STIG Investigates

For the first instalment in our new inveSTIGative series ("new" in the sense that this is our first investigation where none of the stuff is made up), STIG will take a look at the recent Genesis report on the eircom League.

By John Craddock

The Genesis Report

Genesis Strategic Management Consultants were hired by the FAI to take a look at the eircom League. We thought we’d take a look at their work. Here’s one of their findings:

"when compared with other sports, the eircom League attendances (under 400,000 in total last year) trail, by some distance, the attendances at other events – the GAA Championship (2.2m), Celtic League (424k), Heineken Cup (815k)"

STIG took a look at this and found that the total Heineken Cup attendance in Ireland that season (2003/2004) was 178k (see table) making the Genesis Report inaccurate by an impressive 356%. This figure would be even higher if we excluded games played in Belfast but we’re a generous fanzine and we don’t want to embarrass the good people in Genesis too much. That’s not all though. STIG can reveal that attendances here in the Celtic League in the same season were just under 200k, making the Genesis Report inaccurate by a more reasonable 112%. Astute readers of STIG will have noticed that there is no such event as the GAA Championship. For the record, the 2004 Senior Hurling Championship attracted attendances of 609,764 and the Senior Football Championship 1,359,192. These figures both include a total of 45,140 patrons who attended a football and hurling double header and have been counted twice – a total of about 1.9m. (Source: 2005 GAA Annual Report. The Genesis Report interestingly didn’t quote any source for its figures above.)

European Rugby Cup Attendances

Celtic League Attendances

Next we take a look at the attendances given for the eircom League. The attendance figures quoted seem to be lifted off the internet site www.European-Football-Statistics.co.uk , which in turn is provided with its figures from an attendances thread maintained by fans at www.foot.ie , the popular internet forum. This is odd considering that as part of the UEFA licensing criteria clubs should be submitting attendances to the FAI for every league game played. This raises an interesting question – are the clubs not reporting the figures, and therefore not entitled to a UEFA license, or are the FAI not bothering to keep a record of the figures reported? This is a question which Genesis, curiously, seem to have failed to ask.

At the time of going to print STIG is unaware of how much the FAI paid Genesis to compile these figures, but we hope it wasn’t much.

References

This article originally appeared in Volume 6, issue 1 of STIG.

Disclaimer

We have tried to make this article as factually accurate as possible. However, if there is a factual error, please contact us at stigonline@stigonline.com and we will publish a correction.