Leyther_Matt wrote:It'd be in our interests to announce the ticketed attendance as that would include non-attendees (including non-attending season ticket holders; including free juniors) and therefore bump the figure up a bit
Absolutely.
Non-attendance or not, those tickets have been sold and cannot be re-sold, so they should count on the attendance figures. You can bet the RFL & all interested parties will make sure they get their cut of what's actually sold rather than trusting announced figures or checking League Express on a Monday, so we're not gaining any advantages by underestimating the figures, just making our support appear poorer than it really is.
The actual figures may not matter to some people, but over the course of the next couple of seasons if they make it even a little bit easier for us to tick a box on a superleague application then I'd say they're pretty important.
And so far we've been very careful not to overspend the other salary cap criteria of 50% of what we bring in, but later in the season if we want to know whether we've managed to put enough bums on seats to justify making a late signing or two they could be even more important...