Do Leicester attract Asian fans?

[Raj]

Raj one of the biggest twats on the forum is a brown boy.

One of?

As the youngest 40 year old on the forum who is a slight tinge of brown, i can confirm there are more and more asians going City since i started back in the Brian Little Days.

BUT alot still "follow' The Big Boys..Lpool,ManUre...even they most probably dont know where they play.

The Club didi abit of work to try and get more asians to City(we've had numerous topics about all that shite before!)

At the end of the day,its your choice...support your local team or be a glory hunter...its the same for all colours!!

[RGFox]

I have to concur with the majority of the views on here (as an asian).

During the mid-80s, I got interested in football, and based my choice of team (at the time) - Everton - on 2 factors - one of my mates' at school used to talk about them all the time, had the kit, and they had just signed Lineker. I sort-of "supported" them until circa 1990, and when Brian Little took over, and we started to become relatively successful, I took more interest.

I then started attending matches with a couple of asian mates in my teens circa 1992 onwards and got hooked in. I also started taking my nephew along to matches and he's now converted!

I know countless friends who purport to support Liverpool (mainly) and some Man Utd, a couple Arsenal. I think, essentially a glory hunter mentality (which I was guilty of in my youth). The funny thing now is, Liverpool haven't won the league for over 20 years, but people still cling to past glories, so some loyalty I guess!

When I ask why support them? "They're good, we've won 18 league titles, blah blah...". Like most, many have never been to a match in their lives, let alone to the home ground."

So I guess my story may be somewhat different to others, although I'm proud to be a Leicester fan and will be bringing my son up to support them too.

[StanSP]

I have to concur with the majority of the views on here (as an asian).

During the mid-80s, I got interested in football, and based my choice of team (at the time) - Everton - on 2 factors - one of my mates' at school used to talk about them all the time, had the kit, and they had just signed Lineker. I sort-of "supported" them until circa 1990, and when Brian Little took over, and we started to become relatively successful, I took more interest.

I then started attending matches with a couple of asian mates in my teens circa 1992 onwards and got hooked in. I also started taking my nephew along to matches and he's now converted!

I know countless friends who purport to support Liverpool (mainly) and some Man Utd, a couple Arsenal. I think, essentially a glory hunter mentality (which I was guilty of in my youth). The funny thing now is, Liverpool haven't won the league for over 20 years, but people still cling to past glories, so some loyalty I guess!

When I ask why support them? "They're good, we've won 18 league titles, blah blah...". Like most, many have never been to a match in their lives, let alone to the home ground."

So I guess my story may be somewhat different to others, although I'm proud to be a Leicester fan and will be bringing my son up to support them too.

Me too.

[Trav Le Bleu]

In my experience, most British Asians (in Birmingham) are gloryhunters who support Man U or Liverpool and ignore the local clubs.

I agree with this and I think there are two reasons for that.

a) There is a lot more emphasis on being successful and being seen to be attached to success in Asian culture.

b) the vast majority of Asian's are at most 3rd generation in this country, so their grandparents didn't support the local team and probably was only really familiar with cricket, then their children at English schools, with no previous/older convictions to guide them, attached themselves to teams they saw winning games on TV, because they probably wouldn't have been taken to games.

I know that's very generalised, but I believe it stands for the most part.

[Trav Le Bleu]

they couldn't give a shit about England.

Cos the Raj really cared for India.

[Raj]

Cos the Raj really cared for India.

Nowt to do with me pal!

[RonnieTodger]

I am going to take that as meaning that they have no cultural attachment to England or the City they live in, and still identify strongly with India, there are a large proportion that were born in India and then came to Leicester. With the constant bumming of the big four and European competions being the main live footy to watch on normal TV and if you have Sky Sports you will get even more big clubs rammed down your throat, it is not hard to see why any passing interest in football would result in supporting a big team, especially if their parents had no interest in footy and going to watch matches.

As for Cricket, would you go to many Indian football matches if you moved to India? Or would you be more tempted to go watch cricket instead of football because of the crazy atmosphere you get at Indian cricket matches?

