Supporter survey suggests Sheffield Wednesday have work to do to regain fans, who want 'radical' ticket price changes
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That’s if the results of a Star survey completed by over 1,000 Owls fans is to be believed.
Supporters have not been allowed in stadiums since March last year due to the restrictions put in place amid the coronavirus crisis, leaving question marks over whether football fans are likely to feel more or less engaged when the turnstiles reopen.
Wednesday, of course, have been relegated since then.
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Some 70.2% of respondents indicated their feelings towards the club have worsened over the last year, with 37.5% going as far to say the feel ‘totally disconnected’ with Sheffield Wednesday
Just over a quarter of respondents (25.2%) indicated their relationship with the club has not changed, while 4.2% said they felt closer to the club.
Only 41.8% of fans suggested they were looking forward to a return to Hillsborough – 22% said they ‘couldn’t wait’, with 18.8% indicating simply they were ‘looking forward to it’ – while 23.1% said they would still attend matches, but only through a sense of duty or routine.
More than a quarter (26.6%) suggested they would be going less often than before the pandemic, while 8.5% said they would not being going at all.
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Hide AdA bone of contention for many in recent seasons has been the Owls’ ticket pricing structure, which has traditionally topped out as one of the more expensive in the Championship.
Now facing a return to League One, it has been suggested that the club must take a fresh look at these prices in a bid to re-engage a section of the Owls support.
Some 80.3% of respondents to our survey said the structure required ‘radical change’, with a further 16.9% indicating that they felt the structure was ‘OK, but required tweaking’.
Some 2.1% of fans said the club should keep the structure as it is, with 0.7% registering their belief that prices should go up considering the club’s current cashflow problems.
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Hide AdThe survey, posed last week, asked respondents their feelings on a whole host of subjects from the record of the ownership to the club’s ticket pricing structure.