SA Footy

Improve the lights if you want people to go. I know many are no longer going due to the lights . Norwood has the best and its not a great place to watch footy at night. This must be costing clubs a bit. They are not good enough for us supporters to watch a game.

It's a lot more expensive than you might think to upgrade / replace light globes.

A few years back, I attended an AGM at Central District and Roger Girdham, their former Captain who is a current Director and runs his own Electrical business, advised it would be someting like $20K to upgrade the lights.

Not sure any clubs would have this type of disposal income lying around for lights.

Norwood have the advantage of good lights, light poles positioned right on the boundary line and a smaller surface area to cover.

Big Phil wrote:It's a lot more expensive than you might think to upgrade / replace light globes.

A few years back, I attended an AGM at Central District and Roger Girdham, their former Captain who is a current Director and runs his own Electrical business, advised it would be someting like $20K to upgrade the lights.

Not sure any clubs would have this type of disposal income lying around for lights.

Norwood have the advantage of good lights, light poles positioned right on the boundary line and a smaller surface area to cover.

$20k is a lot to upgrade but I think it was more the utility costs to operate that have genuinely stopped Centrals from fixing the lights. The $20k to fix would easily be recouped over one season nevermind over an extended period. I would love to know the exact cost to run the lights for one football game, I don't imagine it would be cheap but would be interested to here the figure.

In saying that $20k only requires an extra 1300 crowd members over the course of your season to recoup back in entrance fees (are entrance fees $15). I would think night games attract at least 500 extra spectators (I don't have the stats to back this up) so in one season and three home games I would believe you would have recouped that cost never mind taken into account the extra income from secondary spend items that 500 extra spectators a game would spend. Lets say they each of those 500 spend $20 that's an extra $10k in café/kiosk/bar/merchandise takings per game.

The maintenance of the lights should be looked at as an investment not a reactive maintenance cost. Happy to concede though that I don't know the exact running cost per game to have them operating.

$20k is nothing really for clubs turning over $3m+, not upgrading them is just a cop out, especially with so many grants (federal, state and council) available if you put in a submission.

Dutchy wrote:$20k is nothing really for clubs turning over $3m+, not upgrading them is just a cop out, especially with so many grants (federal, state and council) available if you put in a submission.

Agree especially consider the Office of Sport & Rec nearly always have $50k grant opportunities available.

This is why I believe it has to be the running costs more so than the maintenance costs which have stopped the lights being fixed....or Big Phil has forgot to add a zero to the figure he wrote.

Dutchy wrote:$20k is nothing really for clubs turning over $3m+, not upgrading them is just a cop out, especially with so many grants (federal, state and council) available if you put in a submission.

Agree.
Surely the lights are an investment in their long term viability and future.
With crowds dwindling something needs to be done to entice crowds back.

amber_fluid wrote:

Dutchy wrote:$20k is nothing really for clubs turning over $3m+, not upgrading them is just a cop out, especially with so many grants (federal, state and council) available if you put in a submission.

Agree.
Surely the lights are an investment in their long term viability and future.
With crowds dwindling something needs to be done to entice crowds back.

Yep. Would love to see the crowd figures for the Saturday Night Centrals games vs day time crowd figure for Centrals around that period.

At a conservative guess I would say crowds were up by around 500 people which in my conservative guess would have been extra income of roughly

500 people more (lets say say 250 of them were paying adults at $15 a head) $3,750
$10 spend per person extra that comes $5,000

That's based around the extra staffing requirements being met by volunteers which I am led to believe what happens at Centrals. Also is total income and doesn't account for the profit margin on the secondary spend items but my figure of $10 spend is extremely conservative imo.

My conservative figure would say a night game would generate at least $8-9k extra in income.

The gate goes to the SANFL. $14 to get in.

If I remember correctly the figure to upgrade the lights was close to $70K.

The SANFL and its clubs are not good at spending money to make money.

Big Phil wrote:It's a lot more expensive than you might think to upgrade / replace light globes.

A few years back, I attended an AGM at Central District and Roger Girdham, their former Captain who is a current Director and runs his own Electrical business, advised it would be someting like $20K to upgrade the lights.

Not sure any clubs would have this type of disposal income lying around for lights.

Norwood have the advantage of good lights, light poles positioned right on the boundary line and a smaller surface area to cover.

Lighting has come along way in recent years . Im not saying it is cheap , just stating they need upgrading as they are not good enough. G

Yes. LED now the way to go.

I just think 2.10 on a Saturday afternoon and all these problems disappear.

It's been tried,it's failed. It's not worth doing except for at Norwood. It almost sent a couple of clubs broke trying it!
Are people's memories that short?

DOC wrote:The gate goes to the SANFL. $14 to get in.

If I remember correctly the figure to upgrade the lights was close to $70K.

I don’t see the issue with the upgrade. The lights at the oval would be used 4 times a week with training anyway.

One extra night for game day 2 times a year isn’t going to break the bank.

With the introduction of Women’s fixture early in the year. Making the Saturday a 3 game event it makes sense to end it with the league under lights.

Wedgie wrote:It's been tried,it's failed. It's not worth doing except for at Norwood. It almost sent a couple of clubs broke trying it!
Are people's memories that short?

What has been tried ? Night games or Saturdays ?

DOC wrote:Yes. LED now the way to go.

I just think 2.10 on a Saturday afternoon and all these problems disappear.

Of course but all Saturdays arent the answer either .

Brett wrote:

Wedgie wrote:It's been tried,it's failed. It's not worth doing except for at Norwood. It almost sent a couple of clubs broke trying it!
Are people's memories that short?

What has been tried ? Night games or Saturdays ?

Night games. They're not viable anywhere except for Norwood and two clubs got very burnt thinking it was a golden opportunity.

The most influential factor for crowds are the weather and the likelihood of their team winning. Having written that there is an appreciation of atmosphere as well which Norwood Oval has with a reasonable crowd particularly at a night game. The hidden income stream though is alcohol. Sales at night games are massively different to a day game and there is a very healthy margin. So footy at night is about beer sales for SANFL clubs. With the prevalence of bars at Norwood a beer is always easy to get so the success if night football there has been about atmosphere and the significant profit on Coopers product.

Wedgie wrote:

Brett wrote:

Wedgie wrote:It's been tried,it's failed. It's not worth doing except for at Norwood. It almost sent a couple of clubs broke trying it!
Are people's memories that short?

What has been tried ? Night games or Saturdays ?

Night games. They're not viable anywhere except for Norwood and two clubs got very burnt thinking it was a golden opportunity.

Centrals on Saturday got a run with the 18's playing after League...… Was pretty ave lighting to be honest.

Rated higher than the League team then.

Love Friday night games at Parade but think lights are one of those things that may get a bigger crowd but if the weather comes in you will probable get less attendance than what you would for bad weather during a day game