16,000 people per Square Mile is the population density of Ealing.....a rough line drawn from Ruislip Rd East, down argyle road, along the A4020 and then back up Greenford road is probably a shade over that, but let's call it a an area populated by 16,000 people who could walk to the ground in 10 minutes.....situated in this area is Drayton Manor School (1,600 pupils), Brentside School (1,500) and just on the fringes we have Notting Hill & Ealing High School (900). There are also a number of community and special needs schools in this catchment area.

I would recommend to anyone trying to attract new consumers to their offering, that dropping leaflets to the 4,000/5,000 houses in this area, as well as incentivising the local schools (who will all be running fundraising activities) to help promote us would far more beneficial than a random leaflet drop in far away boroughs!

I would suggest that most fans of RL clubs other than ourselves are drawn from an area of no more than 3 miles away from their club.....Ealing isn't that dissimilar to Wakefield in terms of Population and I'd pretty much wager heavily on most fans of Wakey being a short distance from the ground.....maybe bigger Clubs like Leeds might stretch a bit further afield, but RL is a community sport and at present, our Community is Ealing Borough and specifically Hanwell, Greenford, Drayton Green and Perivale....that's where we should be concentrating, not Sheen

Dog, the difference between wakey and Ealing is history, how long have wakey been running, a lot of the fans are second third generation.
Moving into an area such as Brentford twickenham Ealing with a minority sport and then suddenly expecting that community to adopt that sport just because they can walk to it is just daft.
Of the schools you mention do any play rugby league?
Look at our current fan base and geographic spread!
And our community is Greater London not just Ealing borough

In a nutshell.

And we have nothing to learn from them??

It would not be too difficult for The Broncos to find out what Dulwich Hamlet are doing right. Ask their chairman. He is a Broncos fan and at most games.

Does he fancy taking us over??? (is he rich)??

He is a regular guy, with a lot on his hands with Dulwich Hamlet.
You think we have a problem with our owner. Ask him about theirs.

Liam, DHFC Chairman, is a salaried employee of a well known company. There is no benefactor at Dulwich. I believe Liam offered to speak to the club about what Dulwich do to drive gates but got no reply.

Dulwich's Community Liaison Officer, a librarian by day, also watches Broncos occasionally and would be well worth the club talking to.

[NORTHERNBLOKE MODE] the bloke that Hired Gus MacKay needs no advice! The Guy who appointed "The Towell" is infallible! The Guy who got us relegated is a genius......[/NBMODE]]

So let me get this straight, you want someone who is worth Hundreds of Millions of pounds earned by making key business decisions to start taking advice from the Chairman of an amateur football team that happens to have a large following of hipsters because they all like to stick together and be a bit different from other soccer fans? Apart from that what is it about Dulwich Hamlet you want Broncos to follow? How to lose your ground? How to fail to get promotion from a league you're by far the biggest spenders in for the previous few seasons?

Jesus, I thought people asking for Eddie Hearn to get involved was funny!!

And what exactly would a Librarian bring to the party?

I'm genuinely lost for words as to what goes through people's heads

What do I think it would be worth taking advice on? Easy community engagement and methods of growing the gate. In a handful or years Dulwich have grown their gate from an average of 170 to around 2000 on Saturdays before they were evicted. (Most of whom are not hipsters whatever the press like to say.) Is it a directly repeatable methodology, no actually
there are unique features at Dulwich that don't hold true for Broncos however much of the strategy is transferrable.

David Hughes was a very good oil trader. If I want advice on oil trading I'd approach him. If I want advice on crowd and community engagement and growing the gate I would speak to Liam and not David. Horses for courses and frankly, given the desperate gate on Saturday, what do the Broncos have to lose?

The fact Dulwich are homeless has nothing to do with this, that's due to a planning dispute totally unrelated to community relations. Dulwich are not the top spenders in the league and haven't been since promotion to that level. They have improved their league finishing position for something like eight consecutive seasons and this season finished 2nd. About right in terms of the budget. This is relevant to community relations/growing your fan base as by expanding the fan base they have expanded the budget permitting improved on field results. (Though being homeless realistically means big cuts next season.)

As to what can the Community Liaison Officer bring to the party, an immense amount actually. Gates have gone up from averaging 170 to 2,000 in a few seasons. Do you honestly think 1800 people happened to blunder through the turnstiles and decided they liked it. Of course not, Dulwich actively went out and recruited a new fan base. This was no fluke, a lot of hard work went into it. The lead person in that process was the Community Liaison Officer. He knows exactly which approaches worked and which failed. Why would you not want to tap into that knowledge?

Frankly the approach that a librarian can't possibly bring anything to the party sums up exactly why Broncos are in a mess. Learn from people who have been there and done it, especially when they were offering the knowledge for free. Feel free to list everyone in the UK who has a better track record at driving community relations and turning that into ground visits which in turn drove repeat visits and then people inviting their friends who invited their friends because the club had the offering on and off the pitch right and people enjoyed it in recent seasons. Then draw up a second list, removing all the paid professionals who are beyond our reach. The remaining list will be very short indeed. But hey, he's a librarian so what does he know.......

