Growing Attendance

[Prepper_Jack]

Hey guys. I tend to enjoy playing the smaller clubs, and trying to push them up through the ranks over time. Recently I've been playing a team in the second division of Sweden. Got them through to the First Division, then to the First Division Elite. One of the major issues has been the lack of any real income on the way up. No cash prizes whatsoever until First Division Elite - but that will only really be good enough to cover expenses over the year, with maybe a little extra. Board has been injecting a bit of cash at the end of the year to help out a bit, but even with this, as well as tight finance control by spending about a quarter of allowable payroll, I'm not sure that the club can get to a financial state to where it can go Pro within a few years, even if I'm a regional team that's on the verge of becoming national renown.

Part of this has to due with extraordinarily low attendance. It started at something like 60 home attendees on average, with 30 season tickets sold at ridiculously low costs. Now it's grown to about 90 season ticket holders, and maybe 150 people from home attend matches. The maximum attendance has been around 450, with the gross majority of that being fans of the other team. Generally, it averages about 200 fans per game. This generates virtually nothing in terms of revenue.

Does anyone have any good tips on growing attendance? My fans generally appreciate the matches, and I usually get B ratings, often with the "like the entertaining football" feedback. Does community outreach have any impact on this? What factors into this? Is it just time and being a certain reputation level?

[Bigpole]

playing in better division, good reputation, success in europe. Like in real life.

[Nacaw]

Fan days are good for this, bit random if you get them. Did you start in a very small city? That will also have a negative long term impact, compared to a team from Stockholm or Gothenburg.

[Prepper_Jack]

4 hours ago, Nacaw said:

Fan days are good for this, bit random if you get them. Did you start in a very small city? That will also have a negative long term impact, compared to a team from Stockholm or Gothenburg.

Good question. I started as IFK Lidingo. Lidingo is essentially a part of Stockholm in the real world, or at least a suburb within its metropolitan area, but I'm not sure if the game considers it as such. Guess I'll have to wait and see as to what the game considers the attendance cap is for this. Unfortunately I haven't had any fan days as of yet. I wish the game allowed you to just start your own club and act as the board, so you could engage in such activities as fan days yourself.

[Bigpole]

I've checked it out for you, your club is a part of stockholm 'region' and has a okay population (25-50k). So you have plenty of room to expand, 

And as I've said - advance through leagues, sign maybe good reputation players from leagues above (on free transfer for example). 

[Vänsterback]

Everyone in Stockholm support AIK, Djurgården or Hammarby. There are often small clubs from Stockholm as high as the First division elite (IK Frej, Akropolis, Brommapojkarna, AFC United) that no one cares about at all. Brommapojkarna and Frej averaged about 600-700 spectators per home game last season. If you want to manage a club from the second division to the professional leagues and have growing attendance you should pick a club from a city that doesn't have a professional club already.