Harrogate Town chairman Irving Weaver addresses attendance concerns and ticket-price rises

The Sulphurites averaged crowds of slightly over 2,300 in League Two last term but just 1,304 turned up at the EnviroVent Stadium to watch their goalless draw with Crawley on August 13, 95 of whom were away fans.

Their lowest-ever post-Covid-19 League Two attendance followed on from a turnout of 1,948 for the 3-0 opening-day success over Swindon, which was actually an increase of 107 on the crowd for 2021/22’s curtain-raiser at home to Rochdale, though the Robins brought 600 with them.

Both season ticket prices and match-day admission charges went up significantly over the summer, with Town stating that the increases were necessary as the club moves towards a more sustainable model of operation, though chairman Weaver is not convinced that this was the only “factor at play" during the Crawley clash.

He told the Harrogate Advertiser: “The attendance last Saturday made me look. I’ve cross-checked the figures.

“I think it is important to look behind the figures. The overall picture is what we need to see. There are all types of things at play here.

“I know that people will be thinking ‘what the hell happened there?’. I think the automatic conclusion to jump to is that it’s because prices have gone up, but I think that it is too early to say.

“I think that we’ll need until mid-September before we have a clearer picture and we can really make an assessment.

“We need more games, more time before we can make a balanced appraisal. I don’t think the situation is as stark as it looks after the Crawley attendance. As I say, there are a lot of factors at play.”

Addressing the other factors he felt had contributed to the low turnout for the Crawley fixture, Weaver drew comparisons with last term's opening-day showdown with Rochdale, which took place on August 7, 2021 and was therefore the closest comparable calendar date.

"There's a big disparity in terms of the number of away fans who attended. Rochdale brought more than 600 [648 in total], while Crawley travelled with 95," he added.

"Another thing to consider is that our hospitality area wasn’t open for the Crawley match as it hadn’t been signed off by that point. That’s 100 people right there.

“It's holiday season, but last summer people weren’t taking flights. That situation has changed. It seems like half the town is on holiday at the moment. And that's not just a feeling I have, when I've been driving home from Harrogate to Wetherby recently, the roads have been quieter, the journey has been taking half the amount of time it usually does.

"My financial director at Strata, his son is one of a number of a group of younger supporters who attend home games. I noticed that he wasn't at the Crawley match. I found out that he's away at the moment, so are all of the group he comes to games with. That's just one example."

On the issue of season and match-day ticket price increases, Town's chairman said: “I’ve not had any feedback about that personally, but then I wouldn’t necessarily expect to.

“I think that you are always going to get that kind of a [negative] reaction to a price rise from some supporters. I think that it is inevitable.

“I don’t yet know on what scale we will be affected by that issue [of fans opting not to renew season tickets due to increased cost].

“What I can say is that we had to move on the ticket prices because we were so far short of the rest of the league and even of the likes of York City. We had to try and level up because we were too far behind.

“It’s a shame that we were not able to introduce an incremental increase, but because of the Covid situation, that wasn’t possible.

“We’ve done a lot of work on this. A lot of research has been carried out and we have not increased prices any more than was necessary.”

Asked whether he was concerned by the possibility of attendances remaining around the 1,300-mark and if such crowds were financially sustainable, Weaver replied: “I think that is an assumption and that you would be very quick to get to that after two home games.

“I really do think that it is too early to say. As I’ve outlined already, there are a lot of factors at play that need to be considered.

“We need at least another two or three matches, then we will have a better idea. That is just being rational.

“Our average attendance last season was just short of 2,400 and we don’t expect it to fall below that this year.”

Town have had some issues with their new online ticketing system, powered by Ticketmaster, with fans also unable to purchase tickets for the Crawley fixture in person on the day of the game due to the club's Commercial Street store being closed.

"There have been some problems with the ticketing system, but we've brought in Ticketmaster having been really hampered last season. We've done our research and canvassed some of the industry leaders before opting to partner with them," Weaver continued.

"We are still learning the ropes on matchdays and we are in the process of recruiting a new ticketing manager.

"For the Stockport game, our own safety advisor - not the North Yorkshire SAG - told us that we needed to restrict ticket sales to one per person to try and prevent a situation where we ended up with away fans buying tickets in the home areas. And, you have to have the same restrictions in place for home fans as away fans.

"We don't want to put barriers in place, we want to remove them, but that was a decision that was imposed on us based on Police information. Certain clubs are known for being particularly bad when it comes to their travelling supporters buying tickets in the away end and Stockport are one of those clubs."

Following two away fixtures, Town return to League Two action on home soil when they hosts Newport County at Wetherby Road this Saturday, 3pm kick-off.