What's the most "Tin Pot" thing you've seen in the SPFL

[craigkillie]

2 hours ago, LIVIFOREVER said:

We had about 4 thousand home fans in our first stint, and could fill the West and South stands. A lot of shit has run under the bridge since then though, with 2 admins, a near miss on one under Flynn, Flynn kicking fans out of their seats for Celtic fans and vowed never to come back till he was away. Well he's been away a long time now and they didn't come back. Massone fucked every business that dealt with Livi, not paying them, and tried his best to put the club into liquidation. Papped into the bottom tier for not being able to put up a bond, because we were in admin. 

That's the abbreviated version of events, and at one stage our fanbase was down to about 600, we've built it steadily up under our good run from League One to the Premiership, to about 1,700, but we're never getting the fans back from those early days, and most of the ones we have now are built on from families that stuck by us and younger fans we've managed to encourage along. It would take years still to have a chance getting near 3,000.

Why are you never getting those fans back? If you managed to build up from literally nothing to have 4000 home fans 30 years ago, then why couldn't it happen again? You are clearly in a better position to do so now, with a Championship club with a degree of history than you did at that stage where you literally murdered another club and dragged the corpse kicking and screaming into the town.

The town may have had a lot of existing Hearts, Hibs, Rangers and Celtic fans from the days before you had a league club, but that was nearly 30 years ago, and the town has a huge population of people who have grown up with Livingston FC existing at a decent level of Scottish football. In fact, a lot of folk who were young kids when Livi moved to the town will now have their own kids.

But the club giving the impression of just laying out the welcome mat to Celtic and Rangers every time they visit is hardly going to help that growth. You've got to ask the question of what is worth more to Livi in the long-term, 3000 extra Celtic or Rangers fans coming once or twice a season (when you're in the Premiership), or 200-300 locals coming along every week.

[lanky_ffc]

14 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:

Is it fair to be comparing Livingstons "dormant" support to that of Kilmarnock?

Far as I can see Livingsons move in 1995 virtually forced them to rebuild their fanbase from scratch so it's not as if there's thousands of generational fans just waiting for an upturn to crawl out the woodwork when things are going well.

Probably not, but there are lots of houses being built in West Lothian, so potentially a new fanbase to tap in to as it grows as a commuter town. My mate lives in Bathgate and two of his wife's friends have started taking their kids along to Livi: one a Celtic fan and the other who mainly follows English football. The fans are there if you're willing to be brave.

Quite a relief that TFS is the size it is. If we do draw one of them in the cup - or reach the Premiership again - they'll get the full North Stand and the stadium will be close to capacity which will save all the tedious debates.

Edited April 4 by lanky_ffc

[Newbornbairn]

11 minutes ago, lanky_ffc said:

Probably not, but there are lots of houses being built in West Lothian, so potentially a new fanbase to tap in to as it grows as a commuter town. My mate lives in Bathgate and two of his wife's friends have started taking their kids along to Livi: one a Celtic fan and the other who mainly follows English football. The fans are there if you're willing to be brave.

Quite a relief that TFS is the size it is. If we do draw one of them in the cup - or reach the Premiership again - they'll get the full North Stand and the stadium will be close to capacity which will save all the tedious debates.

Didn't we give them a section of the Main Stand once, moving the season ticket holders?

[kennie makevin]

18 hours ago, Jacky1990 said:

Cant think of anything worse than going to the football and being stuck amongst a bunch of opposition fans.

Leave that "just here for a good day out" shite to the rugby bores IMO.

Oh God aye, we don't want any of that poncy behaving like civilised human beings while sitting watching sport when we could be battering shite out of each other because his scarf's a different colour than mine..........And then we have people on these forums wondering in all seriousness why you can have a drink at the rugby but not the football ?

[Squirrelhumper]

15 hours ago, eez-eh said:

Nail on the head.

It’s all well and good the Livi fans pointing to the money it brings them in the short term, but it neglects the negative impact of letting your ground be taken over by the Livingston Loyal/CSC. It doesn’t entice new fans and it feeds into the never-ending Old Firm dominance of everything.

Scottish football would be a better place long term if we stopped pandering to the Old Firm for some short term cash. Thankfully some clubs seem to be realising this now.

Killie had circa 3,000 season ticket holders under the previous board (one man board at that) and now have close to 5,500. Old Firm games are night and day now. 

