Priti priti priti Patel

So we do know how many of the 400ish watching yesterday were regular viewers and how many were irregular or one-offs. That gives us a ceiling for estimating the "true" attendance in a non-covid, non-streaming world. Assuming not all 400 were regular viewers, then it's unrealistic to say our attendance was effectively 1300ish and hasn't dropped from pre-covid. Of the subset who are regular viewers, resources aside, would it not produce good data to contact a random cross-section and find out whether they'll be going to games when streaming ends (and, if not, what would bring them back)? If so, and it's just an issue with resources, I'd be happy to speak off-forum and volunteer for that job. I've a decent background in business so I'd be confident getting involved.

Sure - feel free to jump in! I considered having a rule about banking winnings. If I don't bank then I am destined to lose it all at some point, but I wasn't sure when I should bank and how much. Using my excel, I looked at taking half every ten successful bets (which is ambitious given I've not got past three!), but even just taking half seems to massively hamstring my overall winnings. What was your approach?

Is that because the SPFL have said they will prohibit streams next season? Even if that's the case, there would be other benefits to finding out who is watching the stream, and what that means for the gates. For example, If it was found that streams were significantly harming income, then the club would want to consider stopping the stream asap. I would be against that, as a distant supporter, but the club should want to know. Skyline has suggested the crowd being below 1000 is down to the stream. It is also pretty important to figure out whether that's true so the club can properly budget for next season. Plus, if there are people watching the stream who could attend games but still won't when the stream ends - finding out early would allow the club to develop ways to mitigate that and entice them back. For those reasons, it would appear to me that there is benefit to looking at the composition of who is watching streams. I don't think the obstacles you mention in the rest of your post are insurmountable. The users' addresses would give some useful information. As Skyline acknowledged, it's possible a large number of viewers were Raith Rovers fans who would never attend games. The club just has to get a list of postcodes of users and then exclude all those outside of, say, a one hour radius. If you're excluding huge numbers of people then it suggests there are many watching the stream who will not be attending when the stream ends. This is further refined if (a) a lot of the postcodes are from the Fife area, and/or (b) the same out-of-town postcodes don't show up for other streams. In fact - you could do an analysis of the whole season by getting a list of postcodes for all users for each stream, and seeing how many postcodes only show up once, twice, etc. Remove all users who haven't reached a de minimis number of views, and the remaining total could then be used to get a mean number of "True QOS" fans on each stream. Then you can look at their postcodes to hypothesise whether they would ordinarily attend or not. You can also use the address data to refine any survey or customer outreach you undertake. You have said that making a survey mandatory impacts the user experience and adds another step into the process, but good design can minimise the impact of this. You could put the survey question as an additional mandatory field before submitting the purchase form, login form, or the button to open the video. Good PR can minimise any frustration this would cause. Good PR would likewise encourage people to answer a question if it's made optional. It just has to be mentioned on the website that we're conducting a survey, there's one question to answer, and explain how it would greatly assist the club. You could also get Finlay to mention it during commentary, and/or refer to it in a video overlay. Alternatively, rather than placing a survey on the website, you could gather telephone numbers and speak to customers directly. You won't get numbers for everyone, and not everyone will answer the phone, but you'll get a cross-section and (i) whether or not they give you their number and pick up, shouldn't correlate to (ii) whether or not they're a QOS fan who will come to games when the stream stops - and therefore you can extrapolate from whatever sample you get and apply it to the overall viewership. If you get a large enough sample, you can rely on the data. If you get a small sample, you can use it to develop hypotheses, which you can then test in other ways. (When I say "You" I don't mean you, I mean "the club")

Breaking rules 1 and 3 above but that's fine as I'm starting again and not carrying anything forward. Just popped a pound on Sporting (2nd, 8-2-0) to beat Pacos Ferreira (10th, 2-5-3) in their game tonight, 7 pm k.o. UK time. The risk here is Pacos' penchant for draws, but Sporting have been dominant even in games against the other top sides in the league, so they should have too much for Pacos. Of course, additional risk because I didn't take time to check the team news.

Even if true, you have forgotten it.

