Unless marketing improves rapidly gates this season will be back to levels of 1993-4. The game has become ignored in the capital with little or no mentions in the Standard and largely side-lined by BBC London. You can hardly blame them after the farce of the last few years! London is the toughest market in the world in relation to entertainment/sport and we will need sharp minds and elbows to get a hearing. A winning team will help a lot but you wonder as the season start looms whether the club really have a plan to get bums on seats. The contradiction is that we have arguably one of the best sports in the world for spectator excitement and value for money but London seems to have fallen out of love with the Broncos...........

Well, they don't even seem to have contacted people who attended games at the Hive last season. This is a failure of the first order.

There are tens of thousands of people in and around London who have attended a rugby league match in the past 18 months. They've handed over their contact details. But no-one has tried to mine this rich seam to extract even a couple of hundred extra speccies. At the risk of invoking the ghost of GF, the club are still intent on targeting all communication on fewer than 50 hardcore fans via social media.

Why would the club market themselves when there is no financial benefit to any take up from said marketing?

AK got "assistance" (apparently it wasn't a bribe) last year in the shape of a marketing budget. From what I can gather, this was spent on a couple of travelcards and a handful of T-Shirts and had an absolute 0 impact on actual awareness or attendance.....other than to halve our average attendance that is.

The ridiculous situation where we now find ourselves training in Watford, officed god knows where and playing in a stadium where we get precisely $0.00 from any matchday revenues (tickets, bar, food, shop) is a legacy of the idiotic behaviour of our owner. Without wanting to derail this thread, the simple answer is that until we gain financially from marketing, there is absolutely no point in engaging in anything other than which is free.....so we will continue to preach to the ever-shrinking choir.

This weeks email asks us to become members and informs us of an open training session in Hertfordshire at 9am on Saturday.....gripping stuff.

Until we are either back in charge of our own destiny and revenue streams, we may as well resign ourselves to crowds of 500 and if we don't go up this year, looking for a new home or paying rent to Kleanthouse and the Hive.......

...brave new world!

In the words of Al Davis "Just win baby"

There are few clubs even in the Super League who get it completely right, perhaps Wigan and Leeds are the best, wonder how many Championship Clubs do? Leigh seem to be turning their club around but even they have been in deep trouble in past seasons, and Huddersfield I feel for, no matter how hard they promote the club they seem to average so low compared to other clubs even when they won the Super League shield, so it is not easy.

But I think there has been a turn around this year, sponsors, number of local businesses getting involved and yesterday The London Broncos Business Club had it's inaugural event, which seemed well attended and from twitter many were impressed with the club and more so the attitude of the young players, so things are happening it will not all happen over night, a simple idea like the London Broncos Diary sold out and extra had to be ordered, so lets trust this is just the start.

COMMUNICATION!

That said, GF is right (he's not always wrong you know, just most of the time, lol) there is no incentive under the current rental agreement to promote the club ata all. However if we get some wins under our belt it might be in Barnet FC's interest to throw a bit of PR our way.

Ian Lenegan thinks that the best way is for Wigan to play a game here. www.sportinglife.com/rugby-leagu ... ndon-match Millwall, QPR and Fulham are the London venues being considered by Wigan for a Super League fixture in the capital. Wigan owner Ian Lenagan, a former director and major shareholder of London Broncos, wants to switch one of his club's home fixtures to the capital and is confident of making the move this season. "It is a sensible way of expanding the game," Lenagan said. Why not go the whole hog and try Charlton or Brentford?

Ian Lenegan thinks that the best way is for Wigan to play a game here. www.sportinglife.com/rugby-leagu ... ndon-match Millwall, QPR and Fulham are the London venues being considered by Wigan for a Super League fixture in the capital. Wigan owner Ian Lenagan, a former director and major shareholder of London Broncos, wants to switch one of his club's home fixtures to the capital and is confident of making the move this season. "It is a sensible way of expanding the game," Lenagan said. Why not go the whole hog and try Charlton or Brentford?

Essential first criteria.

Disagree with Gutterfax - whilst the deal on ground etc may be terrible, getting more people attending has to be good for the club in the long term, and indeed in the short term if it improves atmosphere, makes the team play better/intimidates the opposition etc etc....................

Winning/losing only adds to/detracts from the core support. It's the lack of a core support that needs sorting asap.

I welcome debate and disagreement, even if you are wrong



It would seem that, unable to find a buyer for his beloved London Toy, Hughes has decided to devalue it to the extent where I could afford to buy the club. We have no income other than that which we get from him and the RFL. Everything else connected with the club that generates any form of income is now the landlords, so it is his responsibility to attract more paying customers as it is 100% in his interest.

