Thirdly, work out how to deliver a great matchday experience to encourage more families to come along. There's the short-term benefit of multiples on tickets/F&B/merchandise spending as well as the added longer-term benefit of nurturing a new generation of fans. Intertwined with this try and limit/reduce the middle-aged, just-out-to-get-hammered 'fans', although this is more an issue at internationals than club games.
PRL could do a lot worse then studying the Canadian Football League. Clubs run on roughly the same budget as Premiership Clubs, yet the loses across the 9 clubs are a fraction of what the Premiership clubs lose a season. Yet they don't skimp on the match day experience and ticket prices aren't ridiculous either. I went to a match in Vancouver last summer and it was a much more enjoyable experience than most rugby experiences in the UK (even if Winnipeg Blue Bombers fans are some of the most annoying sports fans I've ever encountered).
The CFL does have some natural advantages: wider spread of clubs and less competition for spectators for example, but the travel costs are much higher too.
Thinking about people who go to watch F1, what do they see of the action other than a noisy blur of cars every couple of minutes? You also need a load of dosh to be able to go to more than the one race a year held in your home country. It's a sport best watched on telly.
It's not quite that bad, unless you end up with tickets on a fast straight.
I went to the Hungarian Grand Prix in 2015 and sat at a chicane at the far end of the circuit. I had a really good view of two straights, a hairpin and the chicane. As the track is in a valley I could see the end of the start finish straight and the first corner in the distance. There was a big screen in front of me and the PA system was good enough to listen to commentary during the race.
On the flip side I went to the Canadian Grand Prix in 2018. Seats were uncomfortable, the big screen that was opposite the stand I was in the year before was missing and I was sat on a straight so cars were going past pretty fast. Not a lot happened in that race which didn't help.
On the whole I prefer watching on TV. That's not to say it's a bad experience going to races, but many are a long way from anywhere and with travel it's a long old day (admittedly I didn't help myself with the Canadian race by flying from Toronto to Edmonton the morning before to go to Canada v Scotland, then getting the red eye from Edmonton to Montreal the night before the race).
A friend of mine was the account manager for one of the main personal sponsors of a driver who lost his drive at the end of last year and organised hospitality events at a number of races. At some tracks the hospitality sections didn't include views of the tracks, which defies logic to me.
I'm not saying everything F1 does is great: The Miami Grand Prix was a tacky mess in my view, a track around a car park with a fake marina that looked ridiculous, and I'm really not holding out much hope for the Las Vegas race in November, but in terms of building interest, it doesn't do a bad job.
Topic: Ben Jacobs interview (Read 2111 times)
Always a Wasp