QPR Home Attendance Average For Past 50 YEARS

[ingham]

If Beard 'does his homework', QPR expands to a 45,000-a-week Club?

Obviously? How? Specifically, how?

He sits at his desk, and the ball is in the net. Over and over again. QPR in the top four. No, wait, Beard is having another idea. From Old Trafford to the Emirates, big Clubs tremble.

He scratches his chin. Yes! It's in the net. Who will stop QPR? It can't be. He's saying 'er ....'

Easy. So easy.

A jehovah's witness convention four weeks before the start of the season, and of COURSE our performances will improve.

Why wouldn't they? First you need to own an airline. Every successful Club in history knew someone who owned, ran, worked for, lived near, or had heard of an airline.

Then you need Mr Beard. Must rent out the premises. And they're rented. If you want a conference centre, a football ground is ideal. Office space? All that grass is perfect.

And vice versa, of course. Want to win the Champions League? Play in a swimming pool. Need to improve your game. Put Mr Bead in a room and wait. You see. It works.

Imagine the fear. At Old Trafford. Christ, now he's written something on A BIT OF PAPER.

And 45,000 appear. We've come because the World Table Tennis quarter-finals were held here three-and-a-half years ago.

Why not just play brilliantly. Really, that is all Mr Beard, the world football genius, has to do. Show us just how GOOD he is - at FOOTBALL.

Trust me. Win enough matches, keep on winning, year in, year out, and we can close QPR down permanently, because the demand from encounter groups, forums, orchestras and party conferences will make the football superfluous.

Every loser has 'thought everything through'. Every loser has no end of stadium schemes, business plans, ambitions and proposals of every kind.

The winners just do it. In football, we call them winners. No-one knows how they do it. And certainly no-one knows in advance.

Except Mr Beard.

He must. Stands to reason.

[cpr]

He's the chief executive of the business Ing, don't do the football malarkey, dontcha know!

[ingham]

Manchester United 75387 19
Arsenal 60000 19
Newcastle United 50162 19
Manchester City 47044 19
Liverpool 44253 19
Chelsea 41478 19
Sunderland 39095 19
Tottenham Hotspur 36026 19
Aston Villa 33965 19
Everton 33408 19

Difficult to see how QPR would suddenly vault into this group of Clubs.

Between them they've won 80 titles, and been runners up 65 times.

Some of them - United, Liverpool, Villa, Everton and others - were winning titles in the 19th century, with Newcastle winning 3 in 5 years in the early 20th century. They haven't won a title since the 1920s, but they effortlessly eclipse our best, even just poodling along, as they usually are.

Arsenal came much later, but anyone who knows Arsenal supporters knows that they have generations of support on their present scale. QPR is handed down in the same way - to an extent, not exclusively by any means - through families, and that perpetuates our support.

But it also perpetuates the SIZE of our support. If there are more Everton or Newcastle families, there may well be more supporters for those Clubs. Even as unsuccessful as they now are.

We could look for encouragement to the relatively overperforming small Clubs and their attendances.

But such crowds would be pathetic in a ground with a 45,000 capacity. Even in the Premiership, it would often be half empty. Beard and Co would need events DURING the games - Perhaps a mini-olympics in a quiet corner of the pitch - to make up the difference in the Championship.

Much-vaunted Reading's ground only holds around 26,500, doesn't it? I wonder whether our huge expandable ground will be as slow coming under Beard and Fernandes as Readings was (read 'non-existent') under Madjewski, despite all the big talk, and the big debt to pay for the small ground they actually have.

And speaking of Fulham, Real Madrid's rivals-to-be as he suggested, only 25,000, having lost £200 million not even developing the existing Ground. Stoke are only averaging 27,000 in their best period for a long time, well below Villa and Everton, Clubs whose real glory days are a long, long, long. long, long time ago, for the most part, and even their relatively recent glory days now 20-25 years past.

There are quite a lot of Clubs who have won titles, but only a handful with significantly more than 1 victory. Huddersfield's was the best part of a century ago, the Wolves era ended over 50 years ago, and Leeds - except for one great season with Cantona - were a one man Club.

