When will "Thanh Vinh Fire Pan" revive?

A veteran Nghe An fan has summarized the association's work accurately in two verses: "Love is like a dragonfly/When happy, it lands, when sad, it flies." It is true that the link between the club and the associations, the association's management work is still spontaneous, when SLNA wins, it is crowded, enthusiastically gathering 8,000 - 10,000 people, when losing, it is the opposite.

Spontaneous

For many years now, despite having a fan club, there have been no meetings, no direction for activities, and membership activities have been almost spontaneous. If there is a budget, activities are mainly organized to go to the stadium to cheer, otherwise it falls into silence.

Nghe An fans cover Hang Day stadium in gold. Photo: An Thanh

The revenue of professional football clubs, in addition to the sponsors' purses, also comes from television copyright, commercial activities (advertising billboards, souvenirs, jerseys) and stadium tickets. Of which, the latter two sources of revenue are closely related to the fan club, even for MU, the revenue from ticket sales accounts for 20% of the total annual revenue.

After hitting rock bottom in V.League 2017, last season, the number of spectators coming to Vinh Stadium increased by 58.1% to 40,500 spectators/season (average 6,750 spectators/match) but was still lower than the average number of spectators coming to the stadium of V.League 2018 which was 7,903 spectators/match. It was less than half of Nam Dinh Stadium and half of Hang Day Stadium, with only 2,500 spectators coming to the stadium in some matches, far behind the district stadium matches in the amateur tournaments.

With tickets for stands A1 being 70,000 VND, A2 and A3 being 60,000 VND, and B, C, and D being only 30,000 VND and 20,000 VND, it is not difficult for us to calculate that SLNA's ticket sales revenue last year only accounted for more than 3% of the season's spending.

In fact, the statistics of the V.League Organizing Committee are not really accurate, because many away fans such as Hang Day, Go Dau, Hoa Xuan (Da Nang) ... are SLNA. But the fact that Nghe An fans are no longer interested in football is real and has not shown any signs of improvement even though the team has stars Van Duc, Khac Ngoc, Xuan Manh. The most watched match at Vinh Stadium this season was 10 thousand spectators, far behind the top 5 most watched matches in V.League (from 17 to 22 thousand).

It must be admitted that coach Duc Thang is quite interested in connecting with fans, willing to listen and contact the "leaders" of the association. He has proactively visited and given gifts to disabled fan Nguyen Ba Ky, attended the association's gala, and asked SLNA players to stay behind to show their gratitude to the audience after the match. However, the connecting activities before and after the match are still poor, without the hand of an organizer.

When the organization of the association lacks a true leader, not only does SLNA have difficulty attracting people to the stadium, but commercial activities also face many difficulties. The club cannot sell fake jerseys, and fans are not used to spending money on genuine, expensive jerseys. So everything is at a standstill and the team still has to wait for sponsors' money and cannot develop football business.

Restructure

In addition to organizing cheering on the field, which has become a routine and very professional, the next bright spot of the SLNA fan club's work is communication through social networking sites.

The “golden rivers” are an indispensable part of SLNA matches. Photo: An Thanh

Besides analysis and professional commentary, almost every move of SLNA's coaching staff and players is posted. News about players' girlfriends, new hairstyles, and fancy sports shoes are all exploited to the fullest. Many Vietnamese sports news sites have exploited news through this source.

After a decade of Bac A's association with SLNA, it seems that SLNA will have a new sponsor before next season. The fact that Quang Tinh, Van Binh, and Hoang Thinh are training at Vinh Stadium signals a strategy to restructure the team in a positive direction. So is it necessary to restructure the cheerleading work? Who will be responsible for doing that?