As for the long term? Discussing the Long term and London Broncos is an alien concept.......I warned the club in 1999 (could have been 2000) that if they didn't market themselves they'd be in trouble.....that was 3 (2) years before I became a fan.....from 2002 onwards I bent the ear of Warren, Cartwright, Lenegan, Hughes Mackay and anyone else connected to the club........but hey ho, only Lenegan and the RFL listened and Hughes didn't take kindly to being told what to do by either of them.......and guess how that's worked out for him!

Not like me to either blow my own trumpet or say I told you so

, but there you have it!...it makes my blood boil just thinking about the number of times the club has failed to carry out even the simplest of tasks......I'm sure Rooster Booster will be along to give you his amateur freudian analysis shortly....

As for atmosphere and intimidating the opposition, it has been a good many years since either of those have happened at a London home game.......and no amount of positive spin is going to deliver either whilst we are based in tier 2.

Not sure what your definition of short medium or long term, but 14/15 years must meet one of the criteria?

i dont disagree that the club has been appallingly run, and if it satisfies your ego - i am sure your right in everything you say, both in the past and in the future - except......... Where does your argument take us? You seem to be saying you would be happier with 30 watching rather than a couple of thousand, because it doesnt earn us any money - so it doesnt matter? My argument is that irrespective of the money it has to be better for fans, players and for the long term future of the club to get more people through the gates?

Your posts are uniformly depressing, repetitive, negative and arrogant. Stop telling us what the problems are - we all know, stop describing the solutions which may have worked 15 years ago - daydreaming/wishing is nice but serves no useful purpose and make a few positive suggestions about going forward?

just a suggestion

Where is the cranewife?

Then get on with it.

Now that would be something Gutterfax RL probably better than Halifax RL !

Interesting letter in the RL weekly press this week, pointing out there is only One RU Club left in London now, and that is Quins, all the others have moved away why??

Just listening to Smooth Radio in the car here in the NW, Red Devil commercials all the time, Join Dr Marwan Koukash is the strap line, he must be throwing some money in, even a different one for the Red Devils Business Club, but will it make any difference, I seriously doubt it? Huddersfield have tried everything even when top of Super League so often 5,000 plus, the Birth Town of the Sport?

Saracens are also in London.

Saracens are in N London.

Near Quins, you've got Richmond, London Scottish (who have ambitions of being a Premier club), Rosslyn Park.
One of Richmond or Scottish have applied to the council to do up The Athletic Ground.

London Irish still have their base in Sunbury-On-Thames, having moved slightly down the road.

And I can see London Welsh returning to Old Deer Park, sooner rather than later.

Strictly speaking Saracens are in Hertfordshire according to their postal address and Richmond is only on the borders of London. London is 95% a football city and that is the real problem, Even County cricket struggles.

I went to watch Richmond RU on Saturday. Reasonable crowd in attendance. Rob Powell is apparently defence coach there now BTW.

Sums up the mentality and aptitude of your average RL fan.......I think you'll find that there are a great number of Union clubs in London, including Saracens and Harlequins. The fact that London Irish moved to Reading has more to do with the fact that the ground and clubhouse they own (purchased in 1931 for £1,300 and now worth an estimated £100,000,000 ) wasn't up to scratch or big enough to take decent sized crowds. Wasps have moved purely because they were shipping cash by the bucketload and are now in charge of their own destiny and london Scottish/Richmond will soon be back at the top table having being funded by the sale of scrum.com to ESPN for £millions. London Welsh are a basket case but still manage to attract more fans than we ever could.......

Laziness is the reason London Broncos never attracted decent crowds.......Hughes has dropped cash everywhere except in terms of marketing. Will the penny ever drop? Doubt it.

Here's a heartfelt suggestion. Put me on your ignore list. I know I am repetitive....but not as regular in my comments as the club are in managing to make the same mistakes time after time.
If you or the club want ideas for marketing and promotion, then PM me.....I now charge for my services and unlike the numpties employed by the club over the years, I work on a reward/consequence scenario......I deliver, I get rewards, I don't deliver, I get my contract ripped up.
I'm not starving!

Once way of ensuring there are plenty of tries I guess

I was in a shi77y mood until I read that. Cheers

In which case, Twickenham is in Middlesex, so Quins are not in London.
They have a TW postcode.

You'd have to look at Barnes at being in London with an SW13 postcode.

I thought Saracens were now at Copthall which is London NW4.