As a lifelong supporter of my local club, I was pretty horrified at the sight of the Bradford Bulls Pledge 10'000 promotion bus parked in the car park of the Yorkshire Mill Village (less than one mile from Mount Pleasant) in Batley this morning. I understand the bus also visited not only the Birstall area, from where my club draws a good number of fans, but the cente of Dewsbury.
Batley has a professional Rugby League club, as does Dewsbury, and we struggle year after year to attract fans on a miniscule promotional budget. In reality, we have to rely on our on-field success to attract floating, and fickle local supporters.
As well as this cynical and selfish campaign in our towns being both morally and ethically wrong, Batley and Dewsbury are not even located in the same local authority as Bradford.
In 1996, the Batley and Dewsbury clubs lost hundreds of existing and potential fans to Bradford Bulls, following a similarly cynical promotion drive, which included a school visitation programme in the Heavy Woollen district, despite the existence of similar schemes run by our professional sporting organisations.
If any Bradford Bulls supporters wish to bicker with me over their right to advertise in other towns that already have long-standing Rugby League clubs, I would like to ask them how they would feel about, lets say, a Leeds Rhinos drive to attract fans from the Bradford area, which included a blue and amber promotional bus parked in the middle of Forster Square.
Its commendable of the Bulls to come up with this scheme to increase their crowds, but don't do it at the expense of lower league clubs that face a constant struggle to survive, and don't have the finances to compete with you to any extent. To bring your promotion to within less than a mile of both our respective grounds isn't just morally dubious, its also hugely disrespectful.

tbh, I feel for you I do. If we were in the same situation i'd be the same.
But Super League is the elite; these clubs should be drawing on potential from miles around. If that affects your smalltime club then...
Sale Sharks' fanbase in union is a mix of people from a 20 mile radius to watch tripe. If every SL club could achieve interest 20 miles around Rugby League would be in a better state.

I don't see what the problem is. Every third person in Warrington wore a Saints shirt until last year. It's no big deal.

Why don't Batley and the other pub teams do their own promotion in Bradford?

I agree with you this is really in poor taste.

They managed to get an exhibition stand at Bingley Music Live.

It was the only such stand, sporting or otherwise, at the whole event.

Keighley's ground is around 3 miles form Bingley where as Odsal is about 9 miles away. Both are in the Br*dford Met Council area but still, it's really not on and only reinforces the genuine hatred Keighley fans have for the B*lls.

It can't be good for the game when bigger clubs are in effect trying to wipe smaller ones out. Surely the more clubs we have, whether full-time, part-time, or amateur the healthier the game is.

Why didnt Keighley manage to get an exhibition stand at Bingley Music Live. If Keighley didnt advertise at the event it seems silly that Bradford shouldnt

There are reasons!

Seems pretty tight, especially as theres 200 000+ people in Bradford to appeal to.

What? You mean actually promote themselves? What madness are you speaking here?

No, much better to sit back and cry about someone else doing what they won't.

If a starving man is sat in front of a banquet shouldn't he feed himself instead of expecting to be waited on?

So clubs at our level DON'T promote themselves? What an idiotic statement. We do what we can on a very limited budget, and constantly try to attract new fans from our local area. Sadly, unlike Bradford Bulls we don't have the luxury of millions of pounds of money from SKY to fritter away, and as a small club we don't have the benefit of the revenue from crowds that are 7 or 8 times bigger than our own.
I never suggested that Bradford Bulls shouldn't promote themselves in our town simply because we don't either, I suggested that it is morally reprehensible, not to mention disrespectful, to park themselves less than a mile from our ground and try to peddle their season ticket scheme.
Still, if you wish, change the angle of my post to suit your own ends.

Fine. What does your club do to attract fans in the local area? And this pleading poverty thing. I don't buy that. Effective marketing isn't about spending a ton of cash. It's about getting your brand known in the market place.

Does your club advertise near amateur clubs? Potentially stealing away fans who might contribute a couple of quid to the whip round?

Your complaint is the worst I have seen on the board. It's as if some fans do not want the sport of rugby league to succeed.

If their ads get people watching RL who normally wouldn't, great. If they take people from your club to watch Bradford, then look at your club, not the Bulls.

There is more silverware in the Batley trophy cabinet than there is in the Bradford one at the moment.


You should go on an open top bus trip through Bradford showing off your trophy.

You obviously haven't got a clue about the financial constraints that a lot of clubs outside of Super League have to cope with. For your information, my club have cheap offers for virtually every home match, and advertise the fact. You still seem to be missing the point, which is that whilst we do what we can to attract fans, we can do without one of the 'bigger' and more recognisable names in the game making a play to snare fans from our local area.
As for not wanting the game to succeed, I guess that from your post you'd be happy for the smaller clubs to go belly up.

FFS, what's in my sig?

If they're taking away fans from your club, look at your club.
If they're attracting new fans, be happy about it.

This is absolutely despicable.

