ICT encouraging next generation of fans - Cameron
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KENNY Cameron has been encouraged by Caley Thistle’s season ticket sales, particularly the amount of youngsters now coming to home matches.
Despite seeing a drop in their average attendance from 4038 in season 2012/13 to 3558 in the campaign just finished, partly due to only having one home match each against Celtic and rivals Ross County, Inverness chairman Cameron believes the club can be reasonably optimistic about the future due to the amount of young supporters now attending games at Tulloch Caledonian Stadium.
In a bid to ensure the next generation keep coming back, however, Caley Thistle are offering as part of their season ticket package for the next campaign, free seats for children under the age of 12 in the Family Stand.
The club will also continue to give away free tickets for matches to schools, sports clubs, scouts, guides and other youth organisations.
"We are spending a lot of time and effort engaging with the youngsters throughout the Highlands as part of our ongoing community initiatives," he said.
"We have a core support of circa 3000 for our home games in Inverness, yet took almost 8000 to Celtic Park for the League Cup final. If we could attract even a small percentage of those that went the final to attend our home games regularly, it would make a big difference to the club.
"There is no instant fix to increasing crowd numbers and we will not see this rise significantly in the short term, despite the success of the team in the past two seasons.
"But we have our loyal core support and will continue with our youth engagement policy. We have seen a substantial increase in the number of young ICT fans attending our home matches, which bodes well for the future.
"Last season we had numerous sales promotions, with varied success rates, on discounted tickets and we will continue with these. However, the best value for money for spectators is still a season ticket.
"This season, we will continue with our offer to local clubs and organisations whereby there are 300 tickets made available free of charge for every home game, excluding Celtic. The uptake on this has been very encouraging.
"Overall, season ticket sales have been brisk and are ahead of where they were at this time over the last two seasons, which is promising.
"Season ticket sales are very important to a club our size as it lets us set our budgets and gauge what the manager will have to spend in terms of contract renewals, or additional squad members, as they provide a degree of certainty on ticket revenues."
