I know. But I was back in the gym on Monday trying to knock some sense into my back. Pain is pain, but it's whether you choose to suffer...

correction.......they are only historical if they happened pre-2012.........they are no longer historical as the 1,970 who bothered last week points to!
Also, if this had been a thread regrding the performance of the team, then by all means comment on my marketing musings, but as it's a thread on the topic of a shameful attendance, take your personal attacks elsewhere.

The Shameful attendance is a direct result of CURRENT marketing activity being about as much use as a chocolate teapot......

To my mind, the fundamental problem with marketing this club is that there's b*gg*r all to market without a successful team and that's something we don't currently have. Unlike most of our northern and even Welsh cousins, we don't represent any community so we can't fall back on people having a natural soft spot for the local team.

We could market away and get folks to attend a match or two, but would they come back to see and support a beaten team? I think not. If the sport of RL is serious about having a club based in the capital then it has to ensure that it's up there at or near the top of the league. And how does it do that? By removing any restrictions on who we can recruit (players and coaching staff) and by ensuring that the funding is there to enable us to pay these people long term and without the arbitrary time-outs on overseas recruitment that were previously imposed (rather like a government committing to get its military out of a foreign war zone by a fixed date rather than when the job's proved to have been done). There would of course be understandable howls from M62-land about unfair treatment, not a level playing field, etc. So this approach would have to be supported by all SL clubs who'd need to persuade their fans that this is the way to go.

Would it work? Would crowds flock in to see a team that played with panache and had continuing success? Don't know and the omens from what happened during Branson's time aren't really positive. What is sure is that without success on the pitch there's absolutely no chance of selling a sports team which has to operate in a competitive environment.

So, IMO any emphasis on a marketing-led approach is putting the cart firmly ahead of the horse and just won't work.

I guess it's a bit like having a brand new product.

No-one knows about it. So what do you do?

Get it known.

Market it.

If people try it for the first time then great, if they don't they don't. If they try it again, then great, if they don't they don't. Some people will like the product, people won't.

But you do need to make people aware of its existence in the first place.

That's second place. First is having the product.

Which is why David Hughes invested in strengthening the squad this year.

Not enough - isn't allowed to spend more and probably couldn't or wouldn't.

And there's the matter of the coaching staff.

We do have a product. We are London Broncos Rugby League.

The crux is, is that you and many other short and long term fans may not be happy with it at the moment.

If the product is poor, then it will be harder to market. But our product will go up and down in quality as has been shown by our history. We need more people like yourself who have gone through the ups and downs. Afterall, you (and others) took the steps to go to that first game. And still go even with a poor product. We need to market ourselves to get newer people to that first game.

Interestingly, the more people that don't like a product, the more bad publicity we get. So the more people, that say we're poor, crap etc. The less effective the marketing will be as reviewers out there can make or break the marketing.

There are people out there that buy and are happy to buy a skoda!

I was going to go, couldn't make a 2pm Sunday kickoff though

I dont know if certain posters on here have noticed, but for every team that wins, another team looses

That is the whole point , you have to market your team no matter how they perform, having said that, teams can ' perform ' well and still lose, at home the remit should be attacking RL, the result secondary

If success is the only way you can build a club and its support, there are only 4/5 clubs worth having, and that includes us mere mortals down here , so tell me, what future is tgere fir tge Skolars? , or will they thrive when you lot shut down?

100% Correct..........




So far wrong it's painful! Field of Dreams attitude that has the club in the position it is now, with sub 2000 crowds 2 games into the new incarnation..........

I have heard every excuse in the book for the terrible attendances the club get........but believe me, regardless of if the team are top 4, top 8 or stone last, if you DON'T F****NG LET PEOPLE KNOW WE EXIST NOBODY WILL TURN UP!

Why not....just as an experiment that would cost very little, leaflet every house covered by the following map with a 2 for a tenner offer........I assure it it will generate more new fans than the ES adverts did and cost a lot less.
rlhttp://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl

Sorry Mick but that's bollox in respect to this unique situation, you and I both know that retention of supporters is far more of an issue than attracting them in the first place, gutterfax can sprout the mantra until the cows stop mooing, but getting new blood through the door via whatever means inc massaging the teams or the conditions we can recruit by mean nothing if the reasons people do not in general stick with the product have nothing to do with conventional marketing or brand alliance.

perhaps the time has come to accept that [iin general[/i southerners do not want to experience Rugby League as a sport to the same extent that pockets of the M62 and areas of Australia do, and that no amount of throwing money at it will alter that fact, and we cut our cloth accordingly.

Skolars perhaps have the closest we will come to in the South as a community based club where more than just the sport on offer makes people feel part of the club, maybe we just aimed too high.

Huddersfield Examiner! this is what we have to put up with in the North? "WHEN you think of 1970 in sporting terms great memories come flooding back. From a personal point of view it would have to be being allowed to stay up late at nine years of age to watch the World Cup coverage from Mexico on one of those newfangled colour television things. But what is not memorable is when 1970 is the size of the crowd for a Super League fixture. However, on Sunday a meagre one thousand, nine hundred and seventy souls were registered as having watched London Broncos taking on Huddersfield Giants at The Stoop – and I am told with good authority that half that crowd had travelled from West Yorkshire. Read More www.examiner.co.uk/news/examiner ... z1nr0PMrs4

Huddersfield Examiner! this is what we have to put up with in the North? "WHEN you think of 1970 in sporting terms great memories come flooding back. From a personal point of view it would have to be being allowed to stay up late at nine years of age to watch the World Cup coverage from Mexico on one of those newfangled colour television things. But what is not memorable is when 1970 is the size of the crowd for a Super League fixture. However, on Sunday a meagre one thousand, nine hundred and seventy souls were registered as having watched London Broncos taking on Huddersfield Giants at The Stoop – and I am told with good authority that half that crowd had travelled from West Yorkshire. Read More www.examiner.co.uk/news/examiner ... z1nr0PMrs4

Huddersfield are in no position to criticise other clubs, given their past

I would be prepared to accept this if rugby league had no presence in London beyond a propped-up professional top flight club. But with all the amateur clubs springing up, and more schools than ever taking it up (even my old school in Streatham, which only ever had football and cricket when I were a lad, is now taking it up via a partnership with Brixton Bulls) there is a genuine demand for the game from kids. The issue for me isn't that people down here aren't that bothered, it's more that London Broncos / Quins / whoever hasn't been able to attract or retain that interest.

There's enough people who know about and / or play the game in the south-east that we could get average attendances of at least 5,000+. So why aren't we?