I think the 30% was up on the same time last year. Maybe last year there was a last minute rush, whereas this year people may of been earlier with all excitement of the SOS team taking over.

does seem bit to me like the honeymoon is over - starting to question decisions cost cutting shorten game time increased costs food car parking coaching decisions imports - all coming out of wood work today
might be time we all stepped up to promote

Simple - Average team, Average coach = average crowds. get a good coach again and the team will follow and the crowds will return. Sick of the excuses yet again. I'm still going but not for much longer after the inept performance of the team and coach last night. Pay peanuts get monkeys.

My guess is that membership is 30% up but crowds haven't increased at all due to the fact that last year about 25% of attendances were free loaders!
In some ways it is good to give out some feebies as it creates a great atmosphere which we lacked last night but then people tend to expect freebies all the time and don't ever end up contributing to the balance sheet.
Maybe by season's end those "supporters" who only went to games because they got free tickets will miss weatching that much they will go out and buy a ticket for a change! Support the guys that support the game of basketball!!! I know for a fact that past crowds wouldn't have let what happened last night happen. There was no emotion from the crowd whatsoever, for me to be able to make a phone call during the game and actually hear the person on the other end is ridiculous!!!

I heard that all SOS members pay for their own tickets to games for themselves and their families. I think that is Great. They have blended into the background when truth is they should be celebrated.

I didn't go to the game last night, I watched it on TV. One thing which I think is a bit of a problem is that the game started just after 7.30pm. It finished at 9pm.

I have always thought in the past that games were too short in the sense of going out to the game, putting up with traffic, car parking etc. But now they have shorten the game, I think is a big mistake.

I would like to see them go back to the 12 min quarters.

Also, Give Scotty a break, it's a new team, needs time to gel.

Atmosphere was nothing to do with the size of the crowd last night, just a matter of people not being inspired by what they were seeing on court. An Adelaide crowd half that size could've made a fair bit of noise if the team was playing well.

I would say an average crowd of just under 4500 after 3 home games is ahead of last year (?) and would indicate an average home crowd of over 5000 by the end of the season.

The purchase of the club by the SOS came with a lot of Boti driven media support. In turn NBL/36ers interested people and fans got behind them.

The downside is the lack of promotion and marketing, where are the billboards, Shopping Centre stalls, bus advertising, TV Commercials? (although everyone can agree last year's ad was horrible). The general public hasn't been targeted and have no interest in the 36ers or the SOS.

The grassroots basketball public has been treated with a complete lack of respect by new management. These families are the real basketball people of this state and where future 36ers season ticket holders will come from. But this inexperienced and unprofessional new management, whom have no or very little background in basketball not only have ignored us but taken away things from the past. No District Junior Player tickets, no training visits, no Friday night stadium visits, no posters/schedules in stadiums. Junior Finals were heavily supported by parents, grandparents and 100s of High School aged mates of players; a captive basketball supporter base, and no 36ers or 36ers promotional collateral to be seen.

The Brad what do you base your 25% on? I bet you just made it up. At all three games I've been to I know people who have received free tickets and seen the same freebie groups as always. Look at the new Hollywood seats, which the Tigers have done already and which was stolen from the NBA. Do you really think any of them paid for their seats? That being said, all sports clubs do giveaways. My daughter plays Netball and her club received plenty of comp tickets for the Thunderbirds last home game of the season. Crows, Power, United give away plenty as well. Its not free loading its promotion and reward. Its getting someone in the door to see what the game is all about. Its the clubs thanking those supporters, business and families who support the sport as well as the club. These people are also future season ticket holders, sponsors or one off ticket buyers.

Number 44 I completely disagree with your posts regarding the SOS. Do you not remember the Silver Fox thread? If what you were saying was true how do you explain that? Passion is one thing, embarassing the long term fans, supporters and history of the club is another.

From what I can tell the people in the Administration office have no experience in Sports Administration, in Marketing, in Promotion, in Sponsorship sales. What chance do they have? They have no training or experience in what they're doing, and their GM has none either. I don't think anyone on the SOS has any sports admin background either.

New ticketing system wasn't required, new catering wasnt required, new car parking system wasn't required.

The club both on and off the court is at a crossroads. The team and coach need to step it up a level to show they are Top 4 material. The off court team have to do the same and as far as I can see right now neither have shown they have the ability or capability to do it.

