
Previously I presented data and descriptive stats on the attendance at the Aviva stadium for Republic of Ireland
international ties. Below strips out the stats showing attendance at just home friendly ties from August 2010 to June 2013. Giving that pricing structures (to my knowledge) and the competition format Fridays Latvia match (friendly) have remained constant it will be interesting to see the effect the new management team has on attendance. For Giovanni Trapattoni's first game Ireland drew 1-1 in a friendly with Serbia in May 2008. 42,500 people were attracted to Croke Park, thats a 52% capacity of the 82,300 seats available in the stadium.
Of course we can’t control for the ‘opposition variable’ (i.e. I’m sure Brazil would attract more than Latvia, and the Poland friendly attracts foreign nationals in Ireland regardless of the manager which Robbie spoke of earlier this morning) but given the degree of speculation concerning the ‘business side’ of the appointment, it will be interesting to see if O'Neill and Keane can attract at least the average for friendly attendances in the Aviva: 31199. 60% of the 51,700 capacity. This average falls to 28,585 or 55% capacity if you drop the first game against Argentina which was the inaugural match at the Aviva.
If we were to assume that Latvia would be just as attractive as our last 5 friendly opponents (in table above) and that the quality of Ireland's football has got no better or worse, we could probably make a crude estimate of the economic effects of the new appointment.... and perhaps should divide the figure by 2!