CaleyD

How about we stop looking everywhere else and start looking at home, talking/listening to the fans here and working towards whatever works best for us? I should qualify that by saying that if what's best for Scotland happens to be the same as above....great. Just let's not jump assuming things will work here because they work elsewhere. I'm also taking it for granted that it works in Sweden and the fans there are happy with it.

What's that got to do with the price of cheese?

Been happening for as long as I can remember...and bigger/older and better-resourced teams than us have failed to do anything which has ever had an impact on it. Perhaps Friday night football which makes it a bit tougher for people to travel to see their "home" team might encourage them to stay local instead?

I'm feeling good about this one.....3-0 win for us ?

Taking the personal element out of it, then it ultimately comes down to whether or not it would attract more than it loses...and without a bit of work to survey/test that, all we have is the subjective answer. There's a part of me that believes Scottish Football is possibly attracting about everyone who's interested in attending already....our % of population figure is amongst the highest in the world....can that be increased even further? If so, then it's not something that can be done on an individual club basis. Alternatively, the real issue might be that with so many teams we are just cutting up the cake into too many small pieces and in order to improve our attendance then we have to "steal" from another club.....or reduce the number of clubs!!

Fully expected that response from someone...glad not to be disappointed...ya kant. ?

For a club of our size, when in the top league, then non-tv income would have been about 70%. However, the value in some of that other income...shirt sponsorship, ad boards etc...was higher due to the chance of it appearing on TV, so you'd maybe push towards an adjusted figure in the region of 60%. Ticket/fan (non corporate) income would make up a bit over half of that...maybe more towards two thirds (35% to 40% of total). In the championship the largest drop in income is from share of TV, so ticket/fan income could easily push the 50% mark...but I'm not sure it would get as high as 60%.

That kind of research is never going to happen (unfortunately)...for so many reasons...so if we are going to look at change, then it needs workable methodology/analysis and a bit of trial and error. Not ideal, but the alternative is we keep doing what we are doing (even though we know it's not working) because we can't prove anything else would be better.

That would only prove (or disprove) the concept...it doesn't provide any information on what could/would go into making it work.

Let me try and turn this conversation through 180º by asking.... What would it take to make Friday Night Football work?

I agree with the first part...100%. On the second part....they'll pay as much as they do now so long as the TV viewing figures don't change. If people really want to boycott TV coverage then the answer is to turn off your TV, not stop attending games. A move to Friday Night Football might actually encourage TV companies to spend and cover more games because it wouldn't fall within the holdback rules, allowing it to be shown live worldwide. It would also mean that we'd have fewer (if any) games shifted (often at short notice) for TV....as has happened with the Ayr game.

No more or less than I'd look forward to it in the wee hours of a freezing January morning!

Away fan numbers are on a massive decline already across the country, have been for years, and that's just as much on a Saturday afternoon as it is at any other time. Just look at how few fans Ross County take to our place these days. I'd need to check, but I actually think the best crowd they've brought in the last 5 years was a Friday night! There are far more practical things that can be done to improve the atmosphere at games than encouraging large away crowds (which inevitably bring larger stewarding costs etc as well). Even when we were charging away fans less than home fans last season it did little to improve the numbers. The argument for encouraging youngsters is a fair shout...I think!! I have a slight reservation on it because clubs have been trying for years to grow the game on the back of being "family friendly" and it doesn't seem to be working. I wish I could find it, but I have a paper somewhere from a team in Germany (I think) which showed that getting players out into the community regularly did more than free/cheap kids tickets etc. Not suggesting we abandon promoting the game and making it accessible to youngsters, but we do need to look at whether or not we are doing that in the right way....possibly a subject of its own for discussion elsewhere.