[Squirrelhumper]

13 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:

Both doing it has coincided with upturns in form, so I'm not 100% convinced its not a rise in crowds as much due to that as it is lowering the OF support. I

We did it and got relegated. We also stayed up by a bawhair last year yet sold guts of 5,500 season tickets. 

The club has been working on this for guts of 10 years to grow the support. The number of kids, teenagers and adults in their early 20s at our games now proves this is working. 

[Squirrelhumper]

12 hours ago, LIVIFOREVER said:

would St Mirren and Killie have done this if they took a loss of something like 480K against them?

Killie literally cut their allocation from 8800 to just over 4,000.

[Squirrelhumper]

12 hours ago, LIVIFOREVER said:

. Also who in their right mind would want to bring their kids to erse cheek games no matter how many are let in, it's hardly the games you'll grow a support from.

My nephew is 3. He's seen us beat both them this season. He fucking loved it. 

It 100% helps having three stands with home fans in them. 

[AJF]

2 hours ago, kennie makevin said:

Oh God aye, we don't want any of that poncy behaving like civilised human beings while sitting watching sport when we could be battering shite out of each other because his scarf's a different colour than mine..........And then we have people on these forums wondering in all seriousness why you can have a drink at the rugby but not the football ?

@Jacky1990never mentioned anything about battering each other. They just said they are not on board with mixed seating. Neither am I. Football is a vastly different sport compared to Rugby and the support is far more passionate and tribal. That doesn't mean anyone that is pro-segregation is also an advocate of fan violence.

You've made a massive leap there and arrived at a nonsensical conclusion that implied they would be violent towards opposition fans and used that as justification to support an outdated alcohol ban.

Edited April 4 by AJF

[LIVIFOREVER]

10 hours ago, craigkillie said:

Why are you never getting those fans back? If you managed to build up from literally nothing to have 4000 home fans 30 years ago, then why couldn't it happen again? You are clearly in a better position to do so now, with a Championship club with a degree of history than you did at that stage where you literally murdered another club and dragged the corpse kicking and screaming into the town.

The town may have had a lot of existing Hearts, Hibs, Rangers and Celtic fans from the days before you had a league club, but that was nearly 30 years ago, and the town has a huge population of people who have grown up with Livingston FC existing at a decent level of Scottish football. In fact, a lot of folk who were young kids when Livi moved to the town will now have their own kids.

But the club giving the impression of just laying out the welcome mat to Celtic and Rangers every time they visit is hardly going to help that growth. You've got to ask the question of what is worth more to Livi in the long-term, 3000 extra Celtic or Rangers fans coming once or twice a season (when you're in the Premiership), or 200-300 locals coming along every week.

To recap what i've already said, the novelty factor was a part of it to start with, then all the turmoil saw those novelty fans drift away and not come back. If they were going to come back they'd have done so by now, esp after we were promoted back into the top flight and having 5 decent seasons playing there, including reaching a cup final.

Personally didn't think i'd still be going to Livi games all these years later, i just went with some mates to see a local team play in the SFL, and ended up supporting them. Would those 3 or 4 thousand fans have stuck around and brought the next generation in to sustain that level, we'll never know, 2 admins and all the other baggage stripped it back to 600 fans, before a lot of work has brought it up to around 1,700. 

With our history and even now there's an internal power struggle with court cases over who controls the club, it's never the best conditions to grow our support, we'd need some period of stability to have any hope of growing our fanbase to get above 2,000 let alone back to 4,000. Would be huge if we could see the support we have now remain with us when we're relegated, if that happens then yeah, we might have a chance growing it further, i'm not optimistic about it though, i've been around long enough not to get my hopes up.

You seem stuck on this giving Celtic and The Rangers 3 stands will stop us growing our support, it really isn't going to magically grow just because we cut their allocation, we've had decades go by and it hasn't grown past where it is now, 1,700 is the highest its been since it plummeted with admins and relegation. We wont even be playing in the top flight next season. 

 

[RandomGuy.]

1 hour ago, Squirrelhumper said:

The club has been working on this for guts of 10 years to grow the support. The number of kids, teenagers and adults in their early 20s at our games now proves this is working. 

You reduced the OF allocation 10 years ago?