Well yeah, I'd rather go and watch live games than sit and watch it at home

[Trav Le Bleu]

Nowt to do with me pal!

Well we know you don't care.

[nlukka]

Not read the whole of this thread but thought I'd throw my two-pence worth in.

I'm a British-Asian and I have a STH at the Walkers. Most of my Asian friends support Leicester as their second team, but as someone else said earlier, they follow one of the 'big' clubs with a passion. In fact, most of my friends support Arsenal, with the irony being that they're not really glory-supporters anymore given Arsenal's demise.

I do find it sad that most of my friends don't follow Leicester, it's got to the point that I now go to home and away games on my own, but I still prefer that then watching one of the big four in the comfort of my living room. I think if you don't support your local team, you don't really get that same connection with the club (i.e the pride when winning and the desperation when we're not doing well.) I also pick up on the way my Asian friends used to refer to Leicester results - "how are THEY" doing, whereas, now that we're hoping to get back to the Premiership, a lot of them ask "how are WE doing."

At the stadium now I do notice more Asian fans around me than I did before, but I think the pricing often has a lot to do with it. The club could do a whole lot more to incentivise non-regular fans, of all backgrounds, to come to the game's more regularly by reducing prices.

As another person said earlier, Asian kids aren't introduced to a club by their family in the same way that other fans whose families have supported the club for generations are. That's probably why so many Asians do support other clubs, because there's no affinity with Leicester over any other club.

My dad, who moved to the UK in 1974, is often worried that I will encounter racism at games, but as I've said to him repeatedly that has never been the case. I think it's more at away games where that fear comes true, but certainly not at Leicester games at all.

On the whole though, I think unless Leicester are a top-tier football club again, we won't attract back a lot of the fans who support other clubs. A sad truth, but unfortunately the way it seems to be.

[Smudge]

It's a typo chuckles, not a grammatical error, to be honest I am a pretty poor Grammar Nazi, I never call indivduals up on mistakes, because that is sad and petty, and I make mistakes all the time. I want my sig to serve as a gentle reminder to the actual rules of grammar, I am more of a grammar pacifist, but I couldn't find the badge for that.

Der yar!

[Uncle Monty]

Not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but surely the more important question would be that with such a high population why hasn't an Asain player come through the ranks?

[Raw Dykes]

I know I've gone off topic, and I'm not talking about Asian fans at all now, but another thing that annoys me about glory-grabbers is that they're robbing from the poor and giving to the rich. I know they don't give money to the big clubs through ticket sales - they never go to matches, but they do buy merchandise and rob smaller clubs of fans. The money available to clubs all the way through the leagues is already incredibly unfair, and this only makes the problem worse.

Imagine all the plastic fans of Man Utd, Arse-anal, etc. in, say, Torquay suddenly started following their local side - suddenly the club finds itself with a lot more income, and they shoot up the league. If everyone only supported a local club, all the leagues would have a much more level playing field and would be more competitive. We'd see a much more varied champions list again, rather than the same few teams' names over and over again we see today. Maybe it wouldn't make a massive difference, but it certainly would help.

[Raw Dykes]

Not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but surely the more important question would be that with such a high population why hasn't an Asain player come through the ranks?

I'm fairly sure I remember someone at the club commenting on this a few years ago. I think they were saying that Leicester do get quite a lot of promising Asian kids through the youth set up, but they are nearly always stopped at the age of about 15 or 16 by their parents, because football isn't what they want their kids to do for a living.

[flowwolf]

Hmm, I think the problem for me would be the fact that it is such a huge discount, without any consideration, I understand giving discounts to Students, OAPs, unemployed, Children etc, but I am sure there are some in the Polish community that can afford to go to the football, likewise there are some in the non-Polish community that can't.

What they should have done is slashed the prices for all for one game, but focussed the marketing and advertising around the polish communities, or arranged a pre-season friendly against a Polish club*, or sign a Polish player (maybe Bath are a little small for that kind of initiative). Or just given away a handful of free tickets to the Polish community for every game. As well intentioned as it was I can understand how it would get other fan's backs up to have to pay 5 times as much just because they are not from Poland.