Couldnt disagree more with the comments above from Dione. Last year the catering was rubbish and the encore group will improve since they have been given a short lead time. Venuetix did not look after the club. no comment on car parking as dont know what has changed.
As far as sports administration experience and elite sport experience I think you would be surprised at the level of experience if you new the facts. The administration will keep this club afloat

Dione are you an angry supporter of a team that lost or an expert in things you possibly are guessing.

First your upset because media got fans to support the 36ers and SOS, I would have thought a good thing because we still have a club.

I have seen TV Commercial and the club has done 2 shopping centres in last month, is the back of a bus the best place to spend money when a club went broke, apparently in your expert opinion Yes.Obviously your marketing degree was different from mine!

I will assume you are some form of insider having obvious knowledge of SOS and all their backgrounds expecially since you think they have ignored grass roots basketball because you dont get free tickets anymore.Sounds more like an angry mum who had to pay for a ticket.

Then you say the club should give free tickets to reward people to become future season ticket holders, human nature generally for people is if I can get Freebies why pay I will just keep waitng for my freebies.

The you have a problem with Silver Fox or SOS for showing passion because it embarrasses fans and history, yes I would much rather see Mal sit on the end of the bench, thats what the club needs to bring back an owner who spent money on things that gave us no return.

Then you attack SOS and the GM again so I assume you have a personal gripe with someone or think you no everything

Ticketing, Catering and car parking again you are obviously aware of all financial contracts within the club to know what was best or you are an out of work former spotless or venuetix employee

We lost a game, people like yourself are probably best having nothing to say because when things turn around you are then likely to act like a great supporter and really YOU ARE NOT

dione, i am not close enough to validate much of what you say however.... freebie tickets, as a means of building a supporter base long term is a failed strategy in Australian sport time and time again.... a few examples....

The Brisbane Bullets (everyone knew Boondall was 45% 'papered')

Northern Spirit FC (NSL!) playing at North Sydney Oval....at one point it was claimed that of their average 14,000 crowd some 10,000 were freebies.

Sydney Swans ala late eighties/early 90's, even with Capper and crew, who had to radically turn around their strategy and to my knowledge remain a loss making operation.

United are giving away bundles of tickets? It just devalues their product even more in the long run.

Netball have gone down that path of freebie tickets (which cost to both produce and distribute by the way).... and they are a minority sport in terms of true crowd numbers (getting 4-5k to a game not 40k like the Crows..... its not a good slide to be on, at what point do they decide to stop spending money on freebies? Because at that point their crowd numbers plummet and their true support shows - and poorly.

If you are doing comps, they must be specific and targeted, not part of some broad marketing strategy around "filling the house" and "making noise".

I thnk you will find (actually know) that the SOS has pumped up the membership figures to include sponsors, life members, general members, and comps, basically any ticket that has been sold for the season - hence the apparent promotion of over 3,000! In actual fact the membership in previous years has just been measured on gold and silver ticket sales which means previous years are well up on this year. It's okay to bend the truth but to say that the membership is 30% up on last season is an extreme exaageration.

Last season's average were over 5,000 and would currently be averaging low 4's. Unless there's a huge turn around in form, I'd suggest you all get used to the terrible court announcer trying to pump up the few that attend.

I think you will find (actually know) that this year there is more of every catagory than last year except comps. So compare as a total or compare indivdually it is still more. Last years average crowd also included a sell out (Bretts game) and another game which had over 6500 in attendance which included nearly 2000 tickets being given to kids in camps and from schools.

So Knackers if you want to make statements about what you know give all the facts.

Those figures above would then mean alot of games had crowds of only between 4000 and 4200, no different to this year so far. Although first 2 games were listed at 4800

Our dissappointing crowds are more than most other clubs can hold.

jersey girl, i think it is you who doesn't have the facts (or a grip on reality). 2,000 comps? Just decided to pull a figure out of your head? Try about 500 for camps on the night you are talking about. I'm sure Mark Davis wished it was 2,000! And if last year's sell out was because of Brett, why wasn't game one this year? My original point was I don't think a 3,000 members is accurate. And by the way, there's not more members, there's not more corporates, so ACTUALLY, not more than last year.

