City to expand Etihad to 62,000?

[ManCityJordan]

I'd say my area is split 50/50. Both my primary and high school had loads of City fans, and I always see both red and blue tops.

Vast majority of blues I know either have or have had season tickets and been to away games, where as I only know a few reds who go as much.

 

[Stretford Born Blue]

Before we moved from Maine Road, I attended the inaugural supporters club meeting at Northenden.
Dennis Tueart and a couple of other representatives from City came to the meeting. A big discussion centered around how big they were going to make the new stadium, ie around 50 or 60 thousand.
The decision was to be taken, obviously based on season ticket and other ticket sales.
Based on the figures back then, 13 years ago I guess, they decided upon a near 50 thousand seated stadium as our current fan base would fill it.

Interestingly they told us that 35% of our fan base was situated in the South East.............................!!

wonder what the numbers would be now across the country...?!.[/quote

The Stretford bit, gives you away!

How wrong you are pal, 30 odd years a season ticket holder my friend with a family history of blues back to 1884, and my post above is 110% bob on.!!

 

[IanBishopsHaircut]

Why is everyone talking about where blues/reds are based in manc?

Who gives a flying f**k

 

[remember arthur mann]

Before we moved from Maine Road, I attended the inaugural supporters club meeting at Northenden.
Dennis Tueart and a couple of other representatives from City came to the meeting. A big discussion centered around how big they were going to make the new stadium, ie around 50 or 60 thousand.
The decision was to be taken, obviously based on season ticket and other ticket sales.
Based on the figures back then, 13 years ago I guess, they decided upon a near 50 thousand seated stadium as our current fan base would fill it.

Interestingly they told us that 35% of our fan base was situated in the South East.............................!!

wonder what the numbers would be now across the country...?!.[/quote

The Stretford bit, gives you away!

How wrong you are pal, 30 odd years a season ticket holder my friend with a family history of blues back to 1884, and my post above is 110% bob on.!!

You meant to say S E Manchester.

 

[Norman kneejerk]

A bit of a shift from 2002 - it was about equal then between Manchester and Stockport (about 14% of s.t. holders from both)
http://www.e-space.mmu.ac.uk/e-space/bitstream/2173/12506/1/seasonticketreport - brown1.pdf
(pages 4 and 10) - you have to know which M postcodes are within the city of Manchester, and the SK list doesn't include SK7 (SK14 and SK16 are in Tameside). The best stat is that City had more fans living in the city of Manchester (City 2725, United 1968) even though the Rags had more fans in total. Far more s.t. holders for both clubs since then of course.

As a total outsider here, Judging from this map, most city fans seem to be on the right hand side of manchester, so are more united fans from the left hand side? Or do most people from wigan and bolton just stick to their own sides and dont support either united or city? or is rugby league a big factor in those parts of manchester?

Interesting map, about what I expected. The thing that gets missed with this Stockport thing is that a loy of city fans are from families originally around East Manchester/Gorton etc and over the generations have fanned out through Stockport and Tameside and bits of Cheshire. Once you get further into Cheshire the links to Manchester get less and you get more reds again. Also a lot of united families seem to live around places like Leigh presumably because they moved from Salford its just the movement of people - love city demographics as a subject. Its same all over no doubt a lot of West Ham fans now live in Essex not the east end

 

[BufordUSABlue]

As a total outsider here, Judging from this map, most city fans seem to be on the right hand side of manchester, so are more united fans from the left hand side? Or do most people from wigan and bolton just stick to their own sides and dont support either united or city? or is rugby league a big factor in those parts of manchester?

I don't think Wigan and Bolton people class themselves as coming from Manchester any more than people from other towns a similar distance away. They identify themselves more as being from Lancashire rather than GM. I've seen a few articles and surveys that show that City fans are more numerous in the South and East and United in the North and West. Here's the result of one of them that illustrates that. I think each blob shows who's fans are in the majority for a particular postcode area.

Would disagree with Rochdale being red.....

Me too , I lived there for 18 years and definitely more Blue than Red!

 

[franksinatra]

Before we moved from Maine Road, I attended the inaugural supporters club meeting at Northenden.
Dennis Tueart and a couple of other representatives from City came to the meeting. A big discussion centered around how big they were going to make the new stadium, ie around 50 or 60 thousand.
The decision was to be taken, obviously based on season ticket and other ticket sales.
Based on the figures back then, 13 years ago I guess, they decided upon a near 50 thousand seated stadium as our current fan base would fill it.

