But going back i little further - you used to have to ask pubs to put football on the telly and crowds were on the decline.

Agreed, and it's been dire for a number of seasons, but it is not the one single factor in poor press exposure, that's an issue for the sport in general, issue is the correlation between press coverage and bums on seats, which in my view is a red herring.

To puncture my own argument of national highlights programs Twenty20 cricket does not have a dedicated terrestrial highlights package and that does okay, but ours is a minority sport, with consistently amongst the highest non-soccer viewing figures on Sky, and we don't even get a mention on the London News for ITV or BBC London News on the TV, not asking for pictures, just that there is a fixture or result to mention. There are soccer fixtures with lower gates mentioned and union fixtures with comparable gates to our own mentioned, but we do not even register, in more ways than one.

completely agree. as massively important as spreading the gospel is you need something to say first, and this team has had almost nothing to say in its entire history. A couple of brief periods of success followed by attendence crushing moves and terrible teams is not the way to build a following. These things take years and need to become part of a culture - which is where the coverage of the sport starts to come in.


I hate the stoop but while we were harlequins it was our ground,
As broncos we need to find our own or something we can call our own on a permanent basis.
Then we can build a team worthy to play in a ground.
Then the legacy to support future teams.
Once we have a story to tell then focus on the marketing etc- and by marketing I mean brand management rather than just telling people we exist - that should be a standard.

Agreed and "press inches" are increasingly irrelevent in the world of social media. Top priority is having something worth watching.

Press inches drives social media, it doesn't just get up and drive itself in the way that the club is hoping it will by getting the few fans, employees and people within the game to retweet messages. It may be less important but it is not becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Didn't David say it was 250k towards the end of last season?

Whilst owning our own ground would be the ideal business model it won't come cheap. Most new stadiums seem to cost around £1m per 1000 seats, and buying the required land won't come cheap in London. It's very difficult to see how, even with the relevant grants available, we could fund a sole venture stadium without taking out a mortgage that will cost us well north of our current rent levels.

I still think behind the scenes something is being planned for post our current lease. Lets hope that in this Franchise period that on the field there is vast improvement and turnover is increased to decent levels.

So nonsense like [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkEHA-wixDw&feature=g-pop&context=G2d09619YPAAAAAAAAAAthis[/url gets 2m+ views becuase of press inches

I jumped on the clubs over-reliance on fb & twitter as a closed circle of getting coverage, and I would say that video is something that an exciting sport could use on sites such as youtube. As posted previously by myself I think the club missed a trick with the Fenton the Dog video with the club training in Richmond Park and the training ground opposite Robin Hood gate I think. They could have produced a viral video with something along the lines of the mascots chasing the players, towards the road, and then the players chasing back with the London Broncos flash ending the video. something along those lines at the exact same location and you've got a viral video that gets us out there, nothing else at our level works for social media. Last year we had James Corden and Dizzee Rascal in Harlequins Rugby League shirts, who knew. We can't get the msg out beyond our own fans with typed social media and we haven't been able to truly harness the visual element, be that photo or video.

Our website's terrible, our twitter and fb promoter is way worse than the other clubs I follow inc. some championship clubs and I still haven't received one email or phone call asking me to renew my st. We spend very little effort on little details.

Twitter's not a closed shop but our web presence is pretty lacking and incredibly undynamic

What do you mean by not a closed shop?

Think someone was taking about how twitter only preaches to the disciples. But it doesn't. It's a completely open forum where they can reach millions.

Twitter has that ability, unfortunately we don't have the willingness to harness it.

Twitter does have the ability I agree, but you have to create the awareness, every tweet I receive from London Broncos or London RL I re-tweet to all my list, hoping that just one or two or them may click on the link as many are in London, you need to spread the message.