to the club then I question whether you should have the thing in the first place. Occasionally there may be a last minute reason but throwing it down with rain sure as hell isn’t one of them. It’s not like we’re walking a couple of hundred here. Looks like there was at least 2000 seats around the ground maybe more. Bloody disgrace.
I go to most games but the few times in the last year I haven’t I found the ticket resell was a complete mess to use. So get off your ridiculous high horse.
In the old days of (open) terracing wet weather would always see a reduced attendance, much more than cold weather. These days a high proportion of the seats are occupied by season ticket holders and the truth is we draw much of our support from relatively affluent areas, so people can afford season tickets without feeling they have to go to every game to get value for money. The worst offenders of course are in the Family Stand. What is difficult to gauge is how great the demand for tickets is outside of those who attend now. We understand there is a waiting list for season tickets but we don’t know how long it is or if the people on it would behave in the same way if they got hold of one. The re-sale system clearly doesn’t work well, so it seems the only alternative is some kind of ‘use it or lose it’ rule on season tickets.
Didn't get a chance to post yesterday and haven't caught up with this thread yet, but thank god for Ben Foster or the game would have been over at half time. Both teams look like they could have scored on every attack and I think the result was harsh on Palace who deserved the draw IMO. Thought the ref was just bl**dy awful all round and was really surprised nobody got sent off. One thing I noticed at the end was that they played the music at full blast on the final whistle which is just a sh*tty thing to do when the crowd want to celebrate with the players after a win. Please stop doing this Watford.
The disabled in their wheelchairs right at the front of the rookery had to brave the elements. What is disappointing is if the game didn't sell out, no excuses for a local derby, whether raining, bank holiday or televised. Sent from my MotoG3 using Tapatalk
It was more the aspect of reasoning and the continued relatively high level of no shows. Yes, the re-sale is not the most intuitive thing ever but why did so many not bother turning up yesterday, or for that matter a number of other games. I regularly have spaces near me in one of the best spots in SEJ stand but when I try to book for a friend am told various seats are season ticket holders. I totally get that people will occasionally not be able to go and fully understand that. I travel from Reading and work, commitments can often get in the way. I do always try and ensure my seat is used however. So I applogise if you feel I am “getting on my high horse” but there is a difference between trying to make an effort and clearly not really giving a ****. Seems to me that there are too many season ticket holders who cannot really be bothered. It is not meant as a slight on those who occasionally cannot make a game.
Which is fine if you didn’t have a waiting list of people wishing to attend as now. As you rightly say through, that waiting list is probably full of people wanting to make the “big 6” games themselves.
With holidays and work I probably miss 3 games. Sometimes this enables family to go but not always. I used to try and make use of the resale. Once I contacted ticket office direct to make it available and they didn’t resell according to the people who sit around me and that was Man Utd at home! The club needs to take responsibility as well as the fans I think. It can’t be hard to devise a simple online surrender process.
It is annoying. I have had a season ticket for 30+ years and am now trying to get one for my daughter. She missed maybe two games last year but cannot get her a season ticket as not high enough up list. We have borrowed friends spares but am now buying her one each game so she generates points. I don’t see why we have a ST waiting list of a few years when our ground is never anywhere near full. We should be attracting young kids to get season tickets and not making it difficult else young kids will support the big London clubs. I could understand if we were full each week but we are not
Yesterdays game was not a sellout so no chance of reselling your ST. Also many people from the front 6 rows either moved higher into empty seats or moved under the stand to stay warm and dry and have a drink whilst watching the match on the TV's. It was surptisingly cold yesterday with the wind and even those higher up had wet clothes so the wind made it even worse so can understand why people at the front moved undercover.
Despite paying for three season tickets (which my brother and dad then pay me back for) on the same credit card and having the fan IDs linked on the website (as well as the same last name), the club don't allow me to call up and offer both for resale. They, for some reason, require a separate call from each of us. I probably only miss one or two a year but if the club can't be bothered to find a way for me to sell all of them then I'm sure as **** not going to go out of my way either.
It’s a difficult one regarding attendances. It would surely be pretty easy to log attendances via people’s season tickets use and apply some sort of use it or lose it rule, so if your ST isn’t used a certain amount of times you do get to renew the following year helping people on the list. The problem with this is from a business point of view it’s completely counter intuitive to put people off of your product and the longer the club has a waiting list for season tickets the better for them from a fincial point of view.
Under Sir GT, in the season Watford stormed to second in the league behind European Champions Liverpool, after having gone through all 4 divisions, the average crowd was 19,500 or thereabouts. We are not supporting a big club. Things are growing as long as we stay in the Prem. A lot of people are still away on their holidays, plus it was a bank holiday, plus it was p**sing down with rain, plus the match was on Sky, plus the KO was a slightly awkward time. Of course there were some empty seats.
And here you have it. Supposedly droves of fans penned out of games by lacklustre st holders, yet they don't actually buy the tickets which are just sitting there on the shelf.
It is annoying. My mum realised she had missed 2 years birthday presents for me including the big 4-0 and said she would get me a season ticket (I put it on the request list as a joke!). But even though I'm on the list I can't get it! Grrr! I've asked her not to get me anything else yet but I doubt I'll be able to get one next year either
Having been compulsorily moved from in line with the penalty spot to nearer the goal line in the Upper GT to make way for corporates, we've tried to get closer to our old seats as the people to our right only seem to have paper tickets. However, the ticket office has assured us that season ticket holders use those seats....
I saw this on the BBC and thought you should see it: Garth Crooks' team of the week: Maguire, Milner, Mitrovic - and who else? - http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45317342 Thanks Garth. Really nailed the analysis of Pereyra there...
I gave up my season ticket and whoever has the seat for the new season hasn't even gone yet. Ridiculous
Pretty sure the club added something like that to the T&Cs at the start of last season for the first time. Until then it wasn't even clear it was doable. But since introducing it there's no evidence they used it this summer to actually boot out any absent ST holders. As for the waiting list, I guess it depends on the rate of people actually taking up the option. I got a call in July but had to turn it down as it made little sense for me to do it this summer. I was told I'd be off the list as a result and would have to re-join. As it costs nothing to go on the waiting list I suspect it's more like a list of firm sales leads rather than a guaranteed revenue stream.
If the season ticket waiting list is that long, surely it's only a matter of time before the stadium capacity is expanded again. Makes you wonder how long it actually is.
Toad's analysis was a reflection of Sky's: minimal intelligent discussion around our team, maximum coverage of Capoue's tackle. It does make me wonder what the coverage of "lesser" teams is like in Spain and Italy, for example. If Girona v Leganes is on TV, do they spend the entire half time talking about Real Madrid? Not that any t*at would be watching that game to know either way...