Interestingly they told us that 35% of our fan base was situated in the South East.............................!!

wonder what the numbers would be now across the country...?!.[/quote

The Stretford bit, gives you away!

How wrong you are pal, 30 odd years a season ticket holder my friend with a family history of blues back to 1884, and my post above is 110% bob on.!!

Interestingly two season ago 83 thousand different supporters attended the Etihad and only 10 thousand travelled a distance of 100 miles or more. So even if every fan who attended was from the south east that would only equate to 12 percent.

So unless there has been a sudden change in the demographic of support it sounds like rubbish

 

[M18CTID]

It doesn't actually matter if we fill it or not.

That only matters in the minds of people who are worried about what rags or others have to say.

Even if we get 47k one week, 54k the following week, 46k the week after 57k then 47k then 62k the week after that etc etc, then we have more fans watching City, than if the ground was held at 47k.

After a few years of that, if we continue to be succussful, then we will be averaging nearer to the 62k than the 47 & wondering if we are soon going to start exceeding that capacity.

Barca have loads of empty seats most weeks, 20k+ on average. I don't tend to worry about it.

Exactly. I don't expect us to fill it for the lesser Premier League games to start with (and certainly not the early round League Cup games) but that will probably happen in time as the fanbase grows. The important thing is that with so many games selling out these days (regardless of what the thick Rag WUMs say about us never selling out except against them), we're missing out on extra revenue so the sooner we expand the better.

 

[Bluearmy]

I'd say my area is split 50/50. Both my primary and high school had loads of City fans, and I always see both red and blue tops.

Vast majority of blues I know either have or have had season tickets and been to away games, where as I only know a few reds who go as much.

Im 37 so when I first started supporting city (Early 80's) both teams were fairly average and my junior class was split between the two, with the odd Liverpool fan (South Manchester)... Now out of my pals, all the city lads have season tickets and do the odd aways, while the Rags havent got a season ticket between them.. A few do go occasionally (3 or 4 times a year) if they get offered a freebie but there not true supporters in the real sense. A few didnt even go out to watch the Arsenal match as theyve "lost Interest" in football... Says it all

 

[M18CTID]

regarding the people worrying about not being able to fill the ground for "lesser" games and being constantly reminded by opposition fans that we cant fill the ground at 48,000 let alone over 60,000, then we could do what happens in the Millenium stadium down here. The top games always sell out at 74,000, but when crowd attendance is expected to be around the 40-50,000 mark, then the top tier is not opened for that game. Hence the two bottom tiers are full and with clever use of the tv cameras, the empty top tier is not shown and therefore the ground looks pretty full.

Just a thought if offering cheaper tickets still doesnt fill up the ground?

Please dont shout at me.

You must be a nervous wreck my friend :-) Some said we'd never fill the CoM stadium after moving from Maine Road, but we filled it immediately. It's only because we became utter shite that numbers dropped off again.

This season I had no chance of a Barca ticket despite being a paying blue member. After being number 5800 in the internet queue it sold out. nearly all league games sell out well before the day of the game.

Plus get a feel for the immense growth our execs are putting in - we've been expecting this expansion for absolutely ages and I'll bet right now we sell out at each stage of completion as our growth powers away.

The only variable it that we actually start winning things - but then again how many people who've said over the years 'I support so-and-so because I love the way they play'?

How we've maintained so many supporters over the years is one of the wonders of the world, many years of NOBODY around the country choosing City, all some other bugger. Now we will reap the rewards of being a successful club again in the support base. When I moved to Cornwall from Manchester in 1968 there were a good few kids supported City by choice. When my kids went through school the only ones were the children of us, from that generation - those who had managed to maintain their kids in the faith!


That is all changing.

This is a very interesting and relevant point. I would argue that in Manchester and the surrounding area, we've lost a whole generation of younger fans to United in the past 20 years or so on account of them being hugely successful on the pitch and us being largely, ahem, shite at the same time. I'm not talking about the ones who had family that supported City or United and therefore had a natural path to follow but all those that went to school who had parents and family that weren't arsed about football and hence weren't swayed by peer pressure. I doubt whether any kid in those circumstances would choose City while United were winning everything and to be honest you could hardly blame them.

Nowadays it's totally different and we're not only contenders for trophies but are currently streets ahead of them on the pitch and as such I'd expect us to hoover up a lot more of the young local fans that don't have strong family allegiances to either club compared to just a few years ago.