Getting to where Fulham or Blackburn got to won't do it. Only winning will. And that depends on Mittal's £1 billion. It's the easy way, although a glut of billionaires will make easy winning of titles by simply spending harder and harder, especially if 'fair play' curbs the losses they can run up, and, in consequence, (real) attendances become more important.

Hampden Park once held 149,500. But Queen's Park, whose ground it was, only got 500 a week. I wonder if United and City are as nervous about QPR as Rangers and Celtic (sorry, just Celtic now, Rangers are probably PLAYING Queen's Park) are about that likeable little Club, our near namesake. Queens Park, I mean. Not Rangers. Don't get me confused.

But if there isn't the Mansour level of spending, are the odds really more in favour of QPR being the next Manchester or Coventry City? Especially if the Club doesn't own the Ground, as Beard apparently intends it shouldn't, even the absurd 'stadium sponsorship' doesn't go to QPR, will it?

If that is so, we must hope that average attendances DON'T fluctuate in the way Fernandes and the boy Beard imply is possible.

Because if that is so, even the mere arithmetic of the thing tells us that people who know nothing about the game are far more likely to lose 7,000 supporters a week than gain 28,000.

In that case, Beard would need his rock concerts and gospel revival conventions just to fill LOFTUS ROAD, never mind White City Mausoleum II.

[cpr]

Bums on seats, yep, that's what he does Ing, dontcha know!

White elephants a speciality apparently.

[Macmoish]

If want to make it "Fair" could go about it another way - as they do in the USA Professional: Caps on total amounts club can spend on Players/Wages.... (as well as Drafts and Trades)

The whole idea is that while some clubs will some have an advantage - to fair degree clubs are on an equal footing

[ingham]

Get those bums outa here!

Sorry, cpr, just lapsing into the US demotic. For Mac's sake ;D.

[Macmoish]

Bottom line: If we have a 45,000 Stadium, but only get 25,000 average, that's going to make it far less of a cave/fortress - pick you preferred term.

If we go through some bad times, and have only 10 or 12,000, it's going to appear empty and souless

[cpr]

Sept 10, 2012 16:44:53 GMT ingham said:

Get those bums outa here!

Sorry, cpr, just lapsing into the US demotic. For Mac's sake ;D.

"For Mac's Sake", could be a new expletive.

FMS even.

[Jo-Onenil]

Sept 10, 2012 17:14:25 GMT Macmoish said:

Bottom line: If we have a 45,000 Stadium, but only get 25,000 average, that's going to make it far less of a cave/fortress - pick you preferred term.

If we go through some bad times, and have only 10 or 12,000, it's going to appear empty and souless

Middlesbrough have a 35'000 stadium. With an average of 19'000 fans it looks soulless empty and silent. If we build that stadium, then relegation is forbidden...

[ingham]

And those figures for Middlesbrough show how few people are interested if there isn't something exceptional on show.

It's the football - and especially the success - that brings them in. Not mid-table with a 6th or 7th place once in a blue moon either, still less 2nd or 3rd tier football.

And investors are typically not at a Club for very long. And even if they stay longer than the usual QPR quickie, the long-promised transformations don't occur, Reading a good example. Madjewski was there quite a while, we had years of big talk, and the new stadium is smaller than the old Elm Park before it fell to pieces, with a couple of Premiership seasons to show for all the 'building' and 'ambition'.

Look at those Clubs with the biggest average attendances. They must average the best part of a century each in the top flight, with anything from a few titles to a whole shedload, plus Cups.

If we were a good mid-table side, with the occasional foray up to, say, 7th place, there is no reason to think that would get us anything other than a Premiership full house in a small ground.

It certainly won't bring people from all over London to see us get the odd win, a defeat or two, another win and a draw. It's the sides who not only usually win, but virtually always win, that begin to pack the crowds in, and most, if not all, began doing that 70, 80, 100 years ago.

There is a reason why Clubs are the size they are. It isn't just down to the individual Club, the Clubs operate as a group. If the Clubs near the bottom have huge, empty stadiums, the numbers don't add up. If the Clubs near the top have overcrowded tiny grounds, it doesn't make sense.

