A-League Men: Perth Glory chief executive Anthony Radich discusses crowd numbers and free ticket giveaways

Perth Glory chief executive Anthony Radich says the club’s free ticket giveaways will likely be back next season, but stopped short of promising them more often than once a season. Radich conceded a poor run of A-League Men results had impacted crowds at HBF Park this season and an upswing in results was the biggest factor in enticing fans back to games. Through nine games in Perth this season — not counting the Glory’s Unite round clash with Western United in Sydney which was technically a ‘home game — the club are averaging 6378 fans per match. It is the fourth-lowest mark of any A-League Men’s team, although it represents an increase of seven per cent on the Glory’s crowds last season. The club ran their ‘Grassroots to Glory’ campaign, which gave up to 5000 registered junior players aged from 4-16 the chance to take up a free three-game membership, valid for Perth’s opening three home games of the season. Those first three home games drew crowds of 7074, 7338 and 5459. Perth also offered 5000 free double passes exclusively to registered Football West participants for their home game against Melbourne Victory earlier this month — a game which drew 11,035 punters to the game, the highest mark for the club this season. Radich said while the initiatives had clearly proved successful, it would be a financial hit to offer them up more than once a year. “We probably would stick to our approach of the three-game grassroots campaign and building on that for next year, as well as doing the one-off the grassroots footballers celebration,” he told The West Australian. “There does become a cost involved there, in terms of issuing those tickets from as far as our licensing agreement, there’s an associated cost. “There’s obviously the costs associated with people then also coming and attending, there’s an attendance fee. So it’s not cost-free, so to speak.” But Radich said the data they gained from those campaigns would assist them in targeted marketing campaigns and membership for next season. Firmly in the club’s sights are registered local players, with Football West reporting in 2024 they had passed the 50,000 registration mark for the first time. “That’s really such rich data, and that’s our strategy in terms of trying to drive membership: being able to acquire football participant data, and being able to activate call centres and the like to try and sell three-game, five-game memberships,” he said. “It’s not about giving a free ticket just to a random person on the street, because it’s wasted; one, we don’t know who they are, and we don’t get that data and two, because they’re not invested in the sport, they’re unlikely to come, so that’s why we’re really clearly wanting to zero in on football participants.” Radich said the club had targeted outdoor, digital, TV and radio advertising this season, while also trying to engage grassroots participants through Football West’s registration platform Squadi and SevenWestMedia-owned streaming platform Streamer. Perth have won just two of 18 games this season and Radich admitted the results, which have included 5-0 and 4-0 losses at home, had kept crowds away. “In the context of the way we performed, and where the league is at from an attendance point of view, we haven’t performed relatively too badly in that sort of context,” he said. “Obviously, had performance on the pitch been better, I’m sure we would have seen a domino effect in terms of driving attendance going forward, and that would have made our in-season membership pushes more successful. “We would have hoped for a lot better, but like I said, unfortunately, the on-field component hasn’t come to be what we wanted, expected and hoped. “You’re in the business of entertainment at the end of the day and we all love winners.”