Young Fans

Quoted from MarinerWY

The biggest barrier for young fans IMO is not our league position, it is the ticket prices.

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From my personal view as an 18 year old I disagree. I first started going 8 years ago with 7 of my mates. I am the only one who still attends on a regular basis. The main sticking point of why people don't turn up is our league position, my reply to every time I ask someone why they don't support towns is that 'they are poo'. Another thing is that the older generation sometimes forget is that anyone under the age of 20 doesn't have these memories to cling onto to keep them coming back.

When I first started going the thing that kept me going was how good the atmosphere was in the pontoon, I simply wasn't that interested in the football but the atmosphere kept me coming back. There is no better sense of belonging than supporting your local club

Family is another important factor of attracting the younger fans. When you have a couple of members of your family who are town fans then sometimes you have no chance.

I am seen as a loyal town fans by my mates but there is only a certain amount of seasons in non league that I will be able to tolerate.

Quoted from ska face

I don't think the price is the main barrier, especially when you look at the fact that there are people who have been watching the club for 10 years now and the best thing they've seen is Slade's lot losing in Cardiff.

Wembley was 17 years ago. There are a large number of people watching the club who weren't even born then. The poor illegitimates.

THIS. I am 26 and went to Wembley 98 but can't remeber much about it.. My best memories are losing in bloody micky mouse cup finals and play off finals. (excluding liverpool away, wow.)

Bradford put a certain amount (maybe 2500) up at a cheap rate to get people packed into their kop end. It's not just a case of £££'s from season tickets surely. Even if half that amount bought something from the bar or even a programme, then the club would not necessarily lose out significantly financially.

The Lincoln game just seemed so devoid of atmosphere compared to the Macclesfield (away) game. Do people really want to spent cash going to that?

Where Bradford get their high gates from is the amount of young folk that go through the turnstiles on season tickets. Under 11's - see below - are charged a fiver if going with a season ticket holding adult, and this can be for up to two children. Adult season tickets are £300, so a father and two children can go for a full season for just £10. When the children get to 12 years old they're classed as students and then pay £110 per season which works out at just under a fiver a game, so even then it's not going to break the bank to take two kids.

When they first started their cheap tickets I think they charged a fiver per game and crowds went up from about 4,000 to 14,000 immediately. So much better to have a well filled stadium with a lot of youthful noise than a half empty one bereft of any sound? You should have them for life by the time they leave school. It's really not rocket science, and maybe the board could take up the mantle in time for next season?

UNDER 11S POLICY UPDATE - SEASON TICKET

A full paying season ticket holder may obtain a maximum of two season tickets for fans who are under eleven on August 1 2014, free-of-charge subject to a payment of a £5.00 administration fee for each under 11 ticket.

A full paying season ticket holder is described as an adult or senior citizen or student paying the full price for the season ticket. The application for the free under 11 season tickets must be made at the same time as the application is made for the full-price season ticket. This offer cannot be extended to junior season ticket holders (aged between 11 and 15) or FlexiCard holders.

Read more at http://www.bradfordcityfc.co.uk/tickets/season-tickets/index.aspx#XVE1CGGvRm5U9Qer.99

I'm 27 next month and Wembley 98 visits aside (which I don't really remember that well), I've known nothing but failure in all my time watching town. I went to the Liverpool away game where Michael Owen scored a hat-trick, but didn't bother with the one where Jevons scored a screamer. The sole highlight of my time supporting the club was when Kalala scored the winner against Spurs - and that's it. There's not really been any other time when I've jumped around screaming and properly lost it (well, apart from when Disley scored at Gateshead in the playoff semi, but we all know how that turned out).

Anyway, my point is that even for someone my age, it's been pretty awful supporting town through season after season of failure and there being nothing really to cheer about. A couple of years ago in my early twenties, 3 or 4 of my school friends would regularly attend home games and even the odd away fixture, but none of them go anymore for a variety of reasons (moved abroad, don't care anymore, have started a family and can't afford it). I've moved away from Grimsby now and probably only get to about 40-50% of games (home & away) during a season, so support for the club is certainly dwindling and more needs to be done to attract and retain young fans.

One thing that really drunk me off in recent years was the introduction of a 50p per ticket booking fee for online sales. When questioned on the reasons behind this, the club weren't clear whether it was to cover costs, or was meant as a donation to the school of excellence. If it's a donation to the school of excellence it should be levied on ALL ticket sales (in person, over the phone and online) rather than on a method mainly used by by exiled supporters who are unable to visit the ticket office in mid-week to obtain cheap 'early bird' tickets. Essentially this means that exiled supporters have to pay more to buy tickets than those supporters who live near enough to Blundell Park to visit the ticket office before 12:30pm on a matchday. All this does is annoy exiled supporters who already have to spend more of their time and money traveling to watch matches, and was a grossly short-sighted move by the club. I did try raising this issue with the Trust at the time, but nothing came of it.

Quoted from jock dock tower

Where Bradford get their high gates from is the amount of young folk that go through the turnstiles on season tickets.




Read more at http://www.bradfordcityfc.co.uk/tickets/season-tickets/index.aspx#XVE1CGGvRm5U9Qer.99

Its probably more to due with Bradford having the 5th biggest population in England and only having 1 football club.

Quoted from Chrisblor

. A couple of years ago in my early twenties, 3 or 4 of my school friends would regularly attend home games and even the odd away fixture, but none of them go anymore for a variety of reasons (moved abroad, don't care anymore, have started a family and can't afford it). I've moved away from Grimsby now and probably only get to about 40-50% of games (home & away) during a season, so support for the club is certainly dwindling and more needs to be done to attract and retain young fans.

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Seems to be a correlation of most young town fans. The best way to combat this is getting a promotion and playing in the football league.

I was a young fan once....grumble...grumble...kids today.....could leave my bike unlocked outside the ground and when i got back to it there it was, polished,serviced and seat pre warmed ready for ride home. ..

Whilst there's a lot of skint kids; there's a lot of young people with money round here, look at the apprenticeship schemes going on the Humber Bank, all these 21 year olds walking into £30k+ jobs. CATCH in Stallingborough has over 100 apprentices starting each year, whilst all of them don't make it out the other side, a good proportion do.

There's a lot of people in the town that have Hull season tickets despite having town ones in years gone by, disgusting on their part but don't think the season tickets are much more than towns though matchday prices are about double.

Why do tobacco companies give away free fags to kids in South East Asia?