To change QPR means changing the other Clubs, too, and buying shares in QPR doesn't do that. If 'investors' could make the opposition's grounds smaller, and their attendances lower, we might have a chance. But to perform relatively better than all of them, which is what Beard is proposing, means undermining our rivals' competitiveness.

Otherwise the gains are marginal. Look at Ipswich, Forest, Derby, Burnley, even Leeds. Once their brief 'golden era' slipped by, they went back to being whatever kind of Club they were before.

Attendances rise to close to the maximum for QPR (although that virtually never happened), Derby or Ipswich. But those Clubs never packed in 76,000. They overperformed within their own framework, but the framework itself never expanded.

[Jo-Onenil]

Nice post Ingham. But what would you do? Stick with an overpacked Loftus Road while waiting for a relegation that might or might not happen?

I do think it makes sense to build a new stadium of around 28'000 in London.

[ingham]

Play better football, Jo.

Superior football. Quality football. Good enough, over a long enough period of time, to show we have the talent required not only to fill a bigger ground for a short period, but to pay for it, too.

Isn't that why all these multi-use stadiums - like the Olympic one - are desperate to get football Clubs to take them over. Because of the vast revenue even a small football Club can bring in, especially in the Premier League, compared to all those multi-uses which it is hard to believe would even amount to a fraction of the £40 million a Club like ours can earn in the Premiership.

There is never any indication of our results in these stadium speculations. But it is on the basis of those results - our future results, about which nobody knows anything, least of all Beard or Fernandes - that demand must be calculated.

If we can play better, we can play a lot worse (and, noticeably, we often do, although we rarely play top 4 stuff).

Five years is long enough to make a start. If we are sufficiently superb, we'll stay in the Premiership, and get £40 million a season, supposing that funding remains at least at the present level (which is what Beard and Fernandes also suppose, I assume).

Why do we think having a small ground is such a big disadvantage if we're going to get £40 million a season, merely by being in the Premiership, ground size notwithstanding? Losing out on a few thousand people per game will have a proportionally negligible effect on the Club's finances.

If QPR has to pay for a vast arena it can't fill, how will that improve the Club's finances?

We're told the Club has the money - Mittal - but we never see it. We're told that in a mistily vague future, we'll have the sort of attendances title winning Clubs will have - or we'll have that number of seats, not necessarily that number of supporters - but Beard and Fernandes has never done anything like that in the game, and nobody else has, either, virtually trebling the Club's attendances in 5 years.

If Arsenal had done that, their Ground would hold what? 120,000? Interestingly, they built a much smaller one than United. And Clubs with much smaller ones have won the League since they moved in. While Arsenal have won nothing.

To my mind, it is like me building a huge concert hall for the admittedly massive crowds which will turn up if the piano lessons I tell you I might take one day turn me into one of the most in-demand concert performers in the world.

Shouldn't we start at the beginning? And, like a novice pianist, take the first lesson, then all the others. Among other things, we would find out just how easy - or how hard - or how impossible - it will be to make progress of that kind. Rather than simply assuming it's all a piece of cake, there is nothing to be learned, and everything we have learned the hard way can be disregarded.

If QPR is, by analogy, the trainee pianist, learning the game would be a beginning, and the sign that we are learning would be playing it better and better. If it took us 130 years to get here, we might become the top Club in the land in 5, but where's the evidence?

If I were miraculously appointed overnight as Hughes's replacement, and I actually DID know I could conjure success out of almost any bunch of players - Clough & Taylor style, as it were - I wouldn't waste my breath announcing what a genius I was going to be, because people would just laugh, and say 'who the **** are you?'

I'd just do it. Disbelief would vanish in the face of endless victories. And the fact that they don't do that - or haven't yet, I can wait a week or so - is rather suggestive, I'd say.

Once I'd pulled in 3 or 4 titles - I give myself the 5 years Fernandes or Beard talks about, with maybe a Champions League or two thrown in to make it all seem a bit more convincing, then we would know what demand would be. Winning all the time, being on TV all the time, getting interest from all those commercial interests, that would provide more than enough revenue, especially if it will take 5 years to BUILD a new ground anyway.

