Quote Originally Posted by Citizen's Nephew View Post
I think this is a really good point and think has a huge bearing on PL relegation. But Eric, if we play football like we did last season then do you really think that if we got relegated to L1 that we wouldn't shed around 30%? Maybe not the ST holders in the first relegation season but if we didn't go up, and the football didn't improve, then I really couldn't imagine much more than around 10K on a good day and ST sales to gradually decline.
It's impossible to predict and we can only have our opinions on it.

Our fanbase has changed somewhat over the last 20 years. We've lost fans due to the red shirt fiasco, fans will come and go for various reasons, but we've had a stable number of around 16k since the days of Russell Slade, which could be better, but is a figure we've improved on with promotion and I think we'll do better than that again this season. I assume the figure of around 13k season tickets is about right. I don't think that would be affected all that much.

I'm looking at attendance figures of teams that have been Championship regulars when they've gone down to League 1. If there's been a drop in attendance, it's been the season a club has been relegated, more often than a drop the season afterwards in League 1. Several sides have seen crowds improve after relegation. Not too many clubs see a drop in crowds, any drops seem to be no more than around 2k.

Last season we managed an average attendance of just shy of 19k in a season where we were utter shit and struggled at the bottom. This season we look set to have similar crowds. I know there's a gut instinct that crowds would drop if we did get relegated, but that doesn't match the statistics.