Can't answer your questions but does remind me of something published many years ago (over 20) that CPFC was the most local club for a 650,000 catchment, which was the largest in country at the time.

Not sure if advent of Crawley will have skewed that significantly but we should still be close to top if not top of the table for most opportunity.

If a rule were to be enforced fans could only support their most local side I imagine we'd sell out every match several times over. Be interesting to know what it would do to catchment for other London clubs in close proximity.

We may have a big catchment area but we have some very glamorous clubs nearby to steal people away ----

Brighton, Charlton, Millwall, Dartford, Dagenham roll off the tongue.

I loved the days of standing in 40k crowds. Nowhere near as good now.

The demographic of our catchment area has changed dramatically. I lived in Bromley in the 70s and used to go to the local butchers, the greengrocer, the newsagent, the tobacconist, used to know them all by name. At my school all the kids were English. Most supported Palace and were local to the area.
You hardly need me to tell you what it's like now. The 'locals' in the main, are not interested in Palace. You would think we would resonate with the new demographic, considering the make up of our squad, but we don't. However, if we did well, we might be able to get 40 thousand again. As we are, we hardly even sell out for big matches. I regularly get tickets for the biggest matches with little problem: something that us nearly impossible for fans of Utd or Liverpool etc.
We could do with reconnecting with our area, or our area reconnecting with us.

Red and Blue Army!

I think you'd need to split supporters up into groups:

1. Will go to watch regularly in the Championship: 15,000?

2. Will go to watch regularly in the premier league: 25,000?

3. Will turn up for a cup final, play off final, etc: 50,000?

4. Watches on TV but never goes: ????

5. Used to go but now doesn't: ????

And the great unknown...

6. Would turn up to watch premier league football if Selhurst could accommodate more people: ????

I presume the club feel demand exists or they wouldn't be trying to build the new stand, but when does that demand run dry? Would we fill a 40,000 capacity Selhurst if we had an average premier league team? Possibly, though perhaps the idea would be (and hopefully is) that a larger ground results in more money to invest in the team, which equals more demand for tickets to watch them.

Personally I reckon the 'catchment area' figure is a red herring, as there may well be a lot of people living close to the ground, but how many of them have the inclination or the money to go and support Palace? The most densely populated areas tend to be the poorest, and I'm not sure there is much of a culture of going to watch live football in the local community, partly because its so expensive, and partly because the community is very diverse now, not like the 1970s when the vast majority were culturally inclined to go to football. Even when it was £10 to stand on the Holmesdale and we had a good team in the early 90s, there weren't exactly queues around the block.

A big chunk of most London clubs active support base is made up of ex-pats like me: Born and brought up near the ground, taken along by Dad in the days when it was affordable, have since moved away and done OK enough to afford tickets and like to travel back. It's the same at West Ham, Tottenham etc.

There's every chance that the next generation of Palace fans are kids like my boy, born and raised in leafy Surrey with no personal connection to the area around Selhurst other than through me.

Can only think the club think they can put a top class set of players in the the new arena.
It has all become about entertainment, for many. That’s how it is.
It wasn’t always . There was a time when just being in the same room as Man U would fill a fifty thousand stadium, with Palace, fans.
Even allowing for another good hiding. Not any more.

I'm sure we could easily fill a 40k capacity stadium on a regular basis all the while we're a Prem club playing exciting football. Bloody Sainsbury's.

I think our International appeal, and apparently it's huge, has a lot to do with the club's name. Crystal Palace has a kind of glamorous ring to it that say Leeds, doesn't have to folk on the other side of the world. The name attracts attention.

There's a Crystal Palace hotel in Tombstone Arizona. Not a lot of people know that.

Dad and I watched games standing on the muddy slope of the Holmesdale Road end. He cheered and I rattled.