*This could be something Leicester could do to attract more Asian fans, get a pre-season friendly against the Indian national team.

Yes well we have already seen who the home grown Leicester Asians support when it comes to cricket, they overwhelmingly supported the Indian National side when they played at Grace road and that is a fact. So why would football be any different ? And correct me if i'm wrong but nearly all polish people over here are economic migrants and have all come here to secure jobs not sit on the dole and can well afford the proper price of a ticket the same as anyone else. Political bullshit rears it's ugly head once again I despair.

[Saxondale]

Not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but surely the more important question would be that with such a high population why hasn't an Asain player come through the ranks?

There have been a few but non have properly made it.

Usman Gondal (if I remember his name correctly), Aman Verma.

[accessory]

Verma made one first-team appearance (last season in a League Cup game).

Saw quite a few Asian faces at the Real Madrid game - certainly more than in evidence at league games.

But live football in general has a bad reputation among certain sections of the community. Many fans may have been deterred from going to grounds by horror tales from the last century.

[Topman]

When u said asian, u mean Indian/ Pakistani? (brown coloured) not being racist! We have a lot of Thai/ Chinese fans at Leicester, me being one, I have supported the club since I was 9 with my family and friends, I know there's quite a large following considering Chinese is a minority in Leicester, see a lot more Thai support since Top taken over

[Out Foxed]

there's a fair few chinese stooodents in Leicester though

[The Doctor]

Exactly.

There's no opportunity for match fixing in dentistry.

Well there could be if you were pinocchio's dentist...

[volpeazzurro]

serious? less than 5% of this country is ''asian''...hardly a 'high' asian population.

It is a culture thing and it isn't...I was a pretty decent player when I was a kid, easily better than most of the kids on the school team but the games teacher would never ever ever allow me to play for the school..even if some kid was ill or something, and even if his captain pleased with him to play me. At that age in my life, I was kinda blind to the REAL reason as to why I couldn't play for the school team..but I did ask in my innocence if you needed to be 'white' to play for the school football team.

That's really sad but being of a certain age, I can see that being very true. Surely those sort of things don't happen now though do they bluefox9er?

[Captain...]

Der yar!

Haha, love it, I will update my Sig when I'm not at work.

As for attracting more followers of any ethnicity, results like the last couple will help, once we are back to playing good football and picking up results more people will come to the matches and be attracted by the football above all else.

[MPH]

ummm... I do see the points made about the amount of Asian fans/ players being disproportionate to the percantage of the city population... but i personally think that any attempts to attract only certain segments of our population is subtly marginalising others.

Go to schools. offer free / cheap tickets to school kids and who ever comes, comes. *shrugs*

[Pride_Of_The_Midlands]

Why Bradford City fan in a hijab holds key to the game’s future

Watching television coverage of Bradford City beating Aston Villa on Tuesday night, I was struck by the most arresting sight.

As the visitors’ Barry Bannan went to take a corner, he was assailed by an overexcited Bradford fan, attempting verbally to put him off his stride.

Perhaps a choice observation was being made about his height, maybe about his hair’s copper hue, whatever it was probably as well that the pitchside microphones did not pick it up.

Not that there was anything unusual in such behaviour: most fans reckon that the price of entry to a football game these days includes the right loudly to voice disparaging comment about opposition players.

What was striking, though, was the identity of the fan yelling at Bannan: she was an Asian woman wearing a hijab. What is more, she was with a couple of female Asian friends, in a section of the Valley Parade crowd dotted with Asian faces.

If it is possible that someone yelling at a footballer represents evidence of social progress, then this was the most encouraging image of the season.

After all the miserable racist vituperation that has swilled around football recently, here was a Muslim woman, comfortable in the middle of an ethnically mixed crowd, engaging with the game’s traditional possibilities. And in doing so, clearly having the time of her life. How pleasant was that to see?

The good news is that shouty Bradford woman is not alone. For years it was to the game’s shame that Asian people felt excluded from immersing themselves in its glories.

Such was the sense of isolation, British Asian men largely preferred to follow cricket, while young Asian females would never have felt comfortable at a match.

