Careful.

You will be accused of trolling if you make any negative comments towards London.

So these away fans, why would they stop supporting their team and switch over to London now if they'd not done it before? Even if the RFL chose to target these fans, they're fans of visiting clubs so they're only going to show up once a year. You say London hasn't been marketed properly, I don't think targeting those people would be worthwhile as they're clearly not interested in seeing London.

The fact is no one beyond a few dozen London fans seems to actually care if there's a SL club in London or not.

There's all this talk about how it's nots fair, London should have a bigger salary cap to compensate for their geographical location and all the rest of it. And personally, I'd say fine, they can have the bigger cap if they can financially justify it by bringing in big enough crowds and income to pay for the larger cap and not be reliant on massive year on year bailouts from their owner as that's unsustainable as the current situation clearly shows. But there just isn't the interest in the sport or the club in the area. If there was then the club would at least be able to point at it's crowds and say "Look, we have people coming" but they don't and really never have. There's no truly viable fanbase there either home or away. Certainly not away. Most other SL clubs have gotten wise to the fact they're going to get a poor crowd when London come to town and most now use that game for some kind of cut price ticket offer to try and encourage local fans to come down to make up the shortfall.


Yes, the club may be poorly marketed, but what about when you were linked with Harlequins? One of the most recognisable club brands in either code. Still failed to grab anyone's interest. Still failed to find a market to BE marketed in. If London was a real bronco, it would have been shot years ago for being lame.

For a London RL CLUB TO BE SUCCESSFUL at top level needs lessons to be learned from the Fulham days. The club has to become part of an established London soccer club. Play there, take it's name, play in its colours and win over the bulk of the soccer clubs fans.

why? are you having trouble identifying anything that other SL clubs have brought that London haven't?

No, he makes a relevant point by addressing the success of Catalan Dragons.....you on the other hand have yet to make a relevant point.

If london dont make it Huddersfield should have their catalan away fixture swapped from the rubbish march tie to the better august one

First up, to say "even if" in regards to marketing strategy is pointless. The RFL claim 22,000 of the crowd who attended the 4 Nations Doubleheader were London based....surely if these people attended a RL international, then top flight RL is of interest to them? The fact that the RFL, armed with this data have not used it to assist in the expansion of the game outside of its heartlands is a mistake.


If that was a fact, we'd have been dead in the water in 2005. Yes, we don't have the 6,500 ST holders that Bradford have(10,000 if the price is right

) and yes, the club have failed miserably as a commercial entity within the constraints of the current ownership model. Nobody denies this.


Actually, the only unfairness in the whole situation is that the RFL have expected private investors to bankroll their expansion......everything else, including London Weighting or more Australian players is sheer window dressing. You'd be hard pressed to find another SL club owner who has sunk 10million + into their club and yet the RFL seem content to let London die....



We didn't need a bigger cap to make Wembley or 2 play-offs which is more than some current SL clubs have managed in 18 seasons....what we need is access to Rugby League players. RL players from the north will not come south...their 50k a year goes twice as far up north and we aren't prepared to pay over the odds for sub standard players when we can pick up better quality overseas. Having a bigger allowance on the quota hasn't stopped the talent starting to come through....LMS is doing well at Saints, Wigan have picked up 2 more Cockneys...it is a long process and we are at the first generation stage. Speak to Brian Mac at Leeds about the talented kids coming through....cockneys being picked at age group and now for the Knights....losing the pro club risks that development.



less than 1/2 of 1% is the difference to the annual turn over of the Bradford Bulls between London visiting Bradford and Widnes....and as for London's home crowds, there has never been any proper marketing so we will probably never know if the audience is there....it comes back to "who should pay for the expansion of the game outside its heartlands?"




London Broncos/Harlequins RL started to die the day the RFL told IL he had to let go of us if he wanted to own Wigan.....we could have been connected with Chelsea or Arsenal and it would have made no difference....we had an investor with a 5 year and 10 year plan.....the RFL took that away from us. The NRL at one sage had 3 clubs owned by the broadcast partner......and 1 expansion club on extra money....the NRL is a strong competition....do I need to draw a map for you?



shows the level of veterinary care in Bradford hasn't changed since Noah was pilling them in 2 by 2 then

Let's replace the Bronco's in SL, with the London Skolars !!!!!
"I am a genius" !

I'd take the owner and administrators at the Skolars over those at London Broncos in a heartbeat......what they have slowly started to achieve there is brilliant, but I do remind you that they're on the pitch successes are down in no small part to the development work done by the London SL team.....

The writing's been on the wall for a long time, mostly due to incompetence from our board and the lack of promotion from the RFL down here. They can go on about having a London presence, but what have they done to develop the sport here? I haven't seen anything advertising the Wembley semi-finals in London, and I was at the Chile game recently and there was nothing locally or at Wembley stadium promoting the event.

Even if we do survive this, which I don't believe we will, we'll just see another name change and ground hopping, before the owner loses interest and we're back at square one again. The only decent chance we've had was the Harlequins link up, which gave us a home, a local base to grow on, links with St Mary's University etc. but we've thrown it all away to change name back to a previously failed club. The idea from the board was that the Broncos name would grow the fanbase again, but it has fallen heavily, because our fans have been disillusioned watching the same crap week after week and having no answers from the inept board, who have now blamed the location for our support falling rather than the obvious.

The worst part is, they'll be over 70,000 fans in London this weekend, maybe 10/15% have never been to a game before, and it would have been the perfect time to promote the club in the programme, with flyers, announcements etc, in the hope of finding more fans.

The only way I can see a brighter future, is to have a local community club in Championship 1 and build from there, sharing with a local non-league club and just using our academy players in the squad, whilst most importantly growing a local community aspect, something we've never even attempted in 33 years.

EVEN THE FREAK IS RIGHT


[urlhttp://www.leaguefreak.com/what-shall-we-do-with-the-london-broncos-6201/#comment-5989[/url

As an outsider to the sport when I fist started watching in 2002 I was scathing as to the lack of any professionalism or marketing off the pitch.....I was a doom monger from the day I joined these boards and it is with no pleasure that I say I could see this coming back in 2002 if changes weren't made.
We tripped and nearly fell in 2005 but Ian Lenagan came to our rescue, only for the short sighted RFL to pull him and his cash out of the club......what has gone on at the club since then is a slow death...overseen by the RFL who have been compliant in their inactivity and an owner who was too pig headed to spend his cash where it was needed.

Ah yes, the old "Should have been Keighley".
Hate to break this to you, but Fev Rovers, Salford, Wakey, Widnes, Hull, and Doncaster all finished above Keighley. Even if we accept that Doncaster were well adrift, that still leaves five clubs who had a far better claim to a Superleague place than Keighley. Or London for that matter.