This thread's hillarious - I needed a good laugh, and all of these people who seem to know so much more than the people actually involved in running the club has had me laughing my ass off.

Yep, we lost a couple, and pretty badly. Do we need to start bagging everything and everyone around the club now? Nothing like a loss to bring out the fair weather supporters.

Knackers, out of curiosity, where are you getting your info?

knackers seems to have all the answers ladies and gentlemen and apparently does not believe that last years final game sell out had anything to do with the last chance to see Brett play because 8,000 did not come and watch a 2 minute ceremony to retire his singlet this year. I am sure then those 8,000 people attending did not have an impact on increasing the crowd avge you love to refer to either. Maybe we should give the club to knackers to run, he already seems to no more than our current owners and at least then we can have a great positive supportive owner with great people skills. We already have the Silver Fox at SOS but maybe we can make knackers an owner and call him "The Weazel"

I'll state it again - 36ers crowds are ahead of this time last year (as are 6 of the 8 clubs). Crowds always build as the year goes on. 4000 to a Weds TV game after a 30 point thrashing is a good turn out.

Thanks for input Robbo. While I'm not exactly sure what it added except that we are all dumber for hearing it. I'm not the one who started this thread, and probably appropriate seeing the crowd figure last night being below 4,000 (can't remember last time that happened). I think the question is fair that if we're up 30%, how come that's how many turned up to see the Tigers which usually draws a much larger crowd?

My apologies knackers you are so correct, if we are up 30% why would we get 4000 people to a game against melb who were bottom which was live on TV in a week the kids were back at school after a 30 point loss. Thanks for your inspiration, your doubt of anything positive shows you may be thinking with your name. (Thats your knackers if you struggled with that)

No doubt the 30% figure comes from a mixture of "at the time" comparison (different selling times, etc) and some changes in how the numbers are recorded (I have the data, and something that was recorded in one column last season might be in a different column this season - e.g., Gold corporate to Corporate, etc). Few hundred staff/comps from last year that are not in the list this year. Gold adult, conc, kids, etc all look to be up to me.

Regardless, considering the season and games so far, and lack of Maher, the crowds have been OK. I expected them to be much worse after the turbulence of the off-season. I'm more worried about the team's performance over the last two games.

SOS this year have a lot more legitimate interest and experience in basketball than administrations over the last few years.

For crap's sake club bashers, how about you do some basic research before tossing around numbers and over generalisations. Let's compare apples with apples shall we and use the crowd numbers from last year's first 3 home games to this year's?

2008
1 - vs Crocs, 4749 (Fri)
2 - vs Spirit, 4010 (Wed)
3 - vs Perth, 5238 (Sat)
TOTAL = 13,997 AVG = 4,666

2009
1 - vs Breakers, 4671 (Sat)
2 - vs Crocs, 4759 (Fri)
3 vs Tigers, 3919 (Wed)
TOTAL = 13,349, AVG = 4,450

Sooooo.... presently we are "down" 648 people on official attendances from last year, and 216 average over the first three games - well that's a massive failure isn't it!!!?? Correct me if I'm wrong, but are these still the best crowd attendances in the league!?

Remember kids, it's still spring, it's still school, AFL has just finished, a season has happened almost out of no where when the general public thought the game was "dead", there has been little advertising as a whole etc.

I'm confident that numbers will steadily rise as summer comes in, school is out, awareness builds, and we'll see the average lift to 5000+.

Surely we can bag other things than the ownership, like that "HORRIBLE" court announcer!? ;P (insert sarcasm). BTW - I think he's good, just needs to cease with the defense chant after 3 times! ;P

Further to my last post, I thought I would take a closer look at last season's numbers...

Total attendance for season = 75,764
Average for season = 5051

Interesting to note, the games in summer when school is out had an average of 5735 (last 6 home games).

The last game for Mahersy was listed as 7800, but there were about an extra 300 crammed in apparently, but I haven't put that in these numbers.

Also, we had two games in one week at the start of Jan, and we got 6307 to the Weds game, and then 5039 to the Sat game. Pretty impressive back-to-back efforts by the fans.

Let's hope 09/10's lot (fans I mean) aren't as pessimistic as some of the posters in this thread otherwise the team, ownership, coaches and anyone in a 5km radius of Findon might have been burnt at the stake by now!! ;P