THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

Can someone please explain how we calculate our attendances?

It's a bit of a running joke amongst fans of other clubs for them to say we exaggerate/inflate our attendances. The club declared an attendance of 15,311 today with 6,850 visiting supporters meaning we apparently had 8,461 in home areas.

Clearly that wasn't the case today and in the visible home areas I'd say we had closer to 5k, absolute max 6k physically there. Are we including ST holders (including kids/subsidised ones) whether or not they turn up? I remember someone mentioned that email that said a certain percentage of ST holders weren't coming to games - which would make sense as the numbers do not add up. Do we have a shitloads of hospitality or people watching from boxes that make up the numbers?

If so many aren't turning up - why? Is it just a case of certain ones being cheap/free so people have them 'just in case' they fancy it a handful of times a season? Hard to say it's down to the football when we're 3rd in the table.

Either way, we need to stop inflating these attendances as we're starting to look silly, and at the same time more needs to be done to encourage people to come to games if they're local and have a ST.

It’s based on tickets sold so the security staff have a base number to go on if there’s a stadium wide emergency. Most clubs do the same.

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Those that we love never truly leave us. There are things that death cannot touch. Paint... and memory... and love.

That makes no sense.

Does that include ST holders that don't turn up then, or are we routinely selling 1k-2k+ tickets to people who just don't turn up?

That’s what I remember the security staff telling me once when I tagged along to a tour of the area. It includes all tickets sold as far as I’m aware, paper plastic or digital.

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Those that we love never truly leave us. There are things that death cannot touch. Paint... and memory... and love.

Remember the home support is split across multiple areas. Cowshed, east stand, club red and the corners.

It looks sparse because of this. If you packed everyone into the whole east stand (including the east corner), you’d see the numbers we report are correct.

Don’t forget the directors box & boxes.

It does include ST holders who don’t attend, as with me today and the three grandkids who would normally have gone with me, so that’s four short for a start

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Johnstone Paint Trophy Winners, you’ll never sing that

I'm aware of all of this, but it still doesn't look anywhere near the numbers the club report. Some of those blocks, especially the corners barely have a few dozen in them. Block 11 is the most populated block in the Cowshed and even that is probably 80% full at best. Not sure how many on average each block holds (I'm sure someone else knows on here) but I'd guess 300?

You mentioned if they packed everyone into the east stand it would look right, but when you look at the photos of the Ipswich end with 6,850, there's no way we had approaching 2k more than them across the rest of the stadium

Each block is around 500 isn’t it? I don’t know if that makes it more realistic to you though.

But honestly, it really doesn’t matter a great deal. If attendances won the league Sunderland would be in the premier league

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Those that we love never truly leave us. There are things that death cannot touch. Paint... and memory... and love.

700 I believe

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Decided to come back.

No it just makes us look silly when we're reporting clearly false numbers weekly. We're a club that don't need any more excuses for others to mock us.