I can tell you now the first bit of advice would have been don't run random leaflet drops like Broncos did on Saturday. Target the approaches to the community as they way you can measure and contrast responses. Another bit of advice, further down the line NOT now as it has to be right on and off the pitch to hook people, if RFL rules permit run a pay what you want for admission day. One of the key days in DHFC's recent history was the first pay what you want day. Community relations anr awareness had grown thanks to our librarian. People were open to coming but not at a tenner to try it out. (A bigger issue for Broncos at 20.) The club had the offering right off the pitch, on the pitch you need a bit of luck. Many people attended their first Hamlet game, a fair chunk their first football game. Many enjoyed it and came back and, as mentioned, started inviting their friends. A personal invitation from someone you know and trust is worth a million free or cheap offer flyers. It's not rocket science, hard work, a little money and a bit of luck are required.

Edited to say I despair of any rugby league club who aren't tapping into York for advice at the moment. They are doing impressive things too. Again it's not 100% transferrable but much of it will be.

https://londonbroncosrl.com/news/more-t ... y-broncos/ https://londonbroncosrl.com/news/bronco ... l-schools/ https://londonbroncosrl.com/news/commun ... christmas/ Club do nothing in the community obviously! Only 3 things reported but there is stuff going on, lots of people seem to think the club don’t leave the gates at Trailfinders

https://londonbroncosrl.com/news/more-t ... y-broncos/ https://londonbroncosrl.com/news/bronco ... l-schools/ https://londonbroncosrl.com/news/commun ... christmas/ Club do nothing in the community obviously! Only 3 things reported but there is stuff going on, lots of people seem to think the club don’t leave the gates at Trailfinders

Yet the club still use a Pitchero website Liam? Surely a man of your capabilities would have addressed how rubbish that is when trying to attract sponsors?

This might hold you back in your crusade to get Broncos asking you for help!

You keep mentioning 170 to 2000 in a few seasons however what actually happened with the crowds was a jump from an average of nearly 700 in 2013 to 1300 in 2017/18 which is a nice increase but hardly the work of some kind of guru.

Which year was the 170 you mention and when did you start at Dulwich Liam because on your LinkedIN page you have it listed as starting in June 2013 as Commercial Manager so that means you started with nearly 700 as your average attendance. So in 5 years you have actually added only 600 to the average attendance.

As I said, there is nothing to be learnt from your exploits at Dulwich however much you try and bang your own drum on a forum under a pseudonym.

My name is Roger. Liam doesn't post on here. Wire Quinn and others can vouch for who I am.

A new club website, non Pitchero, is under development as the club recognised the issue. The social media team at the club is one person
A volunteer with a full time job. It won't appear over night. Sadly the person concerned also has health challenges which is delaying it. Frankly we don't care, his wellbeing is more important.

The 170 gate average was 2010 ftom memory. I'd doesn't happen overnight. It's basically a long hard road. On that point I agree with you.

The commercial manager is not the person charged with driving the gates at Dulwich. Liam has been at the club for about 30 years and has been present through the changes and has a good overview of what happened and why. The Community Liason Officer is more directly responsible for driving attendances so how long Liam has been commercial manager for is irrelevant.

I have not suggested hiring either Liam or Mishi ( the librarian.) They wouldn't be interested, events at Dulwich mean they are a bit busy. They were willing to share knowledge for free.

I am well aware Broncos do community work. I would question whether they are doing the right community work unless they don't view it as a way of either long term wider community engagement or driving gates in which case, fair enough.

What Wolfpack did is neither here or there. This thread has been detailed - partially by me so hands up - into a Broncos marketing thread. Failures by another club do not make things better for Broncos.

I totally agree about your point on the Dulwich method won't get 1k overnight. I have watched Dulwich since 1991 and am well aware of how long it took to build the gate. It wasn't a smooth upwards curve either. As stated the first pay what you want day was massive.

I won't post this thread again as it's beginning to bore me so I guess everyone else must be sick of it. I am willing to discuss this face to face at a game however.

I repeat my name is Roger and I am not Liam.

And the 2000plus didn’t appear for Toronto either, and apparently we were partly to blame! Not really sure why Toronto played the game in london to be honest but that’s a whole different discussion.
The marketing issue will never be resolved for some folk. Like I say in the eyes of some whatever they do will be wrong.
The club tried a mail shot, which areas actually does not matter, did it get results, well folk saw people getting in using the flyer so must have done something.
Have said it loads of times, for me rugby league in the south is too niche to expect the community close to the club to be the new supporters, the clubs community has to be a lot wider, even if that means two bus rides to get to the games.