Rise in league attendances is good news for FAI
Emmet Malone Soccer correspondent
Attendances at League of Ireland games have increased by more than a third during the opening six weeks of the new season, FAI officials revealed yesterday. The increase of 37.16 per cent equates to an average of fractionally more than 400 additional spectators at every game played in the two divisions so far.
In terms of total numbers, 97,656 people have attended the 66 games played so far compared with the 65,828 who watched the first 61 games of the last campaign.
“We’re absolutely delighted,” said league director Fran Gavin yesterday. "It’s good news and after what have been a difficult few weeks with the FIFA registration problems we’ll take all the good news we can get.
“The marketing campaign that we have undertaken has been going very well for us, the advertising has worked well and all of the people at the clubs who have been working with Noel Mooney to promote the league have been doing a tremendous job.”
Predictably, the scale of the increases vary considerably from week to week according to what games were played but the numbers have been up every time, most notably in weeks two and five when improvements of 66 per cent and 47 per cent were achieved respectively.
Mooney, the league’s marketing manager, stressed that the organisation’s intention was to ensure it continued to reach out to a wider audience. “These figures are well ahead of what we would have been aiming for at this stage but it’s still very much just a first step for us,” he said.
“We’re working very hard on countless fronts to maintain the improvement but issues like attendances are closely linked to what the clubs are doing in all areas of their operations.”
Gavin, meanwhile, said the FAI remained committed to the ongoing campaign by Cork City to win the right to register two of their most prominent close season signings, international midfielders Gareth Farrelly and Colin Healy.
The club have made a new submission to FIFA on Tuesday effectively asking the game’s international governing body to reconsider its own ruling in the case on the basis of club officials believe are inconsistencies in the rules.
They are also preparing to lodge a case with the Court of Arbitration in Sport which they must complete by tomorrow and Gavin says Merrion Square are providing all the support with this they can. "Hopefully City will succeed in having the decision in relation to the players reversed but whatever happens we will look to have the rules changed during the summer and we expect to have the support of EFPL (the association of European Professional Football Leagues) in our efforts to do so.
“We have no issue with the principle involved here,” he concluded. “The issue we have is with the fact that the dates included in the rule, July 1st and June 30th, are meant to apply to a winter league, not a summer one.”
