Hi, i'm from korea

[silvercue]

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).

The empty seats in the family area are caused by the fact you can only buy min 2 seats and they allow people to buy them with gaps next to them, so before you know it you can have 1 in 3 seats unavailable to selll! The club need to sort the family area - it is just wrong.

As for locals - if you don't want Korean's tagging along, why do you want Somalis? :drunk:

[brightonr]

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,

I would imagine that the things that the owners are doing now, are to improve the fanbase over a period of years. We are not going to get 5000 Koreans in Loftus Road simply because Park is with us. There are no doubt many ways of attracting new fans and I think that we need a good 25% increase to our average gate if we are going to be playing in a new modern stadium.

James mentioned earlier, "Kids for a quid". I seem to recall some complaining about the screaming high pitched noise we had to "suffer", whilst these youngsters were getting all excited watching their early games of league football.

Then of course there were the "Four for a score" I think it was called and the "Bundles" promotions. DesIgned to target the exact same missing local fanbase you would appear to refer to, whereby local fans could come with friends/family to see what all the fuss was. To see what made people like you and me get almost to the point of obsession. But of course, that led to loads of complaints from existing fans as to how unfair it was that the cost of their season tickets was more pro rata than those that took advantage of such promotions. How they were somehow subsidising the attempt at obtaining new fans. Not saying for a second that you were one of them, but you will have seen threads on here about it for sure. Whatever the club do, regardless of who owns it, will always be not to the liking of some people.

We need new fans, not just to survive, but to thrive. I for one couldn't care where they come from, provided they all want us to win, to support our progress and enjoy our future successes.

[willis1980]

i can see all sides of the argument here, i dont like a ground full of tourists not because im a xenophobe but because on the whole im a bit of miserable caant and i cant stand people dordelling about the gaff not knowing where theyre going or blocking my view with their cameras. in the pub after the game i quite enjoy chatting to some of our tourist supporters, on sunday we had a spaniard chatting to us who came to watch rangers because of granero, a load of icelandic bods came to watch rangers wearing the kit of their local club which is blue and white hooped and then theres all the scandis that come and watch rangers on the regular. fact of the matter is that we notice these people more because we are a small club and they dont just disappear into the ether as they would do in a crowd of 40k or 50k. out of the additional c.3k to 4k supporters we are getting now that we are in the top flight i would be suprised if more than a 1k were korean, people have possibly only picked up on the fact because you can visibly distinguish them from our traditional supporter bases. the remaining add on supporters are likely to be just as fickle and are likely to stop attending if we were to be relegated, which is just as shameful as jumping ship because a certain player has left imo. as much as it saddens me all of this is what football is likely to be like in the modern globalised world, foolham are a prime example suddenly an extra 18k appeared in their ground! you can either lose hair over this or just choose to accept that this is how it going to be from now on.

[MrSwakeley]

i can see all sides of the argument here, i dont like a ground full of tourists not because im a xenophobe but because on the whole im a bit of miserable caant and i cant stand people dordelling about the gaff not knowing where theyre going or blocking my view with their cameras. in the pub after the game i quite enjoy chatting to some of our tourist supporters, on sunday we had a spaniard chatting to us who came to watch rangers because of granero, a load of icelandic bods came to watch rangers wearing the kit of their local club which is blue and white hooped and then theres all the scandis that come and watch rangers on the regular. fact of the matter is that we notice these people more because we are a small club and they dont just disappear into the ether as they would do in a crowd of 40k or 50k. out of the additional c.3k to 4k supporters we are getting now that we are in the top flight i would be suprised if more than a 1k were korean, people have possibly only picked up on the fact because you can visibly distinguish them from our traditional supporter bases. the remaining add on supporters are likely to be just as fickle and are likely to stop attending if we were to be relegated, which is just as shameful as jumping ship because a certain player has left imo. as much as it saddens me all of this is what football is likely to be like in the modern globalised world, foolham are a prime example suddenly an extra 18k appeared in their ground! you can either lose hair over this or just choose to accept that this is how it going to be from now on.

There were loads of Norwegian fans coming to Loftus Road in the 1970s and they were well funny. Of course it's changed in the Premier League, and of course we get pissed off that the foreign ****er in front of us doesn't know who Don Shanks was. But then everyone has to go to a premier league ground for the first time... and I hope they receive a better welcome than the luddites on here.

[bonheurjh]

Oh mate! this thread is still active? :D

[bonheurjh]

We are going to have a new stadium which is big enough to take more fans inside.

End of Story.

[bonheurjh]

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.

My message to you. no homo!

don't laugh at my message mate!