I enjoy having a bet so that I can take an interest in matches that don't involve one of my teams, but I'm not keen on the industry and the mantra "the house always wins" has certainly proven true, and costly, for me. I have therefore come up with the idea of placing a £1 bet on an odds-on game and rolling the money forward. I calculated with Excel that if I got ten bets in a row at 1/2 odds my winnings would be ~£80, twenty bets would give ~£3000 and thirty bets would give £190,000. My first three bets were all successful. I think I had Dover Athletic to lose twice and a Champions League game, although I can't actually remember. That took my accumulated winnings to £3.58. For my fourth bet yesterday I had a choice of Fulham (v Peterborough), Kelty (v Cowdenbeath), Sunderland (v Mansfield) and Queens Park (v East Fife). However, each game had something that made me wary, so I decided not to place a bet. Only the first two would have come in and only by late goals. That left me feeling that my winnings weren't growing quick enough (mistake) so I looked at the fixtures for today. I have just lost my accumulated winnings. I went for Oxford United (6th in League One and in great form) v Bristol Rovers (16th in League Two, in poor form, with four first choice attackers injured). Oxford seemed a pretty safe bet. The only niggling point in my mind related to the managers. Karl Robinson of Oxford and Joey Barton of Rovers are good friends, talk regularly, and from seven meetings between them Barton had a record of 6w 1d. But I put that to the side, since those victories all came with teams competing in the same division, no bet is ever perfect, and I wanted to have a go. The teams have just drawn 2-2. I shall therefore start again. Knowing my luck, I won't get past the first bet this time. But I shall try to follow the same rules as before, complemented with a couple new ones from today: 1) only bet on leagues I know or can research (i.e. English or Scottish) 2) only bet after looking at the relevant league tables and each club's list of results 3) only bet when I have been able to see a match preview and information about injuries and suspensions 4) if I bet at 1/2 odds and the odds improve before kick-off, take a cash out and place the bet using the improved odds 5) if I bet at odds better than 1/2 and have a cash out option which would effectively pay 1/2, I should take it Plus 6) don't bet just because I want my winnings to grow more quickly 7) [not sure yet what to take from the Robinson/Barton thing but there's definitely something to be learned there]

That's not the only way to know, though. There are various ways you could assess the composition of those watching the stream. You could adjust the privacy terms to allow you to look at users' payment addresses, or add a user address feature when registering for the platform, or have all viewers take a one-question survey to unlock the video, or an optional pop-up survey on sign-in, or use users' email addresses to ask a cross-section about their status, or cookies to gather location-related data from users browsing activity, or any manner of other ways to find out who's watching the stream. That would give the club valuable intelligence about what crowd numbers we should budget for, whether the stream is affecting attendances, whether the stream is a net benefit or loss, and no doubt other factors, all of which can be used to make more informed and better decisions for the benefit of the club. There was a question at the last AGM about whether the board had a plan and what evidence it was based on. I think the answer was "no" and therefore "none". The fact our crowds are now measured in three figures is one of the more obvious outcomes of that approach. It's weird that the experienced businessmen running our club don't apparently do obvious things like make plans and perform market research.

The stream will include many Rovers fans who would never travel. Can't believe Skyline is giving it "meh" when our attendance, including away fans, was below 1000. That's actually shockingly low and indicates the steady, continual, unmanaged decline of the club in recent years. It wasn't that long ago people talked about our hardcore of 1300, 1500, 1700 who would always go. Now the "hardcore" is measured in three figures and the people involved with the club don't even care. I am sure it will get turned around at some point, but the current trajectory is headed towards oblivion.

Johnston at fault for three Kilmarnock goals last week and starts. I don't think there's any danger AJ is "clueless" about how little he contributes - just has no shame protecting his boy over doing what's best for the club.

I don't really follow big team football but I've heard rumblings about Barca ha kng a transfer embargo or something. What's the score with the low crowd?

Tbf it was nailed on it was going to have a non-white family in it. My girlfriend is Nigerian and will point and laugh at the telly when every advert has non-white folk in. Have sat and cheered before when a white person appeared. But we're an interracial couple so it's fine for us because we're both demonstrably sound c***s.

That jeep on the corner can't believe what it's seeing.

Possibly someone on a tag who wanted a smoking area?

"Staley stayed in contact with Epstein for seven years after the financier was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008, and visited Epstein in Florida while the financier was still serving his sentence and out on work release in 2009. Staley said their relationship tapered off after he left JP Morgan. His final visit involved sailing his yacht to Epstein’s private island in 2015. " Crazy how wide this thing is. Mad that it's been able to get out with so many vested interests.

Non-pay wall version of The Times article https://archive.ph/n82th

Leyton Orient went full bugle. Orient also have home games on 6 and 9 November.

omfg

You're no meant to, according to the media, but... you love to see it.

If I wasn't so apathetic I would be raging at the inclusion of Max Johnston. A literal child keeping Gibson out of RB where Gibson has shone so often simply because his dad can't bring himself to drop him. It is so unprofessional. That's both the management team now put their own kids' careers ahead of the club's best interests.

Someone land on him?

Normally, bricking the windaes of Jewish owned businesses will raise the eyebrows of the locals. Ahh, a busman's holiday then.

How did you get their attention?

Never seen a better embodiment of this gif...

Ah... That's disappointing.