Hi, i'm from korea

[stainrodisalegend]

lol you love playing the race card dont you? Was going to warn essex that it wont be long before he gets accused of racism but i was too late.... embarrassingly predictable and what a nice advert for a Moderator!.

Am not accusing anyone of racism. I am just struggling to find any logical reason why a QPR fan would be unhappy that we have attracted a lot of new fans. I thought fans tended to want their club to grow and be successful, but looks like I was wrong. I also suggested maybe the dislike is because they are new fans as some old timers on here seem to look down on anyone who wasn't on first name terms with Rodney Marsh. I don't know what the issue is - what sane person could? - but I do just pose this question: if a player came from, let us say the Isle of Mann, and for sake of argument a couple of coach loads were coming down every Saturday from there to see their local hero would any of you lot be getting quite so worried that a few empty seats were being taken up by folk from the Isle of Mann? As I say, just asking, not stating.

[stainrodisalegend]

Question for Essex: let us just say Fernandes did buy Park primarily for his marketing potential - I don''t believe he did by the way - but then so what? How much money do you think he has sunk into the club? Where do you think that money comes from other than his airline? Maybe you have an infinite amount of money to throw at your hobbies but in the real world don't you think that the owner needs different parts of his business empire to support each other? And if growing the brand in Asia brings in further revenue - directly through sponsorship etc and indirectly through promoting his airline, making Fernandes richer and leaving him more money to invest in QPR - then isn't it possible that the signing of Park will increase our budget for good players? And do you understand that football is now v big business and not a charity? And did you know that British tourism was boosted by three quarters of a billion pounds last year due to foreigners coming over here to watch Prem League football matches? Don't you think that's a good thing, or would you rather support a poorer club and live in a poorer country? Or are you just having a good old moan?

[essex]

Question for Essex: let us just say Fernandes did buy Park primarily for his marketing potential - I don''t believe he did by the way - but then so what? How much money do you think he has sunk into the club? Where do you think that money comes from other than his airline? Maybe you have an infinite amount of money to throw at your hobbies but in the real world don't you think that the owner needs different parts of his business empire to support each other? And if growing the brand in Asia brings in further revenue - directly through sponsorship etc and indirectly through promoting his airline, making Fernandes richer and leaving him more money to invest in QPR - then isn't it possible that the signing of Park will increase our budget for good players? And do you understand that football is now v big business and not a charity? And did you know that British tourism was boosted by three quarters of a billion pounds last year due to foreigners coming over here to watch Prem League football matches? Don't you think that's a good thing, or would you rather support a poorer club and live in a poorer country? Or are you just having a good old moan?

I am well aware that more fans can only be a good thing, but i think we need to be focusing on building a real fanbase and not tourists. Grounds full of tourists have no atmosphere, and tourists rarely travel away. What happens if the worst does happen and we get relegated? Will these tourists still be flocking through the turnstiles at LR? or will they be down the road at other premiership grounds? Whereas if we try and build up a decent fanbase from the local area, they are more likely to support the team even if we do get promoted.

[vespa]

I am well aware that more fans can only be a good thing, but i think we need to be focusing on building a real fanbase and not tourists. Grounds full of tourists have no atmosphere, and tourists rarely travel away. What happens if the worst does happen and we get relegated? Will these tourists still be flocking through the turnstiles at LR? or will they be down the road at other premiership grounds? Whereas if we try and build up a decent fanbase from the local area, they are more likely to support the team even if we do get promoted.

Your making a fair point Essex

[James1979]

I am well aware that more fans can only be a good thing, but i think we need to be focusing on building a real fanbase and not tourists. Grounds full of tourists have no atmosphere, and tourists rarely travel away. What happens if the worst does happen and we get relegated? Will these tourists still be flocking through the turnstiles at LR? or will they be down the road at other premiership grounds? Whereas if we try and build up a decent fanbase from the local area, they are more likely to support the team even if we do get promoted.

the only game I can remember being sold out in league 1 was cambridge (I think) when it was "kids for a quid". We do not have a big enough "local" fanbase. Our brief encounter with league 1 proved that.

[vespa]

How many clubs sell out to capacity in the third tier of English football ?

[James1979]

How many clubs sell out to capacity in the third tier of English football ?

just wondering where these thousands of fans are that wouldn't come to watch us in league 1 or the championship for that matter. We were unbeaten all year at home in league 1, and prices were initally ok in the championship. We still got nowhere near capacity and our capacity is only 18k! You guys seem to claim we should be getting this local fanbase.....where is it? Where's it been for the past god knows how many years? It seems some of you would rather take some of the chelsea fanbase because they're "local" rather than the new Asian fanbase.

