The lack of competition in the PRO14, and a resultant tendency to rest first choice players, definitely impacts the interest of some fans. Some family members can't even be bothered to watch these games on the box. It will be interesting to see if this changes now that the SA teams have upped the standard, which will require Leinster to change its selection policy for these games.wixfjord wrote: ↑September 13th, 2022, 9:31 pmI disagree, I think it's a fair point. As I say, big stars attract fans. No doubt about that, as the above research says.LeRouxIsPHat wrote: ↑September 13th, 2022, 9:17 pm No it doesn’t compute, the second and third string players are the ones who’ve actually been playing the games so it’s hard to market that no matter what way you slice it. IIRC you were one of the posters calling for changes to the league because of facile victories. Even if you weren’t, there was clearly a feeling on here that change was needed, and if fans on here were feeling that way then it would have been extremely difficult for Leinster to overcome that with casual fans when that was the product they were dealing with.
I also wouldn’t forget the progress that has been made over the last 20 years. We’ve gone from a small time organisation playing in Donnybrook, to bigger crowds in the RDS, and now we’re regular visitors to the Aviva and get good crowds there. Crowds over the last couple of years have been massively affected by Covid too so let’s not forget that either.
Not saying we can’t improve but we’re by no means a failure and should look at the bigger picture.
That doesn't mean we can't do better to attract fans by making bigger stars out of those who play in the league for us, which we haven't done.
We've made great progress in the last 20 years, and that has stagnated in the last 10.
I'm not saying it's easy to market, I'm saying we haven't done it well and in many cases haven't tried enough.
There's massive potential and a little bit of creativity, lateral thinking and risk taking is required to unlock fan growth.
And of course I am not just talking about league games either, as I've said. Even when we have the first string players we often haven't drawn big crowds in the RDS.
The GAA operate a season ticket scheme where fans who attend a certain percentage of their teams' games (it was 60% until recently) were guaranteed a ticket to the All Ireland final if their team should qualify. I wonder if a similar scheme might pay dividends if the provincial season ticket holders who could document attendance were to get tickets for the 6N?
