If the fans seem a little bit more subdued than usual at Nottingham Rugby games recently, there’s a good reason for it. Suffering a severe economic crisis and with few fans in the stands, the Nottingham Rugby club decided upon a interesting solution to drum up fan interest, inflatable fans.
Reaching out to a local company, Airheads, that specializes in artificially creating crowds for TV and movies, the club had 1,000 inflatable fans placed around the stadium, dressed to make them seemingly indistinguishable from the live fans. Which says a lot about the British people but that’s a whole other story…
Airheads’ director, Lee Harris was excited about the whole thing:
“As a local firm we are really keen to support Nottingham Rugby in their quest to raise the profile of the club. We are hoping an extra 1,000 ‘people’ in the crowd against Exeter, will encourage supporters of both rugby and sport to come and get behind their successful local team. Hopefully it will add to the atmosphere, and inspire people to come back again next week and help the team qualify for the Cup Final by beating Leeds.”
Fitting in with the 1,305 real fans in the crowd, the inflatable fans helped spur the Nottingham side to victory and continuing on in their pursuit of the National Trophy. Reportedly, the cup run might help stave off disaster for the club, although fan attendance has still remained a problem, hence of course, the inflatables.
I can’t wait for this to come to the US.
The Slanch Report 
this is a fab idea! they are so realistic and would highly recommend the company
check out http://www.airheads.biz