But it doesn't really make sense to me for 'investors' to imply that the Club is crammed in to an unserviceably small stadium on the basis of one top flight relegation struggle in 15 years- and a rip-roaring start in the bottom three this season. We might not stay in the bottom three. But Arsenal, Liverpool and United didn't get to the pulling power they have now by merely keeping themselves in mid-table for a year or two.

And why, if football is the point of all this, do Beard and Fernandes insist on a multi-use facility?

What they are proposing is using QPR's money, support, identity and league position to fund projects of their own which have nothing to do with football, assuming that that is what multi-use means. Not football.

If QPR will not own the new facility, how will it benefit? Why would a mere 'tenant' get ANY of the revenue from all that 'multi-use'. Coventry City didn't get the ground sponsorship money because they didn't own the Ground. The Landlord gets it.

But a 'tenant' PAYS the entire cost of a property he inhabits as a tenant. If, for example, the property has been acquired or built by means of loans? On that basis, QPR will pay the cost, but won't make any money out of it. What would be the point in handing revenues over to the tenant. The reason for having a tenant is to PROVIDE the rental revenue in the first place. If QPR owned the entire complex, then it would get all the money, as well as being obliged to pay for it.

But QPR won't even own the Ground, let alone anything else.

Given our history, and Fernandes and Beard having never even taken that first 'piano' lesson, it seems far more likely that we will be the next Coventry City than West London's Manchester United.

We're not even buying title-quality players, like Chelsea did, or City did, but we're talking about a Ground comparable to theirs. that is the only alternative to sheer Clough-like brilliance. Fernandes and Beard can do an Abramovich or a Mansour, with Mittal's money, and take us directly to the top, as they did.

But they're doing neither. And on the basis of that, Loftus Road seems just about right, to me.

I have nothing against a bigger ground, or a new Ground. It could be 100,000, no problem. But watching QPR being asset-stripped by people who have only been here a year or so, not on the basis that they've made the Club successful or made it profitable - there are plenty of debts, it seems, and they're still clinging to the ABC loan taken out nearly 20 years ago, so, to my mind, it all sounds far more dodgy than anything else.

Do United. on the basis of Ferguson's successes, think United should build a Ground holding 180,000 or more? Roughly the equivalent in United's case, to a 45,000 capacity ground for QPR.

Their current capacity is less than their one-time record attendance of 84,000. If success creates demand for much bigger grounds at small Clubs like ours, why aren't Grounds actually bigger? Reading's isn't. Fulham's isn't. Arsenal's is notably smaller than it once was, even at 60,000. United's is. City's is. Chelsea, too.

Good talking to you, mate, always a fascinating topic, and an excellent thread on it.

[cpr]

Fantastic reading Mr Ingham, absolutely fantstic, brilliant in the extreme, I doff my cap to you sir.

I hope your posts get the audience they deserve and I don't mean just us fans.

[Macmoish]

Edit/Bump another year

Sept 3, 2010 7:44:32 GMT Macmoish said:

Edit/Bump

QPR Attendance

2013/14 16, 600

2012/13 17,779

2011/12 17, 295

2010/11 15,635

2009/10 13,348

2008/09 14,003

2007/08 13,958

2006/07 12,936

2005/06 13,440

2004/05 16,055

2003/04 14,784 (QPR's Promotion season)

2002/03 13,206 (Playoff Final Season)

-------------

[These Stats below, from Wikipedia, so can't absolutely vouch...)

1996-97 12,554 (First Season Down)

1995-96 15,683 (Prem Relegation)

1994-95 ??

1993-94 14,228

--------


Going Further Back...QPR Attendance Figures From Gordon Macey

1975/78 - 23,830

1976/77 - 21,085

1977/78 - 19,900

1978/79 - 16, 287 (Relegation under Burtensahw

1979/80 - 14,087

1980/81 - 10, 938 (Docherty/Venables)

1981/82 12,576 (Venables)

1982/83 - 12,806

1983/84 15,560 (First season back up)1984/85 14,148

1985/86 15,241

1986/87 13,987

1987/88 13,135

1988/89 12,286

1989/90 13,226

1990/91 13,524

1991/92 13,699

1992/93 14,969

Stats from an old Gordon Macey "Queens's Park Rangers..."

