Marketing is all about creating the desire for a particular product, making the recipient want it...

To run a marketing campaign, the first thing you need is a target. Then, you need to calculate the Budget available (including contingency) and the measurement peramiters.
In the case of QRL....If the target is 5,000 average gates and the budget is £300,000k, then the measurement needs to be spot on.
Then, you try different routes to market and gauge response, sticking with (and ramping up) the successful ones and binning the failures. After 6 months, you will have a recipie for long term sustainable marketing, but you must continue to try new avenues as well.

As an example, you place a £2,500 1/4 page ad in Metro and Lite.....offering free beer/food (get Greene King to sponsor it) and a £5 ticket on production of a completed form.
After the game, data entry the forms, contact the respondants, ask what they though and offer them a £10 ticket to the next game. The resultant £10 tickets sold is the "return on investment". Yes, you may get 1,000 turn up to the original £5 game with free beer, but they aren't any good to you unless they come back! Proctor & Gamble, the world largest advertiser ($1,000,000,000 per year) say that a consumer only becomes a customer when they buy your product for the 7th time.
Is you get 100 of the 1,000 to come back...it works and should be repeated but if it doesn't, dont stop all forms of marketing.......try something new.
This trial and error method is the only way to figure out what is best for you. The alternative is to employ a marketing agency....and they don't come cheap.

I think you've missed a nought off. Quins need a 300% increase to get to 10k.

I said I was using IL's calculator


300%.........happy now?

did he borrow that calculator off Justin Morgan ?

If Quins RL brought the price of a ticket down to £14.28, then we could buy 1500 per game ourselves, achieve the target, and not actually spend any money - 1500 added ticket sales * 14 home games at £14.28 each = £299,880.

Assuming my calculator is better than IL's obviously.

[url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_league/super_league/celtic_crusaders/8135198.stmCeltic Crusaders Chief Executive claims that they need 4500 crowds to "break even"[/url

Am I missing something in all this crowd stuff

Just gone into the Quins RL site to be greeted by a page advertising the next 4 fixtures, good way to take you into the site I thought until I read the banner over the top of the Leeds fixture saying

"Record League Attendance"

I read it si 4,378, even Alistair Campbell couldn't spin that as a record league attendance. Best crowd of a miserable set of crowds but lets stop taking the mickey with the headlines

My God, you're right. Even by our club's standards that is an absolutely ridiculous thing to put on the splash page. Not only ridiculous but absolute b*****ks too.

Am I right in thinking the biggest QRL crowd was the 8,000 odd for the first game at the Stoop v Saints?

You would be. Apart from the double header.

I never count the double header - as I remember most of the RU fans had either left or headed for the bar to celebrate their promotion. Either way, what are the club doing with this 'highest league gate.......EVER!!!' thing?

It's a battle to win over the 'locals' I fear too. I talked to a couple in a Richmond pub last week who attended a Quins game earlier this season, as they are 'rugby' fans -supporters of London Welsh they told me are in the financial sh*t at the moment.

The experience they had means they won't go back. Apparently those noisy northerners put them off, and the language was appalling. They'd never seen or heard anything like it apparently



There is a culture problem for you in that area. Lots of people who are dyed in the wool Southeners who are intollerant of the north. Seeing League as a Northern game turns them off straight away.

You need to really market games against the Catalans, Crusaders, and another London team is desperately needed to attain the 10k. Lets hope you do it eh

Im not sure thats strictly true. I'm of the belief RU has a middle to upper class following. RL is a working mans game and attracts the "white van man" and what comes with that sort of person.(borne out of where its roots are)
RU is grown out of grammar schools etc and has been stated previously the average salary at Quins RU is £40k. It is a social scene rather than a thorough understanding of the sport scene-if that makes sense

There is a fundamental difference socially between the sports.

Whereas football crosses all social boundaries-or appears to.

Try telling that to the folks in the valley's



Born out of the working class agreed, but by and large now hi-jacked by big business and the corporate world. Once, not so long ago either, players lived within the communities they played in. These days the vast majority live with the other "nouveax riche". At the top end "ordinary fans" are being priced out of the game.

So you sort of agree with what i've said, substitute north/south for class-same dog washed my friend.

So how do Quins break down this northern sport/working class image and get the posh buggers around the Stoop to watch them?

Sit them at the opposite end of the ground to the away fans, i suppose they could still smell us though

I don't know but its one of the real problems of London Broncos having re branded as Harlequins in lets face it a 'posh ' area. As well as being a union stronghold sadly RL is perceived as being for the hoi polloi, northern hoi poloi at that. While I think the club should plug away at developing a local (ie within 3-5 mile radius) fan base they also need to attract what I would describe as football fans looking for a summer sport, and do this by advertising /marketing all over London and the South. I'm sorry if some folks have been put off by the more down to earth and colourful language of some of our visitors, maybe regulars at Chelsea, Arsenal West Ham etc might not be! They will certainly find RL much better value ticketprice wise.

Just shy of 4,000 at your place today - seems a pretty decent improvement to me for a match against Huddersfield.

900 more than I was expecting. Where did they come from?

Hudds brought a few yesterday

i was sat next to a Giants fan in AD with the worst B.O. ever



so if you are a giants fan with long greasy hair and a beer gut and sat in AD row R, you stink mate

To much sun, worse stand in SL, poor ticketing, to many kids acts at half time, beer in plastic glasses, playing on Saturdays and now.....

BO- get on the phone to the CEO and tell him- He can add it the list of why people dont want to watch Quins. How will we ever get 10000 fans with smelly people there- arrest the stinker, get the environment agency involved. Lets go back to winter rugby where [isweaters dont sweat [/iand if the do they wear a coat to hold the smell in

We will eventually create the ultimate place to watch rugby with a superior race watching it.

You can see it in the Sun-

RL takes the lead again..........

He was the missing Lynx