Torquay United Fans Forum

my only problem with the posters is that there are 2 of them that feature more of players in bristol rovers kit than torquays. :no: other than that they are a good idea. the more ideas we can try the better.

i lkie the idea of having someone in town (haldon centre or similar maybe) in a little stall talikng about the club, drumming up interest and getting feedback from the general public. whoever does this though would have to be very friendly, but very thick-skinned.

the holidaymaker thing is a great untapped source of revenue for us
we should have leaflets in EVERY b&b in the bay area, give them a family ticket for £20 or summat, they wouldnt come anyway, so practically give the tickets away, they'll spend money in boots or food stalls, and may become hooked for their next trip south, in any case its a bigger attendance at the very least

can i just say i mentioned about trying to get kids interested and what can we do about it, in a thread at the end of the season.

its took me a very long time to get my lad to go to a game and we got the 2 4 1 for the barnet game and went but i couldnt even give away the free one.
http://www.torquayfans.com/forum/viewto ... f=3&t=5734

trouble is he has lost interest now because the season ended and he has just got started.i'll get him in there again dont you worry.

they are all more interested in their various gadgets, phones, consoles, laptops etc. i cant even get him and his mates out for a kickabout. there are loads of them like that these days. nice sunny days last few weeks and they just wanted to stay in playing bloody xbox.

i do think the club should be in schools a lot more than they do. getting the players to visit would go a long way to getting the kids interested.

a team even playing half decent, slightly entertaining football and winning a few games would go a long way i think.

Hi Guys
Just having a quick read before I am incarcerated in Horsepiddle again.
I wondered if we were possibly missing a small but non the less significant element of supporters who could attend matches.
We are a holiday center. In fact we are mean to be one of the premier holiday spots in the whole of the UK.
We must have a large number of football fans come down to the area.. As the season is starting earlier and earlier, why can we not try to attract these supporters by whatever means we have.
Is there anything that says we cannot have adverts on other web sites of football interest which promote the area and tell those supporters they can watch a bit of football while they are here.
We could have fans from all over the country pay us a visit. You never know. some of those fans, some of whom probably follow the
Premiershite could add United as their second team.

Also, I think initiatives for kids to come should be a constant deal, not just a few one-offs over the course of a season. A fantastic example can be found at Walsall, where kids pay the normal discounted rate for a season ticket and it is refundable over the course of the season. Should they turn up to every game, they effectively pay nothing. Granted, that doesn't bring money into the club right now, but it will in the future and once those kids turn 16, they become adults and pay the full rate, which is far more likely to happen if you've just spent the last 5 years going to every home game.

On the other side of that, the refunded money usually ends up being spent in the club shop or at the food stalls, so it comes into the club anyway. According to a news story from the BBC about it, Walsall saw their attendance rise by around 1,000, revenue earned through other areas of the club rose substantially as parents effectively had "free money" on the day and the amount of adult season tickets bought rose too. In a few years, they reckon they will really start reaping the rewards as estimates show around 50% of those extra kids will end up buying adult season tickets and the majority of the rest will visit several times a season.

you have hit the nail on the head andy, we need to get at the kids, they are the future of any club, when i was a kid at school in the early seventies don mills use to run organise coaching schools around the bay and teignbridge and bring a couple of players along to help. i suppose a bit like frank prince does .
we need the kids to pester the parent.

Agree, the only floating adult fans who would come to games IMO are the ones who maybe used to go but now don't and the 'outsiders' who move into the area from elsewhere and are maybe looking to get involved in watching their 'local' team. Of course some of these newcomers may already be fans of teams like Man U or Arsenal or whatever but in the absence of going to watch them they may choose to go to Plainmoor instead. These are the only two sections of society likely to respond to a poster campaign or anything like that. A random bloke who had never been to a football match before and had lived in Torquay for 20 years say would not look at the posters and think to himself that an afternoon at Plainmoor would be a good idea. He would have already have been by now if he was interested in the club.

That leaves the kids.

Schools in Torbay need to absolutely blitzed with posters, players and club reps going in and doing talks, school trips even to games, free tickets, matchday games and competitions, meetings with Gilbert and other stuff for the younger ones, opportunites for them to play matches on the pitch, tours around Plainmoor etc. The possibilities are endless and I know it seems a little Phoenix Nights-esque but the upshot could be that some of these kids love it so much they pester their parents to take them along to football and they get hooked. I know I did when I was a lot younger and pestered my dad to take me to Hull to watch the Tigers. This is the area we need to concentrating on IMO, forget the adults. The adults will come with a free ticket or if we are doing well and then they will p*ss off again until such events occur again. The kids are the future and with the competition so fierce now from plastic Premier League clubs then it is vital for TUFC to get in there first, they are in situ and have no excuses. I'm sure Andrew will point out that there already a lot of initiatives underway in getting kids involved and I respect that but I just feel that we should f*ck off the adult floaters, if they come because we are doing well then fine but they cannot be relied upon to sustain a club who experience so many ups and downs at a low level and so we need to build from the bottom and we need to really be pretty aggressive about our campaigns with schoolkids if TUFC is to have any future going forward IMO.

