Quote sally cinnamon="sally cinnamon"Ticket schemes are not going to get you 20,000 fans unless its Wigan and we can get them to bring loads over (maybe offer them half price if they leave before the end). '"
I didn't say they would. But it might help as part of a wider, community focussed marketing push. What about a loyalty card type approach like the supermarkets do? Points for buying stuff from the shop, points for buying a season ticket, points for buying match tickets, points for introducing new fans etc. But as PART of a wider scheme, it wouldn't work on its own.
Quote sally cinnamon="sally cinnamon"I wouldn't try to diminish the work the club does engaging with the community but I think you get diminishing returns with this in terms of being able to attract more fans. If a big programme of investment in the community would have 20,000 through the turnstiles then money wouldn't be a problem, we could borrow it if a lender truly believed it would pay off like that. '"
Thats a very defeatist way of looking at it. Thats like saying there can't possibly be any new business ideas out there because if there were they would have already happened. Look at Leeds and Wigan - they are both extremely visible in the local communities with a huge number of amateur, junior and school teams playing RL compared to Warrington. That is a large part of why they get bigger crowds. And its why football clubs in smaller towns get bigger crowds - because it means more to more people. Lots of people in Warrington know nothing about RL and rarely come into contact with it.
Quote sally cinnamon="sally cinnamon"It is likely to be a much harder product to sell to new fans than we have had under Smith with his array of top class stars from both hemispheres. The likelihood is we will slip backwards as a club on the field, in the next 5 years. Whilst people may point out that other SL clubs will be in the same boat too, that is the whole problem, the game in general will find it difficult to grow. '"
But, as others have said above, selling RL to your community isn't about top class stars. Youngsters will look up to professional sportsmen regardless of how famous they are. Obviously the higher profile of football will always be a draw - but lots of football fans don't actually attend matches as its too expensive. There is no reason why they can't follow football on TV and attend live RL matches as well. If you embed RL in your communities through school teams and local clubs, people will want to support their town team too providing the club has good relations with them.
I know none of the above is easy, the point I'm really making is that I do believe Warrington has the potential to be a much bigger club as there are loads of under-tapped areas nearby (Lymm is a classic example). But it will only be achieved by a joined up, long term strategic plan, not just by telling your existing fans that we must sell out our matches.