[LIVIFOREVER]

Thinking about it, the cutting away allocation to grow your support is like the theory of cutting ticket prices will get more fans coming to games. Both means the clubs take a financial hit seeing if it works, and a huge risk doing so.

[Squirrelhumper]

1 minute ago, RandomGuy. said:

You reduced the OF allocation 10 years ago?

No, we changed the board around then and started properly engaging with the fans. 

We reduced the Old FIrm allocation 5 years ago.

[Squirrelhumper]

1 minute ago, LIVIFOREVER said:

Thinking about it, the cutting away allocation to grow your support is like the theory of cutting ticket prices will get more fans coming to games. Both means the clubs take a financial hit seeing if it works, and a huge risk doing so.

Relying on away fans to sustain your club is an even bigger risk. 

[RandomGuy.]

1 minute ago, Squirrelhumper said:

No.

Right, well that means your whole "look at how brilliant things are for us" speel is pointless when the discussion is solely about how Livingstons crowds would rise if all they done was reduced the OF allocation.

Edited April 4 by RandomGuy.

[Squirrelhumper]

11 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Right, well that means your whole "look at how brilliant things are for us" speel is pointless when the discussion is solely about how Livingstons crowds would rise if all they done was reduced the OF allocation.

Eh? Our home crowds have increased probably two fold since we did it, not sure how much more evidence you need that it works?

Fair enough i get why you are rubbishing it given you give the OF tickets in 3 stands and probably always will. 

[LIVIFOREVER]

6 minutes ago, Squirrelhumper said:

Relying on away fans to sustain your club is an even bigger risk. 

That's not what we're doing, we're utilising stands that are normally empty to increase our revenue and help us have a budget to be competitive in the top flight with the smallest fanbase. And it worked for 5 of the 6 seasons we stayed up, making us competitive enough to comfortably stay away from the bottom 2 for the first 5 seasons. 

Leaving them empty makes no financial sense, it wont grow our support, and would have prob seen us relegated back down to the Championship in our first season.

[Squirrelhumper]

Just now, LIVIFOREVER said:

That's not what we're doing, we're utilising stands that are normally empty to increase our revenue and help us have a budget to be competitive in the top flight with the smallest fanbase. And it worked for 5 of the 6 seasons we stayed up, making us competitive enough to comfortably stay away from the bottom 2 for the first 5 seasons. 

Leaving them empty makes no financial sense, it wont grow our support, and would have prob seen us relegated back down to the Championship in our first season.

So you are happy to just see your home games turn into away game in these games for ever, without even trying to reverse it?

How does letting Celtic do Tifo's etc make you money btw? 

[LIVIFOREVER]

Just now, Squirrelhumper said:

So you are happy to just see your home games turn into away game in these games for ever, without even trying to reverse it?

How does letting Celtic do Tifo's etc make you money btw? 

Not particularly happy nope, but we're outnumbered at home against most teams in the Premiership and i'm not particularly happy about that either, should we cut every team's allocation below what we can have in the home section, that would be financial suicide.

Up till this season we've competed pretty well against the 2 top teams in the league playing at home, esp Celtic, whilst giving them 3 stands, this season we've only won 3 games, so i doubt it would've made a difference footballing wise how many fans were in the away end against them.

The Tifo's are a different issue, that shouldn't have happened, you obv can't trust them not to take advantage of being allowed to bring them in, and the club issued a statement about that.

[VincentGuerin]

29 minutes ago, LIVIFOREVER said:

To recap what i've already said, the novelty factor was a part of it to start with, then all the turmoil saw those novelty fans drift away and not come back. If they were going to come back they'd have done so by now, esp after we were promoted back into the top flight and having 5 decent seasons playing there, including reaching a cup final.

You seem stuck on this giving Celtic and The Rangers 3 stands will stop us growing our support, it really isn't going to magically grow just because we cut their allocation, we've had decades go by and it hasn't grown past where it is now, 1,700 is the highest its been since it plummeted with admins and relegation. We wont even be playing in the top flight next season. 

 

Essentially, the theft of Meadowbank has been a failure.

The people of Livingston have rejected the club and it's all basically been a waste of time.

The best outcome now is Livi going bust, shedding their shameful origins, and starting again from the bottom with some respectability and finding their own level. Although, I get the feeling that if they do go bust, there will be no significant phoenix club. The town isn't interested and has made that very clear.