[ingham]

Yes, well, Hitler did his homework before he invaded the Soviet Union, eusebio (where are the damn smilies?), did he not!

There simply weren't going to be any problems. There never are. He just thought them out of existence. No winter clothing, no antifreeze required. The sun was shining, it was warm ...

Russia is approximately the same size as Belgium, and he got across Belgium in no time. Ergo ... And anyway, the Russians were rubbish.

There you go, mate (sorry about the smilies). And a stadium name suggestion, to boot.

Stalingrad.

What do you think?

I also don't believe gramps paid to get in. Revenue streams? With supporters like that? (I definitely need some smilies here).

[terryb]

What these figures tell me is that apart from the immediate post war years & of course the glory of the mid 70's, we have higher home crowds now than we have ever had.

Look at the figures in the Venables era. They were a lot lower, but maybe that applied to football in general at that time.

When was the last time we played a home league game with a crowd under 10k? It happened more than once when we were in the top division previously. We do not have the highest numbers but our loyalty is up there with the best.

[bp]

Terry the crowds dipped mainly due to hooligan problems. You took your life in your hands going to games then!!

Peter [Ingham] my god you old Marxist Leninist Trotskyite are you still reading the Morning Star and the Socialist Worker?

And finally to correct a point made earlier [3 years earlier] by Budgie

Sept 3, 2010 8:56:20 GMT Budgies Mullett said:

High ticket prices = low attendances.
Low ticket prices = high attendances.

I seem to remember it was £18 or so in 04/05. Get back to those prices and we will get those attendances/ higher matchday revenue/ local and national interest that our owners are so desperately seeking.

04/05 was the year you had £18 tickets only if you were an Ellerslie/Loft Season ticket renewing [13000+ season tickets sold majority of which were renewals that year], the 'On The Day' price and new season tickets were much higher. And we only averaged 16000 that year because we always gave the whole of the away end to our opposition otherwise it would match recent years. Another reason, so my sons say, is we had a great chairman that year...!!!

the fat head and glasses might remind you of who I mean, and no thats not Devo its me

[ingham]

Er, I did reply to yours, Bill, but it has disappeared.

So there is a God after all

[Macmoish]

I forgot I had done this!

“@oldbighead1: .vblockranger Higher att. this season than 10/11 or 33 years before.Twitter minority do shout loud,but fans are voting with their feet,fact”

[ingham]

Sounds like an utter disaster in the making.

Have the people who doubled losses then doubled them again to £177 million getting the Club relegated REALLY done their homework?

No doubt that is what he means by the bit about the stadium in use for 19 PREMIER LEAGUE games per season. Yeah, right. We're always in the 'Premier League'. And every small Club in the Premier League or out of it gets 45,000 every week.

Why on earth should the Club pay through the nose for a stadium which is being built for SOMETHING ELSE?

And if the purpose of the stadium is 'other activities' - vague, but general enough to imply the odd major event like the World Cup, without any evidence that it will ever host anything of significance that is EVER bigger than QPR's regular average attendance of 13,000 plus.

Speculators siphoned £13 billion out of Londoners for 3 weeks of decent attendances. THAT is where the money is to be made. Building and selling venues like this. And being the Landlord, if a football club, or even two, can be its slave, pouring its own revenue into paying for the Landlord's investment while any money EARNED from the site goes straight into the Landlord's pocket, not the Club's.

Beard has told us this already.

How can they claim to be representing the Club's interests at all if the chief purpose of the stadium is not its suitability - and only its suitability - to the Football Club they are supposed to represent. According to the article above, Beard and his mates represent anyone and everything OTHER than QPR.

But they don't mind selling off QPR's assets to line their pockets.

Why not build the Club a stadium where any OTHER activities at the CLUB'S home enrich QUEENS PARK RANGERS?

We're supposed to believe that Fernandes, his pals, Beard and his associates, BELIEVE in QPR and are here FOR LIFE? I can just imagine. So negative is their image of QPR - and their assessment of their own talent and capabilities as its representatives - that they think it incapable of even OWNING ITS OWN HOME.

