Leinster bosses not worried by falling attendances
Leinster Council chairman Jim Bolger has rejected the idea that Dublin fans are getting bored of watching their team win, despite an alarming drop in attendances at their games.
The provincial chief admitted that just 16,000 tickets have been sold for Sunday’s doubleheader of Leinster semi-finals. Five-in-a-row chasing Dublin play Kildare in the main event while Meath take on Laois in the first game, with Bolger predicting the overall attendance is likely to end up at around 30,000.
That’s almost half the 58,723 that turned out in 2011 when Dublin played Kildare in a similar double header of semi-finals.
It’s in line with a drop in gate receipts at Dublin’s league games this year while just 14,380 turned out for last month’s double-header of quarter-final games which also involved Dublin. Asked if Dublin fans and neutrals generally are getting bored of watching Jim Gavin’s team steamroll opponents, Bolger shook his head.
“I don’t think so, if you get bored watching good footballers playing at the top of their game then I don’t know what we’d do then to not be bored,” he said. “They are an exceptional team and we have to acknowledge that.
At full flow, they are a joy to watch, albeit it’s not a great place maybe if you are on the receiving end of it.
With a capacity of over 80,000, that’ll leave 50,000 empty seats at Croke Park on Sunday and considerably more during the first game between Meath and Laois. Bolger said there is no push on yet to take semi-final games out of Croke Park despite the situation.
“If it comes to a stage where we think we should take the semi-finals out we would do that, but at the moment 30,000 is still a significant crowd and we couldn’t accommodate it anywhere other than Croke Park, if we get to 30, which it looks like we will,” he said.
Leinster gate receipts dropped by 30 per cent in 2018 and Bolger attributed the worrying trend partly to the condensing of the inter-county fixture schedule.
“We need to maybe press the pause button and analyse what impact it is having,” he said. “We have it really tightly structured now that there are so many games in so short a period of time and that’s probably adding to it as well.”
