Quote gutterfax="gutterfax"1. London were fine at Charlton....but I would have started in a smaller ground...Brentford was fine.
2. Branson didn't want to "invest" or "market"........he didn't understand WHAT he had bought. The London Public, including myself, had no idea London RL existed........there was zero marketing......as for the Monarchs......the club was badly managed but that said, they started as London RL should have......there are 1,000,000 ex-pat northerners inside the M25......it's not because of the fans coming down to London that games at the stoop v Wigan and Saints are the biggest draws........a good number of away fans get the bus/tube home after the game....that's the audience for London RL.
3. DH dislikes/distrusts marketing.....IL left before he had a chance to make a difference and thr storm managed to break the cap because the part owners of the NRL owned them....not because of fan numbers. Their fanbase went UP last year....marketing dream.
As for TV........where do you reckon pro/semi-pro RL would be in the UK without Uncle Rupert?
4. Free ticket offers? Yeah....like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.....should have been done and done BIG in 1996........
5. I didn't say it was right or a good business model...I just said they weren't a loss making club (at the moment and at the whim of DH)....YOU SAID THEY WERE....YOU ARE WRONG.
I could debate this all night, but what's the point. In short, if London RL does fail, it will be through lack of trying IMO.'"
Ummm, what has news limited owning the storm got to do with their cheating, if as you say it's because news turned a blind eye to it, why weren't they cheating before wally waldron from St Kilda AFL club got there?
And on the previous page, you said the storm came about because of TV money the NRL wanted but the NSW teams were against this expansion.
Well wasn't it the then NSWRL who invited the non NSW teams into their comp in the first place in 1981 with Canberra and 1988 with the Brisbane Broncos and Gold Coast/Tweed Seagulls?
And wasn't it the NSW mob in the then ARL who managed to get a Kiwi, SE QLD, Nth QLD and Perth side into the comp in 1995?
Also, didn't the then ARL have on their plans a Melbourne team of their own to come in around 98/99 called the Melbourne Monarchs? And isn't the only reason the Storm are in the comp now because Murdoch took over the League, killed off a dozen clubs and done what he liked?
Now I agree with you about London, they need to be helped in anyway the RFL can give them, but you are waaaay off the mark in regards to Australia and Rugby League, waaaay waaay waaay off the mark.
Just one last thing about the Storm, you said it was good for them that they got busted cheating last year as their (a marketers dream) crowds went up.
Well no, after they got busted, their crowds dropped to 10k, the reason they ended up with a 14k average is because their first 3 games before they were caught, they had over 22k for their first game, a 14k on a Monday night against Manly (pretty good actually) and then 25/6k against the Warriors.
They were averaging over 22k before the shiit hit the fan.
After that, the crowds fell right away until the end of the year where the storm sold $1 tixs against the Broncos and 20k turned up.
This year, the Storm are near the top of the table playing really well and the crowds have gone backwards, it was not a marketers dream, it was and is a nightmare for the clubs and its fans.