As I said in the OP....it's only ludicrous in relation to what happens at the moment. If it we didn't have this fixation with wanting large numbers of away fans at games* then it suddenly isn't so ludicrous. Ourselves and County are perhaps a little different because we both have good numbers of fans who have moved South for education/work etc who attend games....but a Friday night match down there is still going to be more convenient for them than a home match up here at any time! *I have nothing against away days or people attending away days...I quite enjoy them myself...but whilst it's normal in Scotland, it's far from normal across the rest of the globe other than for the "big" games....and even the big games in Europe (from what I can gather) only give visiting teams very small (relatively) areas because there's not normally the demand for anything else. That doesn't make our norm wrong...it just shows that there are other norms (arguably more successful ones) that could/would come about if things changed.

Travel for existing fans who live out of town and relying on public transport is something there's no easy too. It would also take a brave person to make the call to sacrifice that support in the hope that the decision would generate a larger support from closer to home!! FWiW...I don't actually think that season tickets do clubs any favours and would get rid of them (in the traditional sense) tomorrow if it was within my power to do so. If not for the fact that clubs, even the bigger clubs, have become so reliant on that pot of cash at the end/start of the season, then the business case to get shot of them would be an easy one...but that's a whole different conversation...lol

Is setting off at 10:30pm for a journey home really any worse than setting off at 8am for a journey there? Swings and roundabouts. Most games postponed as a result of frozen pitches are because, for a 3pm game, the decision is being made early in the morning before pitches have a chance to be prepped. With a day of sun daylight on them and time for ground staff to do proper prep, then there's possibly an argument that it would be less likely we'd have call-offs...summer football would certainly reduce the chance even further.

I'm not talking about shifting to a Friday night to accommodate TV. However, we have to accept that televised football is the norm and has been for a long time now. Remove TV and the associated money and we'd be part-time (at best) and playing in the lower leagues in front of 700 to 800 people down the park (as we couldn't run our stadium on that). I don't buy into the theory that people are sitting at home watching a game instead of heading along to local matches. If they are, then it doesn't matter when we play games as you can get football on the TV pretty much 24/7. The fact that we've had pretty healthy crowds at TCS for Friday Night games in the past would suggest that's not the case. Not saying Friday Night football is the only option...but I do know that banging our head against the same old wall, time after time, isn't the answer. Like it or not, we need to find a way to work with TV now that we're so reliant upon it. See previous comments about away travel.

But if we sacrifice 150/200 away fans for 250 more home fans...surely that's a better scenario for the club?

I just posted this on Twitter but thought it might make for an interesting discussion on here..... As much as I think moving the Ayr v ICTFC match to a Friday night is ludicrous...I only find it such in relation to the current "norm". I'd actually support a move to shift the entire Scottish Football Calendar to Friday Nights...but I would make kick-off later! Some of the best (home) atmospheres we've had were at Friday night matches, and there is something a bit special about playing under floodlights, but that's not the main driver for the above view. It ultimately boils down to the fact that football, for all but the largest of teams, is struggling to compete with other interests at weekends....so why keep banging our head against that wall? There is an argument about a drop off in visiting support, but if the move put enough on the home gate to counter that, then all the better. In terms of our fans travelling to away games...meh! I enjoy an away day as much as the next person, but the idea of prioritising putting money in the pocket of competitors ahead of what may be in the best interests of the game as a whole (or even just ICTFC, from the point of view of ICTFC fans) would be a bizarre argument against the idea. Discuss...!!!

Oh yeah sorry, Samoans would have been a ridiculous suggestion ?

It's up there with the Samoan Rugby Player idea from a while back!!

Yogi's apparently looking for a job overseas, but wouldn't rule out a return to the SPFL either.

Far too many letters in Kaepernick for there to be any profit in putting his name on shirts ?

ICTFC have had a good few players over the years who were on "£1 a week" type deals. However, there was a bit of a hullabaloo over it (throughout the game) when the minimum wage thing kicked off and I don't think it's as common/acceptable these days.

Imagine it will be a case of players having to leave in order to bring in anyone new. If we went that route in order to bring in Bolt, then we'd not have a starting XI..!!