Quote Fergus="Fergus"From what it would appear, Wakefield Trinity has no professional business/management/promotion/advertising structures. While ever there is no investment in this area we will continue to flounder. An earlier poster commented that news and views about the club are only relayed through social media or local radio. When someone from the club is offered a spot on Radio Yorkshire or Leeds, I wonder how many of our non trinity supporters are tuning in as well as the diehard fan - not many I'm sure !!
The club, apart from the Community team, have little or no interaction with the city. Whilst this prevails, growth and interest in the club will always be held back and reined in. A sad reflection of this was the fact that as the season ended and until only recently, anyone entering the club shop would have thought they were entering a third rate charity shop under development. I know people may say that the club was awaiting new merchandise but surely proper business plans would have prevented this revenue inactivity from taking place
Maybe the slow movement of progress regarding the clubs home is partly because potential investors, whether they are sponsors, council or developers, see a business organisation that oozez little professionalism.
I must say the interest from the Castleford public toward their local team is much to be admired - lots of lessons could be learnt I'm sure.'"
The problem with that Fergus, is that advertising & promotion costs a lot of short term money, chasing potential long term return. An advertising budget is a bit of a luxury to clubs like ours.
As for the management side, I have to say the club appears to be the best run it has been in my time supporting the club (since 2000) and from what I've read/heard - a lot longer than that. Again, it's all well and good employing an experienced CEO to direct commercial operations, but a good one will cost you say 50k - or 200 season tickets. Thats without pension contributions, NI etc.
I'd suggest the issues with the shop were to do with us not ordering much stuff because Macron were turning out a lot of tat that went unsold and we were locked into the deal with them from before MC's time. Looking at the new gear in the shop, this issue looks to have been addressed, but WE as fans need to back the club and go and buy the stuff.
Cas are to be applauded for the buzz they create in their local area, but let's be real - Cas is pretty much the only ticket in town up there and their ground is spitting distance from town centre and lots of tightly packed, terraced housing around the the town centre. They also have large areas to the east, south and north to gather support from, Wakefield is hemmed in by other SL & Championship sides.
Wakefield have none of these above and the area directly surrounding the ground is a very ethnically diverse area, which tend not to have great representation at sports grounds (aside from cricket)
IMO, the only way to get more punters into BV is to have some success on the pitch, again this season is arguably our best squad in SL era (some say 2009) - so it looks like we are gradually addressing these issues. But it takes time.