[vespa]

our average attendance in Div 1 was just under 15000 ,which i think is pretty good , for a club of our size. Especially when you consider the away end was empty most games

[vespa]

Personally i dont care one way or another if a few Koreans come to Loftus Rd , but as with ANY newbie supporter , we cant expect the majority of them to be around when the bubble bursts.

[essex]

We have Tony, Phil and Amit. All of them are very clever guys. We had noone of their calibre on board when we were in the lower leagues, they must have ways between them to get local fans supporting the team. If premiership survival was a formatlity this year i can see the benefit of primarily targeting the tourists as moving to a larger 30k+ ground and we will need to fill it. We don't want to be come another chelsea with a poor numbers of real fans and having to rely on plastic fans and tourists filling up our ground. How many of them do you think would still go to matches if the unrealistic happened and Abromovich pulled his money out and they were relegated.

I think we need to look at clubs like dirty-leeds who have big crowds regardless of the league they are in.

[silvercue]

We have Tony, Phil and Amit. All of them are very clever guys. We had noone of their calibre on board when we were in the lower leagues, they must have ways between them to get local fans supporting the team. If premiership survival was a formatlity this year i can see the benefit of primarily targeting the tourists as moving to a larger 30k+ ground and we will need to fill it. We don't want to be come another chelsea with a poor numbers of real fans and having to rely on plastic fans and tourists filling up our ground. How many of them do you think would still go to matches if the unrealistic happened and Abromovich pulled his money out and they were relegated.

I think we need to look at clubs like dirty-leeds who have big crowds regardless of the league they are in.

essex - so you would not like to be in the Champions of Europe one day?

If you look at our LEAGUE attendances for the last 20 years they have hardly deviated at all, apart from one blip year, when it was still very cheap. The division, the ticket price - whatever - it has hardly made any difference. We have a small core of regular fans and they are loyal, so we have good away support too.

We have a lot of migrant workers from eastern europe at LR, if we have some people from Korea - it makes zero differnce. We still don't sell out often and local fans can still very easily get a ticket of they join the membership scheme.

And what exactly are we going to learn from Leeds?

[MYU]

I am well aware that more fans can only be a good thing, but i think we need to be focusing on building a real fanbase and not tourists. Grounds full of tourists have no atmosphere, and tourists rarely travel away. What happens if the worst does happen and we get relegated? Will these tourists still be flocking through the turnstiles at LR? or will they be down the road at other premiership grounds? Whereas if we try and build up a decent fanbase from the local area, they are more likely to support the team even if we do get promoted.

Don't you think that the club have already tried that?

What could the club do right now, not forgetting the fact we have a small ground and a higher wage bill.

[essex]

How have they tried it? I cant remember when there was last a push to bring in local fans. There are numerous things they could do, do special promotions for season ticket holders to bring in extra fans (this could help fill the empty seats in the family area).

[QPR_NW10]

can we put things into perspective a little - we get virtually no money from our gates compared to the rest of the PL, even Championship.
If we go down, our fanbase will go from 18k to 14k in a week. that's 4k difference. that is nothing. Leeds went from 35k+ to 15k...portsmouth from around 20k to 9k...our stadium is so small it really doesn't matter in a way.
i'm all for more "real" fans, but fact of the matter is we've been away for nearly 20 years...and in those 20 years the PL has absolutely boomed. we missed it, we missed the huge "gold rush". nothing we can do.

imo it makes no difference whether we get 18k or 12k...we hardly make any money through the turnstiles.

[MYU]

can we put things into perspective a little - we get virtually no money from our gates compared to the rest of the PL, even Championship.
If we go down, our fanbase will go from 18k to 14k in a week. that's 4k difference. that is nothing. Leeds went from 35k+ to 15k...portsmouth from around 20k to 9k...our stadium is so small it really doesn't matter in a way.
i'm all for more "real" fans, but fact of the matter is we've been away for nearly 20 years...and in those 20 years the PL has absolutely boomed. we missed it, we missed the huge "gold rush". nothing we can do.

imo it makes no difference whether we get 18k or 12k...we hardly make any money through the turnstiles.

You have that spot on, if we can get a few more people wearing our shirts around the globe is a step in the right direction. Some people will ask questions like "who are they", and like the shirt.

It is also try that some people only follow the club because they like the shirt, we are not the club so we are very limited. What we can do is everything we can to try bring more attention to QPR, if we don't try, we wont get anywhere.

Even if we can bring in one new fan to QPR each month, it's something and we're not going to give up.