Hey, what I've written might be a load of cack but it's what I think we need to do as well as rewarding the CURRENT fanbase who go regularly with incentives like free tickets for attending so many games or free programmes if you collect tokens or something. Forget the freeloaders looking for one off match deals never to be seen again and forget the 'go when we're winning' mob. Yes they bring in a few extra quid but to me they are a waste of space.

i know the club gets involved with the schools to point but what about giving away say 500 tickets for one or two games for the family stand to some of the schools, that may get people intrested in coming to watch it again, there are a lot of kids out there that have never been to a live match as most of the parents are premier leagur armchair fans.

A Candy wrote:Thanks Royalgull.
As always you make some very good points and I agree that the best way to fill the terraces is to have a winning team and of course we will start the season with great optimism and hope. I also agree about the youngsters and getting the players more involved and the Wycombe experience is certainly an interesting initiative. Any survey will need to be planned so that results can be collated easily. I don't imagine an on-line survey will be possible as you are already contacting the people who support the Club. Maybe some random questioning of shoppers with good old fashioned clip boards outside Sainsburys ?
Anyway, food for thought.
Thanks again.
Andrew

That is what I was thinking, could even ask for fans or volunteers just to be in the town centre one saturday afternoon this summer, have a little stall somewhere and try and chat to people. Encourage them to come along or at least find out why they won't go. If it's a recurring theme then at least you'll know what you need to do to bring some of these people in.

It's a start and I certainly welcome the idea, but the poster itself might have been better.

For a start it takes all of two seconds to find a better font than that, and the words down the side remind me of when I used to do sixth form design projects and had space to fill.

I think also the wording, if we are going to go for the 'passionate/local team/live experience' angle, could have been a short story from someone who is recalling their first game, or a memorable moment in their history of supporting Torquay United. We all have those moments, something relatable and subjective would be far more meaningful than saying we are the biggest show in town. What does that even mean?

Furthermore... "an afternoon at Plainmoor" is pretty vague. If we're going for casual fans who've never been to a football game, might it be wise to assume they need spelling out to them when we play, where Plainmoor is, postcode/bus routes/etc?

Like I said, it's a start and that's something so I'm not trying to cause a scene, but I'm not exactly wowed by the end product myself.

Thanks Royalgull.
As always you make some very good points and I agree that the best way to fill the terraces is to have a winning team and of course we will start the season with great optimism and hope. I also agree about the youngsters and getting the players more involved and the Wycombe experience is certainly an interesting initiative. Any survey will need to be planned so that results can be collated easily. I don't imagine an on-line survey will be possible as you are already contacting the people who support the Club. Maybe some random questioning of shoppers with good old fashioned clip boards outside Sainsburys ?
Anyway, food for thought.
Thanks again.
Andrew

Have you thought about doing a survey in the Torbay area of people in whether they would come and watch Torquay and what puts them off doing so?

A Candy wrote:Perhaps I can remind you of the early bird season ticket deal,the new membership opportunities and the Family ticket. Also as the season progresses there will probably be various "special offers" to make attendance easier on the pocket.
Thank you.
Andrew

Good options but it's the casual fans you need to attract not the stalwarts that buy season tickets every year regardless. Ultimately a succesfull team playing good football is the only 100% foolproof way of increasing attendances. Easier said than done, alternatively it's getting peopel thinking they are getting a bargain that needs to happen. Bradford's fan base has gone up since being in this league, mainly down to cheap tickets. Thing is those new fans that rock up in cheaply give the club the money back in things like food and drink, programmes, replica kits, scarves etc throughout the season anyway.

You have to target the yongsters, get the players out and about in local schools, around our way Wycombe players and staff were knocking on people's doors like an election campaign trying to get people coming to their games. It's a days 'work' for them but increased their profile in the lcoal community, this is an area I see (looking in from the outside) where Torquay struggle. it could be down to the pure logistics of the Torbay area, a lot of people have moved there later in life so aren't going to have a love for the local football club but the kids that are there is untapped long term revenue. Soccer schools, day visits, promotions for local schools get the kids going. They go with their friends or if their parents go then even better. When there are big matches, Plainmoor is sold out or we take 10,000+ to Wembley, it's impossible to get all of those wanting to come every week but it shows there are enough people around that are interested in the football club for us to aim for 4-5,000.

There is no easy short term solution to consistently improve a clubs fanbase but it's these steps that tend to have most success.

Hi Andy, I do not have a problem with your opinions and as you know I welcome the thoughts and views of the fan base. Posters are of course only a part of a wider marketing strategy and I am not suggesting that posters alone will bring the crowds flocking back to Plainmoor. There has been many comments in the past about the lack of posters around the area and this is one initiative to try and address this issue. We have other plans in the pipeline that we hope to publicise soon.
Thank you for your words of faith, much appreciated.
Regards,
Andrew

I don't doubt that Andrew and they are the kind of things that maybe can help. I didn't wish to be down on anyone for presenting ideas but if I don't think it will have any effect then i'd rather say so than lie. I know that you are one of the few people behind the scenes this last year or so that I have had faith in.