Saturday will be BIG in Soweto! As a guest of Energade, Tank Lanning cannot wait to be part of this truly unique experience … But the big man, in his Virgin Active column, wonders how many of these really big sporting match days are yet to come?
In honour of the great man Nelson Mandela, Bafana play Burkina Faso, the Boks play Argentina, and they are followed by a whole host of local musos who will turn the FNB stadium into a massive music festival. It is an apt venue and it will be an absolute cracker.
But they are few and far between these days …
Soccer and rugby are without doubt South Africa’s two biggest sporting codes, yet attendance numbers at games, especially club or provincial games, are sinking faster than a greasy breakfast after a night out with Charlie Sheen.
Sure Pirates vs Chiefs and Stormers vs Bulls will draw a big crowd, and Cape Town has been incredible in bucking the trend, but even recent Springbok Tests at Mbombela and swoon, Loftus Versveld, have produced huge tracts of empty seats.
There are a myriad of reasons … Just too much sport these days, people have many more entertainment options, it’s a pain in the butt to get to and from a stadium given our pathetic public transport, tickets are expensive, food and drink at stadiums is a rip off …
But the two biggies in my book are TV and the actual match day experience. The TV experience, which comes via a R650.00 per month dstv subscription, is just so damn good. Game previews with interesting analysis, best seat in the house with commentary and replays, 60 inch plasma screen, mates with you on the couch, free wifi so you can Tweet like a mofo on your ipad, no rain, beer at bottle store prices, and the braai just 14m from your chair …
This while the match day experience has degenerated into a very expensive one that comes with dancing girls instead of a curtain raiser, unpleasant kick off times like 19h00 on a Saturday because TV bosses dictate those now, and stadium announcers who lost their jobs at SABC in the 70’s …
Talk about chalk and cheese!
So what about making like the Poms and Kiwis, and playing games at smaller, safe, family orientated stadiums with a view to actively trying to hugely improve the match day experience by being innovative? Injured players taking the tickets at gates … pre game seven a side match involving the Blitzbokke … Post match entertainment in the form of a local band … a braai area that provides free fires and sells meat packs at Spar prices … Happy hour 2 hours before kick-off … half time bench press contest between 5 recently retired players …
In New Zealand, the Crusaders play at a 20 000 seat stadium, as do Harlequins in the UK. The Varsity Cup vibe on Monday nights is created through innovation and the fact that they play at stadia that only seat 4 or 5 thousand people. The vibe at games is just so much better when the stadium is full.
Perhaps a move to community based stadiums rather than empty caverns?
Nice little article Tank, and fully agree on the whole TV experience being a huge factor for me in not making an effort to get out to the stadia. Especially for CC games where you have 2 or 3 games in a row.