Gills in profit.

[gillsfan1066]

Thats fine then, in that case I think GFC should do a Wimbledon and move to Belfast, there are about 300,000 people there so we could easily sell out a 20,000 seat stadium, or maybe Basingstoke they have 150,000 + there ??

[Garawa]

I get a fair amount of marketing mail etc but I concede most of it is via twitter etc. I know this isn't suitable for most but I guess it is the way of the world these days but I accept the club c/should do more. In terms of low crowds because of who we are playing kind of proves my point. Apathy due to opposition will never give us the fantastic fans we think we have. When Man City were in this division they kept coming waiting for that chance to be back in the big time. Leeds also when they went down. There are a lot of of former Premier league teams in the lower divisions all thinking they shouldn't be there. But they are! You have no choice but to support the side against whoever they are playing. If everyone stayed away waiting for the big teams we would be out of business within a year.

Marketing isn't really the solution here. Our crowds fluctuate between 7.5 and 5.5 therefore we must have fans that will only ever attend a few games a season regardless of marketing because they will surely know about the other games as well? It isn't feasible to think otherwise. If they need a big team or discounts every game to attend then our fan base is more fragile than we think and really the core is the 5.5 and the club have to price it accordingly.

[gillsfan1066]

Only in those five wonderful years 2001/05 did we average over 8,000++, in the early 60's when I started going 6000 was the average gate, in the 70's it was up to 7,000, between 89 /95 it was down to 3,600, and last year it was 5,694, well thats the last 50 years taken care of, want to know the average gates before the 60's, lol.??
260,000, ++ live in the Medway Towns, someones not doing their job properly if we can only get about 1.75 % of the population to turn up, maybe time to start calling Gillingham Football Club ....... Medway United FC ,or Medway Wanderers FC , or how about..........MEDWAY RIVER DOGS FC, lol.

[Rimshot]

Marketing doesn't work then ? Lots of smart people are wasting a whole lot of money in that case. Sorry but that makes no sense at all and since GFC doesn't do any marketing worth talking about I'm not sure you have any evidence.
Scally spends plenty of time pontificating about his personal views so he clearly believes that communications have an effect, it's simply that he can't bear the thought of investing money in the clubs future that could otherwise line his pockets.

[lidbid46]

I actually think a major problem is that so many teams in our league are so far away from us. We have hardly any local derbies and when we do, like Southend, we take 2000 fans. The northern teams play derbies virtually every other week so their attendances are always boosted by away fans and home fans who enjoy a game against local opposition. If we had 2000 away fans at Priestfield we would have nearly 8000 at every game. It is odd the way the league has become so northern oriented and nothing looks like changing any time soon. Also, our expenses must be greater than most other teams and the travelling time must affect the players performances in away games.

[Garawa]

I agree Lidbid, some clubs have away games in walking distance. Many other fans think Southend is a close game for us (using Google no doubt) without realising how far it is really. Rimshot of course marketing works and I said I get a fair amount of it. I have no idea why you don't seem to see much but it seems to work on occasions but not on others. The club managed to engage enough to get almost 2000 to Southend and if they went of their own accord then you can query about why only a few come to some home games. Remember the club gave out a few hundred free tickets to houses around the ground about 4 years back and only a couple of dozen were redeemed. As the Tuesday night crown was a little over 4000 the only explanations were that they were already ST holders but unable to come or they couldn't be bothered. The pubs seemed pretty full of people watching the Champions League game however!

The club can do more, of course they can, but you can't say that fans would flood through the door if they were contacted. If they were fans they would want to attend in the first place unless time or money was an issue which in that case renders marketing irrelevant.

[gillsfan1066]

I have never understood anyone buying a house next to a football ground, airport, river that floods , then complain about the swearing singing etc ,when people leave the ground either happy or sad, or in the case of the airport the jet noise and smell , or the river when it floods, hell didn't you see the stadium when you went looking at the place, or those planes flying 50 feet above your roof, what did you think it was an once a year air display ??
My bet is anyone that lives near the ground probably doesn't go, they hate the Gills for daring to build the stadium so close to the house they were going to buy 50 years later.
My gripe with the Gills is that there are 1.4 million people living in Kent, it has the 8th largest population of all the 46 counties and if you exclude the say 50 % that live nearer London than the Medway Towns , there must be at least a few thousand living between Gillingham and Dover or Tonbridge that want to watch Kents only pro team( at the moment) ???