But they don't mind selling the one it has off. These talented guys who lost £177 million when the TOTAL debt for the last 25 years only amounted to £33 million. Bhatia and Mittal, Fernandes and Beard have lost almost SIX TIMES what every other chairman since Gregory lost over a quarter of a century.

But don't worry, the Club will get nothing out of it. That's reassuring.

If the stadium is the priority, not QPR, why don't they represent the stadium company, and let someone who puts QPR FIRST represent QPR!

If the stadium owner will pocket all non-football revenue, and all the revenue from sponsorship of the Ground, which will only be viable if QPR play there - using the example of that other White Elephant, the Olympic Three Week Wonder that Won't Pay Its Way Without a moderate medium sized football Club, West Ham - what on earth will QPR get out of it?

I see no evidence at all that these people have the Club's interests at heart. And none whatsoever that they have the slightest talent for football. Still less have they any idea how to handle the Club's finances.

Fernandes made a reference to the debt being connected to the Ground. As £177 million can hardly be secured against Loftus Road, does this mean he has lost more or less the ENTIRE value of the new stadium before it has even been built?

That is what his predecessors did, so it is hardly surprising. And does he expect to get it back in rent from the £200 million?

Interesting that all the articles never touch on the way the stadium will actually work. Just a lot of empty speculation about how much it will be used, with no evidence that it will, and absolutely none that it will benefit QPR in any way at all.

Compared to Gregory, who had the intelligence to back off, and the talent to actually make real attendances materialise within the capabilities of the Club, they are a joke. The big ideas he had about stadiums left QPR with a ground which was far smaller than the one he inherited, and would have moved us to another one - Griffin Park - which ended up even smaller.

Until someone who knows something about football is running the Club, and who is here long enough to demonstrate that the CLUB has the nous, the talent, the experience and the track record to merit a bigger ground, it will be send in the clowns.

And however inept the last lot were, the next lot always seems to surpass them. The more money they lose, the more outlandish the fantasies become.

Just outplay the opposition convincingly for 15-20 years. Be brilliant. Use money shrewdly, creatively, expertly.

Any fool can be a yokel, they say. And any yokel could outsmart this bunch.

[Macmoish]

Bump

Sept 3, 2010 7:44:32 GMT Macmoish said:

Edit/Bump


QPR Attendance

2013/14 - 16655 (Promotion!)

2012/13 17,779 (Relegation!)

2011/12 17, 295

2010/11 15,635

2009/10 13,348

2008/09 14,003

2007/08 13,958

2006/07 12,936

2005/06 13,440

2004/05 16,055

2003/04 14,784 (QPR's Promotion season)

2002/03 13,206 (Playoff Final Season)

-------------

[These Stats below, from Wikipedia, so can't absolutely vouch...)

1996-97 12,554 (First Season Down)

1995-96 15,683 (Prem Relegation)

1994-95 ??

1993-94 14,228

--------


Going Further Back...QPR Attendance Figures From Gordon Macey

1961-62 10,986

1962-63 9979

1963-64 7,812

1964-65 5,713

1965-66 8,263
1966-67 13,161

1967-68 18,462

1968-21,572

1969- 17,525

1970-71 12, 862

1971-72 14,556

1972-73 14, 714

1973 - 22,862


1974 - 20,385

1975/76 - 23,830

1976/77 - 21,085

1977/78 - 19,900

1978/79 - 16, 287 (Relegation under Burtensahw

1979/80 - 14,087

1980/81 - 10, 938 (Docherty/Venables)

1981/82 12,576 (Venables)

1982/83 - 12,806

1983/84 15,560 (First season back up)1984/85 14,148

1985/86 15,241

1986/87 13,987

1987/88 13,135

1988/89 12,286

1989/90 13,226

1990/91 13,524

1991/92 13,699

1992/93 14,969

Stats from an old Gordon Macey "Queens's Park Rangers..."

[Macmoish]

And then I find this site

QPR Attendance Stats for the past Century +

www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attnclub/qpr.htm

[Macmoish]

Just to bump!