Technically West Ham broke their home attendance record at the London Stadium last night with an official attendance of 59,870 which equates to 59,870 tickets sold.
In reality, we know many thousands of West Ham season ticket holders were missing last night who didn’t use their seats!
The fixture changes haven’t helped with the Boxing day match moved to the 27th December and the New Years Day match against Brighton moved to Wednesday evening 2nd January, which was the first day back to work for many people.
Dragging yourself to Stratford on a dark and cold winter night for a midweek game after work is not the most motivating of tasks to want to do and coming straight after Christmas money is often scarce for many which is another factor.
Putting this excuses above aside West Ham real attendance is regularly between 10% and 20% less the official attendance figure published. At our new stadium capacity of 60,000, that means somewhere between 6,000 and 12,000 season ticket holders were missing last night.
Confused ? I was there last night. It looked to me like a really good turn out. I can’t vouch for the seats behind me, but the stadium looked nearly full.
You mention 6000 to 12000 season ticket holders missing – perhaps – but there were scores of people with paper tickets who had troubles finding their seats. It seemed to me that a lot of supporters without season tickets had taken the chance to buy a resold ticket.
If you are a loyal supporter you don’t have to “drag” yourself to games surely? There were spaces around us in the 1966 seats. Maybe some people are still away on their holidays? According to the club 52,000 home tickets have been sold for Saturday’s game in the FA Cup. They won’t be able to include season ticket holders in the final attendance so let’s see what the true attendance is
Stupid remark Tony eh if your a supporter like you say next it will be if it’s raining we dont go to the games.
Too many games over the Festive season . End of . Managers have been saying it for years. Time the Premiership woke up to the reality . WHEN WILL THE FA WAKE UP ?,
Well that’s anybody’s guess … I don’t care how much players are paid when it comes down to the physical abilities they are expected to achieve . The money is not an issue in this respect . The Human Body can only take so much . THE CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR FIXTURES SHOULD BE CURTAILED . Less congestion to satisfy SKY SPORTS .
iPad finger punchers at best getting paid for nothing . Something needs changing but not in the future. ,,,,,, it needs changing NOW . Managers who have dared to say something from time to time have been crucified for daring to say something . Five , six and seven games over three weeks is crazy . If we want a celebration of football over the Festive season then all teams should kick off at the same time on the same day . AS IT USED TO BE before Skysports America got involved . And who amongst us is really interested in the
NFL ?? . ( football spelt in American )
The old First Division was organized by the FA and it was ok ,,,, but now under Sky Sports with all and sundry with Thier iPads and girls dressed up is an afrontary to the game as it was intended . ….. BIG MONEY RULES . Could go on forever but would probably get censored and banned .
Kevin terrific post my son you said it all. Money and greed and as big a profit as possible is the sole aim in today’s world. Sooner we start waking up as a nation and get rid of the people chasing this the better. USA is at last coming to its senses with the disastrous human being trump and here we must get rid of zero contracts asp . Sky sports rule how football should be shown and at what times and the fa obey its rules to a t. Players are human not machines and unless every team can afford 22 players of quality the games need to be slimmed down to a once a week agenda all season meaning slightly earlier and a slightly later end of season until all clubs can afford to employ that many players. Imo
The easy solution to too many games is to start the season earlier, finish it later and have a mid season break of two weeks one week either side of Christmas, that way everyone including the players could recharge with their families.
Shiftworkers. Season ticket holding mate of mine is a shift worker which includes working nights. He often can’t attend night games. He puts his ticket on the exchange but it hardly ever gets sold so the seat remains empty for the game.
Sorry this is not directly related to this story (although maybe there is a connection) but I saw a report on the most recent set of accounts. According to that our match day revenues are still below what they were in the last year at the Boleyn. Was this part of the Sullivan/Gold Masterplan? Please tell me if I got it wrong but I thought the big selling point of the LS was the bigger attendances, leading to bigger revenues to provide the funds for top class players? I remember seeing Sullivan on Sky before the famous interview before the Brighton match last year (I won’t sack Bilic- he has a three year contract. It is a questiondoing the honourable thing etc). He said then that the club would become ‘self financing’ which I took to mean he would not even have to dip into his own pocket susbstantially to sustain (improve?) the quality of the squad. I am no businessman so would really be grateful if somebody could explain if I am missing something. Are the ticket prices suddenly going to double. I know capacity is increasing, but surely not by enough to transform matchday revenue? I have said consistently that I did not want us to move but that I would accept it if it transformed our finances in a way that would take the club forward. I am sorry to keep bringing this up but I feel supporters who think like me have been badly misled by the owners.