Thanks to some imaginative initiatives, parts of the game are increasingly reaching out to the Asian audience. Which, if nothing else, makes commercial sense: this is a substantial inner-city market residing in the shadow of league grounds. To ignore it is to miss out on the customers living on the doorstep.

And the Asians are coming. At Manchester United home games, television audiences have for several years now seen a family of Sikhs doughnutting the dugout, passing each other sweets as Sir Alex Ferguson stalks the technical area.

At Wolverhampton Wanderers, the growth in interest among the city’s Asians has been growing rapidly since 2007, when a group of six fans formed Punjabi Wolves.

“We just thought: the game belongs to us as much as anybody,†Raj Bains, the organisation’s founder, explains. “I started going to matches in 1979. In the early days it was a bit scary, even with the home fans. But there are no issues now.â€

Within five years, the organisation has grown to the point it now has more than 800 members. At home matches, they sit in different parts of Molineux. But at away matches the Punjabi Wolves are a noticeable, unified presence, travelling together, sitting together, banging their Indian drums as they approach grounds.

“The drums give us our identity,†says Bains. “But we consider ourselves very much part of the Wolves family.â€

Bains has been approached by officials from West Bromwich, Aston Villa and Birmingham City all seeking his advice on starting similar groups.

But he is too busy building Punjabi Wolves to franchise the idea yet. Established as a charity, from the off the group has collected money for good causes.

Last summer, Bains led a party out to India to help in the construction of a housing project they had helped to finance.

“Eight Asian and two English lads went,†he says. “Which was a reflection of our membership. We’re open to anyone: Asian, black, white. The only entry requirement is you love Wolves.†All ages, too. One of Punjabi Wolves’ regular drummers is 13. Which in itself is noteworthy.

Indeed what was perhaps more telling about the Valley Parade ranter was not so much her ethnicity as her age. She was clearly under 20. With her satchel slung round her neck, she looked like she was a student.

And the young really are an endangered species in the game’s upper reaches. In the Premier League the crowds are ageing faster than Paul Lambert as he watched his defenders flail and fail on Tuesday.

Scan the stands during any top flight match and the hairlines are receding, the faces lined, the average age way over 45. The clubs are doing little to address that ageing demographic.

At the Emirates on Sunday, Arsenal are charging visiting Manchester City fans £62 a head, perhaps on the assumption that they all come from Abu Dhabi. There will not be many students in that crowd. Unless their dad has paid.

Down the divisions it is not like that. At Milton Keynes, for instance, the Dons are watched by a crowd markedly younger than that at any Premier League venue. The main stand is packed with families, while gaggles of youths gather in the Stadium MK’s Cow Shed stand, chanting encouragement to their team.

Which is perhaps no surprise: half-season tickets, taking in the rest of the Dons’ League One home campaign, are available to under-18s for £20. That is not per game, that is for all 10 remaining matches, the kind of price affordable for even those whose paper round wages have stubbornly refused to rise in line with inflation.

It is the same at Bradford. Even as the club sank through the divisions, a conscientious effort to maintain crowd levels has seen prices held down.

Assuming she flashed her student card, the Asian woman ranter would have paid only £14 on Tuesday night to watch a riveting cup semi final. After what she experienced there is every chance she will be coming back.

It may be the product of necessity – in Bradford’s case maybe even of desperation – but what such a policy has done is mark out a new and different course for football.

While the Premier League plays out to an ever more affluent, ever ageing, white audience that will eventually, inevitably, die off, clubs like Bradford have found the path to renewal.

In fact, it could be said that what I was looking at when I saw that young Bantams fan in the hijab was this: football’s future.

Article in The Telegraph today

Here is the picture of the Bradford City fan

[Ashley]

I know a few Asian Leicester fans who go to games some very good friends of mine. Aman Verma came to Leicester from Kings Lynn through my cousin who is now in charge at Hinckley United as he knows Shaky very well unfortunately Verma wasn't good enough for the grade and is now at Brackley in the Conference North.

[The Year Of The Fox]

We have no more of an asian fan base than any other average club imo. ignore any fans of other clubs who say otherwise as its simply not true