The Queen of the South thread

[Greenacres]

Is Aiden Kirkpatrick out with a injury ?.

The streaming should  really be £15 to cheap at a £10.

A wet cold day pay £18 or stay indoors watch for a £10.

I would rather go out to a game but a lot of fans will prefer to stay in especially saving £8 .

Away fans I am surprised we get any really all the bother of traveling when for a £10 you can watch at home 

 

Edited November 7, 2021 by Greenacres

[Alex Nesovic's Barmy Army]

I asked this previously. I'm worried. Maybe need to create some 'have you seen this mascot?' posters

Any news on Dougie the Doonhamer also? Has he retired?

[Alex Nesovic's Barmy Army]

Was running around pre game yesterday.

I know he didn't have a pre season per se but no excuse for a professional footballer to be lacking fitness. If he's just lacking match fitness, that only comes via games.

Is Aiden Kirkpatrick out with a injury ?.
 

[Benji]

Currently watching St Albans v Forest Green. 

imagine if our club had the drive and ambition of FGR. 

[Homer Thompson]

Currently watching St Albans v Forest Green. 
imagine if our club had the drive and ambition of FGR. 

Imagine if our club had an owner worth over £100 million.

[19QOS19]

Currently watching St Albans v Forest Green. 
imagine if our club had the drive and ambition of FGR. 

Ach, to be fair we're pretty good at getting papped out of tournaments by sides two divisions below us as well...

[Benji]

6 minutes ago, 19QOS19 said:

Ach, to be fair we're pretty good at getting papped out of tournaments by sides two divisions below us as well...

I really put the kiss of death on them didn’t I?

[Benji]

12 minutes ago, Homer Thompson said:

44 minutes ago, Benji said:

Currently watching St Albans v Forest Green. 
imagine if our club had the drive and ambition of FGR. 

Imagine if our club had an owner worth over £100 million.

Not bad for a New Age Traveller witb a vision 

[19QOS19]

[emoji1787] I really put the kiss of death on them didn’t I?[emoji1787]

Absolutely [emoji38]

[Benji]

4 minutes ago, 19QOS19 said:

Absolutely

That’s why I don’t place bets

[SUPERSOUTH]

Rumoured Manager & board meeting yesterday? It probably happens all the time but surely this time questions were getting asked of the manager..... 

[Priti priti priti Patel]

11 hours ago, Homer Thompson said:

To be honest, whether the streaming is a net benefit or not theres no actual decision to make. It was a necessity last season, extended into this season to give fans an option while attendances were restricted and it will be gone, in its current form at least, next season. At no point was there ever a decision to be made about whether to continue or not and the decision will be out of our hands for next season.

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.

Quote

Presumably, you're talking about tracking cookies? Theyve been blocked by major browsers for a while with Chrome looking likely to follow anytime now. We know from trying to block English viewers that any geo data within the UK is incredibly unreliable.

You could get the users address but that doesnt really give you any reliable information about whether or not they would have attended the game. We have many fans based outside of the local area who travel to games regularly and plenty of local based fans who dont, or cant, attend and have been watching the stream.

So, you're really down to asking people. Entirely possible but if you make it mandatory it impacts the user experience (and adds another step into a process that some already have trouble with) if you make it optional the numbers completing it will be pretty low.

There is already a fair amount of data available and there is analysis that can be done eg international v UK fans - but working out how many watching the stream would have attended the game would either involving collecting a large amount of additional data or making a lot of assumptions. 

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")

Edited November 7, 2021 by Priti priti priti Patel

[Homer Thompson]

54 minutes ago, Priti priti priti Patel said:

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 SPFL havent said anything officially, as far as I know, but everyone is expecting it to go back to non-UK only streaming next season. It would be a major shock if that doesnt turn out to be the case.

We've already committed to streaming to season ticket holders for the season, so stopping completely isnt an option. We could stop taking PPV but given there are likely to be fans who dont yet feel comfortable coming back it would seem a bit churlish to simply stop based on a best guess that its harming income. The streaming income is only a few pounds less than the average ticket price, so its hard to see how it could significantly harm income.

I would argue that the club should be doing all it can, with the resources it has, to entice people to attend games. Im not sure how knowing if someone would have attended or not really makes any difference to that.

54 minutes ago, Priti priti priti Patel said:

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")

We already have a lot of that information and have been looking at regular viewers versus one offs etc. The problem is location. As I said, you're making a huge assumption that a local address is someone who would have attended and one further away is one who wouldnt - until you get to a reasonably far distance, and as we're not allowed to stream to England most of those have already been excluded.

Unfortunately, the issue with a survey isnt really the design of the site but the ability of some people to register, login, pay and view the stream. I think you would be surprised how much support a decent number of people need. Everything is designed to be as simple as possible for a reason!

It would be great to have more data on viewers, and fans in general (but thats a whole other thing we dont do but should), and maybe we should have been collecting some of this info since the streaming started. We didnt, though, and there are only 11 games left as it stands to do so. 

None of what you say is inherently wrong, its all possible and it all could be useful, but theres only so much data realistically available and basically no resource within the club to do anything with it.

[queenslad]

I know of a number of supporters who watched stream yesterday as they didn't know the main stand was open. They had decided not to return until the main stand was open and didn't know it had reopened. The decision to reopen the main stand seemed to be made very late Friday afternoon. Not everyone is on social media or those who are may not be on it all the time. I only use facebook but a lot of messages do not appear on my stream and I only find them when I log onto QOS official site. Can the club send out regular emails to supporters, they should have addresses and even know what part of the ground they are in

[Homer Thompson]

5 minutes ago, queenslad said:

I know of a number of supporters who watched stream yesterday as they didn't know the main stand was open. They had decided not to return until the main stand was open and didn't know it had reopened. The decision to reopen the main stand seemed to be made very late Friday afternoon. Not everyone is on social media or those who are may not be on it all the time. I only use facebook but a lot of messages do not appear on my stream and I only find them when I log onto QOS official site. Can the club send out regular emails to supporters, they should have addresses and even know what part of the ground they are in

Technically, yes, we have a system we used for the ticket ballots at the start of the season. The issue, as always, is someone having the time to do it.

I have just had an idea though

[queenslad]

I know a number of regulars who used to attend have paid for seasons tickets and are watching the streams until covid goes away or they feel safe. They paid full price for season tickets even although they would have been cheaper buying pay per view on a game by game basis.

Heard several comments from people in new stand who were happier on saturday too with there being less people in the new stand with the old stand being open and having more space. There are a lot of people still afraid of covid in DG and that fear will take time to disappear

 

[Priti priti priti Patel]

41 minutes ago, Homer Thompson said:

We already have a lot of that information and have been looking at regular viewers versus one offs etc. 

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.

Edited November 7, 2021 by Priti priti priti Patel

[Fae_the_'briggs]

6 hours ago, MallanandFlanagan said:

Any news on Dougie the Doonhamer also? Has he retired?

Not 100% sure but I don't think any club mascots are working just now, can't recall seeing any at away games I've watched either. Probably another Covid restriction. 

[Beastie Russell]

21 hours ago, 19QOS19 said:

I expect programme sales will take a hit. £4 is a bit steep.

Perhaps not initially charging £4 then selling the unsold copies to a programme dealer who puts them on eBay for £2.99 would help
 

Before counting the money from the streaming you’d need to work out how many of the 400 streams were away fans ?

 

[Alex Nesovic's Barmy Army]

Morton have theirs back. It was that tweet I saw when I originally asked about Dougie.

#FreeDougie

Not 100% sure but I don't think any club mascots are working just now, can't recall seeing any at away games I've watched either. Probably another Covid restriction.