It’s a bit like Tesco coming on your local shopping parade in the middle of the council estate asking you to shop at Tesco rather than the local Off licence.

What the F()CK









Do you really believe that it is wrong for a competitor of yours to try to attract your customers away?

You think your horrified

?

I am more horrified that you typed your original post, checked it, read it back to yourself and then still pressed the post button

The parochial attitude is what has held the game back from actually pushing on to become a truly national sport. If you look at some of the marketing strategies employed by the Bulls and ask how much would they actually cost?

Getting your players to visit schools and give out free kids tickets. Most kids tickets are less than half the price of an adult one and a lot of the kids who got these tickets would require an adult to take them to the game. So right there, you've made money on that free ticket. Then once they're in the ground you've things like food and drink to buy as well as other match day items like Programs.

If you look at the early Bullmania days, none of what Bradford did was really that revolutionary in terms of marketing, it was just revolutionary in terms of RL. And it worked and earned them fans. But as for "stealing" fans? No, that's simply not the case. People saw a better option in terms of entertainment and took it. Damo made a very good analogy when he compared it to Tesco and the local off-licence.

Again, I'll repeat myself. Both the Batley and Dewsbury clubs have given out thousands upon thousands of free tickets to schoolchildren in the local area over the last 14 years. Do you seriously believe that we are so far behind the times the we haven't, and don't continue to use it as a tool? This is an attempt to expand our clubs and safeguard our future by attracting new fans at a young age. And then we get Bradford Bulls, a household RL name operating in the heavily publicised Super League offering the same people the same deal. As a potential new fan, what would be more attractive? The answer is obvious.
Rugby League is ostensibly a sport built around Northern conurbations, and if the bigger clubs operate in the way that Bradford are doing in this case, then smaller clubs will eventually die.
Maybe a good way to solve our so-called 'lack of effort' on the self-promotional front would be for the RFL to give us more SKY money, which would allow us to up our game in this area?
Of course, thats never going to happen, and the welfare of Championship clubs doesn't really matter as long as everything is all well and good in Super League.

So your horrified that I am concerned and upset about that fact that an organisation that has so many financial advantages over the organisation that I love dearly and have supported for over 25 years, making a blatant attempt to attract our exisiting fans and current fans whilst plonked less than a mile from our home stadium?
Shame on me.
I've no doubt that if the RU decided to start a Guiness Premiership club in Wrexham and made a play to snare Crusaders fans through a cheap season ticket deal, a lot of people, including yourself would be up in arms that an attempt was being made to kill our expansion club off.
You tell me what the difference is, especially given the fact that due to the franchise system and the likelihood that Batley and Dewsbury will never ever get to play in the highest echelons of Rugby League, we are playing a different sport to Bradford Bulls.

Sport is a business, get over it.

If any supporters leave then the small club is not doing enough to try and keep them in.

Yes.....was I not clear in my post. I don't care what my competitors do, so long as I counter their activities. I don't care what my peers earn at my company...so long as it doesn't impact on my ability to earn money.....FREE MARKET ECONOMY!
...not for you concern, but for artuculating it


...nope.....don't care less and wouldn't if it happened. FREE MARKET ECONOMY!

None!...and here's why
The guy who makes home made anti-dandruff shampoo...which is of a higher quality, better for the enviroment and provides employment for 5 local people with specialist skills (one of whom has a handicapped daughter, another will be a coach of a local team and another will have been doing this since Adolf Hitler fancied Dover as a holiday destination....with the other two being apprentices of this art) will always have a niche audience...but Proctor & Gamble...the makers of the worlds largest selling product to this audience, Head and Shoulders...will always be...well, head and shoulders above it!
Simple...FREE MARKET ECONOMY.
And...his better quality, more organic, eco-friendly product won't get stocked at Tesco either.......FME

If our soap guy wants to play with the big boys...he needs to ger Palmolive colgate involved......but if he does that...he won't be the independent supplier his customers like.......FME

Simple fact is that Bradford have gone from being trailblazers in SL to bottom feeders...they needed to address the loss of fans and have tried to do so....get over it

I have a lot ofsympathy for the OPs comments.

If Batley and Dewsbury who do a lot of community work in school, clubs etc then get shafted by a stronger and more aggressive powerful neighbour they will lose support. this then makes it harder for them to do that community work etc which brings new fans into the game.

Bradford may pick up fans from othere areas but they will probably put nothing back into those areas. If they were planning to do schools work or community work they should be doing it in BRADFORD

they are a parasite feeding on the work of smaller clubs.

There is no symbiotic relationship betwen them . they are just feeding off them.


However that is the way of modern society and buisness and RL is a buisness for better or worse that is the way it will be.

....and the fact is that if the Bradford Bulls aren't advertising for fans, there will be a soccer club that is, or an RU club, or the cinema, or some poor TV programme or Mecca Bingo or whatever else.

Putting up an adertising board = shafting?

Hardly an advertising board