Rovers are hoping the introduction of a three-match ticket package for next month’s triple header can boost attendances by around 1,500.

The club were around that number short of their 10,000 season ticket sales figure which left a £300,000 gap in the club’s income projections.

While sales did rise by around 100, after the club took the decision to freeze prices at last year’s early bird rate, 1,100 chose not to renew, offsetting the 700 new, and 500 returning, season ticket holders.

Head of commercial and marketing Greg Coar admits the club have to ‘be creative’ in their approach to attract more fans through the turnstiles, given the importance crowds have on the overeall business.

Tomorrow’s game with Huddersfield will be the first televised game of the season and only their third at Ewood since winning promotion back to the Championship.

“It’s a big proportion of our income and it is linked to everything else as well,” Coar said of attendances.

“The hospitality becomes more appealing the fuller the stadium is because there is a better buzz.

“The retail numbers are higher, the more people want to get on board with sponsorship.

“Television is linked in as well. Sponsors are looking for a return on their investment and televised games are absolutely crucial for that.

“We haven’t had that many games televised recently, we are this weekend, and a better visual spectacle is more likely to make us chosen for television again.

“It is a challenging balance and we don’t profess to get everything right, but everything we do is centred around the fans and we are still below average for the Championship.”

The three-game package includes home games with Sheffield Wednesday (November 2), Barnsley (November 23) and Brentford (November 27), while discounts of £15 per ticket are available for the Owls game, made a Category A plus fixture, for members of the 1875 scheme that currently has 1,800 members. Prices for the three game package are £45 for adults in the Riverside stand, and £50 in the Blackburn End.

Coar added: “With the three game package it would be great if we could get 1,500 fans taking that up because it then boosts the attendance for three games, rather than just being a one off.

“It is £10 more than a matchday ticket for the Sheffield Wednesday game so we have tried to mitigate the impact on home fans of the Category A plus. We are certainly not taking our fans for granted.”

Chief executive Steve Waggott said the club ‘couldn’t have done more’ to push season ticket sales, having held the price, while a £10,000 giveaway should they reach their target had little impact.

“We chose to freeze the price of season tickets at last season’s early bird rate,” Coar said.

“I was confident that if we held the price at last season’s early bird rate then we would get to the 10,000 target.

“We haven’t hit that target and that leaves us with a shortfall of cash which will then have to look to recoup in other areas, whether that be sponsorship, retail, but we only have a finite number of supporters we can target. We have to be as creative as possible.”

Many fans suggest reducing the price of matchday tickets is the answer, though lowering costs previously has failed to bring in the volume to make it viable.

Coar said the Oxford game, on the final day of Rovers’ promotion winning season of 2017/18, was ‘the perfect storm’, with over 27,000 in attendance as they celebrated promotion back to the Championship. 

But he pointed out: “If you keep reducing ticket prices then the novelty of that wears off and it soon just becomes ‘the price’.

“We have challenging matchday income targets.

“We had a massive walk-up number for the Charlton game on the opening day, the highest number we have hit for years in terms of fans paying the full ticket price for a game.

“But we lost that game and that was pivotal because that was a real chance to try and convert those walk-up fans in to buying a season ticket.”

Rovers’ season tickets generated in the region of £2m of revenue, with matchday ticketing targets of just under £1.7m. That would equate to around 20 per cent of the club’s annual turnover, though the desire to get more people in to the ground isn’t solely finance driven.

“More importantly than income, we want a better atmosphere and as many people in the ground as possible,” Coar explained.

“The people are there, we’ve seen that with the crowd for the Oxford game, and even if they just came to a few more matches per season each, that would make a real difference.

“We have to try and be creative but we know that we will never be able to please everyone.

“When you bring in cheap deals, we do get messages from some season ticket holders who feel they are being undercut, but the vast majority would rather see a full stadium and better atmosphere.”

Rovers brought in new catering partners this summer, with Sodexo taking over from Northcote whose relationship with the club went back some 17 years.

Work to the lounges inside Ewood Park has been delayed slightly, but extensive improvements have already been completed on the Premier Suite, as well as the concourse areas, with digital screens and contactless payment machines installed.

“We had been with Northcote for years, they have a Michelin starred restaurant just down the road and we had a long relationship with them, but that came to an end,” Coar said.

“There was a concern because of that people may have seen whoever came in as a downgrade but that’s not been the case at all.

“They retained a lot of the chefs and staff which has helped with that and the feedback from our customers has been brilliant.”

Prices have increased on the concourses, though Coar hopes a flexibility within the company, that has seen early bird meal deals introduced, can ease any concerns.

And reporting an increase in spending per head, he said: “On the concourses, it’s been a bit of a challenge.

“The prices have been higher than we had envisaged and we thought it might have been a case of the prices lowering because of their buying power, or at least staying the same.

“But they have gone up a bit.

“They have invested hugely in the digital screens and point of sale machines in the concourses and the work on that has been first class.

“The spend per head is up, we are working on the transaction times to try and bring them down so people get served quicker but on the whole it’s been good.

“Things had to change and I feel we’ve ended up with a really good option.”