how much are they charging for tickets?

also do they have people sitting courtside on beanbags? swear ive seen tht before!

Yes, I believe they're struggling financially.

There's be posts on this before, but it seems you need $4M/yr to run a NBL club. I haven't seen the official attendances this season, but in my notes I have their attendances as averaging 3,935 from '09 to '13. If they are playing in a 2,200 seat stadium and selling an average of what 1,500 per game (?) then that's 68% capacity - should be looking for a lot, lot more. What's happened to the other 2,500 supporters?

I think they will certainly be reviewing their business plan for next season.

The loss of the car parking spaces is a major, major reason why people started staying away. With a lot of the mining jobs winding down too there are a lot of people who are watching what they spend and don't have the motivation to go along anymore. It used to be a relatively cheap night's entertainment that you could bring the family to, have a few beers and get home easily from. Not anymore.

"$4 mill is way over the odds. $3mill. Max unless you are Perth."
Perth do ok now, when they have 9,000+ members and can sell another 3,000+ tickets.
But during the Challenge Stadium era I reckon they relied heavily on Jack Bendat and somewhat generous sponsorship.
Without somebody with similarly deep pockets, I don't know how Townsville can survive selling less than 2,000 seats.

I hate to see the NBL losing teams, but maybe they would be better off in the QBL?

I've heard the car parking situation mentioned numerous times over the past 18 months. Can someone give an objective explanation of what actually happened with car parking? Was the parking free and who did the 600 bays belong to? And how did it come to be that these parking bays were no longer available?

Is getting to this venue practical for families?

Train stop nearby?

Or busy bus route?

Marcus the venue (swamp) is fine to get to, there is other free parking available within a 10 min walk and free shuttle buses. But the loss of the old car park was an issue as it was a two-three minute walk away, although is at the end of a dead end and took forever to get out of after games. A 10 min walk now actually gets you home much faster.

The board are currently negotiating new rent of 4-8k per game down from $24k a game, if they can cut that by $20k at $20 a ticket is 1000 ticket reduction in their breakeven. I think the old breakeven used to be a bit over 4000 seats a game, so a reduction of 1000 tickets would have seen them close to breakeven or making money based on last years numbers of 3200 to 3600 a game.

There have been a number of contributing factors, but change of ownership at the entertainment centre, lack of negotiation from previous owners and bad timing has been a real problem. Let's hope the new owners would rather have a tenant 14 times a year at 4-8k plus food and Bev than nothing.

Anyone know what other teams get charged for venue rental per game?

Anon I was referring to the owners of the entertainment centre not the crocs! Maybe I should have said 'unable to have the rent reduced to a level that would have made the crocs viable, through no fault of their own'.

Obviously while they were trying to sell Jupiters/ entertainment centre, jupiters owners wouldn't want to cut their revenue by 1/4 million a year on the entertainment centre, so they could achieve the best sales price possible. I can understand that business decision to not reduce the crocs rent, but it certainly didn't help. Let's hope the new owner of the entertainment centre/Jupiters is happy to have the crocs back at a lower rate.
Fyi I have been a season ticket holder for more than twenty years and still am, so my option is as valid as anyone else's.

^ 'Opinion' haha.

Sounds like we both want the same thing anon!

edward groves , 20k rent , 8000 seats , adelaide

People in Townsville don't do public transport, simple as that. They want to drive, park for free and go home. The rent at the Ent centre was like $20k per game, so breaking even is not even a possibility.

Pat Reidy is a moron with no business acumen and the club as a whole is a dead team walking, in my opinion.

I was in Townville over Xmas, and my mate drove me to their "stadium", my god what a joke, I feel sorry for the professional players having to play in a stadium like that in front of 1200 people.

If Townsville can't get 5k minimum to the Ent Centre, lets piss em off and bring in a Brisbane team, very simple.

"People in Townsville don't do public transport, simple as that. They want to drive, park for free and go home."

It's not that they don't "do" it, there is only a very rudimentary bus system that is difficult to use as a viable means of commuting. So you have to drive or get a cab.

The parking situation is way overblown. You can park a 5-10 min walk away every time without hassle. The thing about Townsville people is that they are really lazy when it comes to walking, so they complain when they have to walk 5-10 mins after parking their car. They expect to get a parking spot right out the front of wherever it is they are going, and when it doesn't happen they kick up a fuss. They will get over it.

The key issues facing the crocs are:

- TEC rent. No one wants to go to the RSL stadium so they need to get back to the TEC. Need to sort out the rent issue post haste.
- Incompetent management on the business side (Overpriced tickets plus a million other issues)
- Losses piling up and losing winnable games / choking (easiest way to turn off your fan base IMO is choke or lose the effort areas)
- Not enough business advice / help from league head office when they are clearly drowning. They need direction from outside the organisation and they need it badly. The league should be sending someone there on secondment until this shit is sorted out, unless they don't care about them folding.

When Barry Gibson was running the show, none of these things were issues, and while I'm not sure what sort of rent they were playing at the TEC back then, I would assume that he would have been able to make it work under any situation. Which goes to show just how important good leadership is.

also Pat Reidy has nothing to do with this team any more Craig. He stepped down last year.

One of the pluses of living in a small regional city is the lack of traffic, ease of parking, etc. (I have lived in Geradlton and Kalgoorlie.) It's one of the trade-offs.
The cost of living in the big city is long journeys, traffic, and expensive parking, or taking the train & walking.
Typically the smaller cities have limited public transport options, so everybody drives.

being a member previously of the now defunct Giants, when they moved from Hi-sense to Dandenong, that was the end of the road. they got full crowds but that covered everything and left them nothing in reserve.

sadly the crocs are heading the same way. unsure what they can do, but the hawks went thru the same, as did Geelong and Hobart and the pirates.

when ya run outta money, ya run outta money.

good luck to them though. I hope it pans out

Who set those ticket prices and what was the thinking?

The other issue is ppl in Nth QLD hate walking 5-10 mins as it is very humid over the Dec-Feb period.