Off the Pitch:
Nearly 7 months after the re-brand was announced, the club finds itself in a worse situation than it was at any stage under the Harlequins name.
After an initial burst of activity, with mentions and exposure at the Wembley Stadium 4 nations Double header and the announcement that 12 Black Cabs would be liveried with the clubs new logo, nothing else seems to have improved.
Commercially, the club have no paid sponsors on their shirts. The line of corporate boxes at the stoop remain unused on Broncos match-day.
The Club shop remained empty for another Christmas and when stock arrived, it was limited at best.
Hoardings around the ground seem to either be for our media partners or for the Sponsors of out hosts, such as Greene King and Alfa Romeo. The Evening Standard, the official Media Partner gives the club the same coverage it always has.....sweet F all.
The list of "sponsors" on this page [url=http://www.londonbroncosrl.com/sponsorship/club_sponsorship.phpHERE[/url is depressing, with 99% of them if not more involving not one penny in income.
The 2012 Strategy for attracting new fans seems to have been largely based around getting ST holders to bring friends along and rewarding these ST holders with cash off future tickets and purchases in the shop. Once this incentive didn't deliver, there didn't appear to be a plan "B" and the excuses began to come out....the inexperience of the back office was again exposed with the announcement of our home game on Feb 26th being against [size=150Huddlesfield Giants[/size.
Facebook became THE place to get info about the club, with more and more information being posted there to bounce the ever increasing negativity of "fans" down the page as the season has progressed.
The Weather was very unkind to the London Broncos re-launch game, with a cold snap that would make a brass monkey nervous and all the associated travel chaos, but a sub 5,000 attendance for the clubs first game back was a sign of what was to follow. 3,289 LESS fans than bothered with the clubs first game as Harlequins, pointed to a miscalculation as to the effect the re-brand would have. The supposed hoardes of anti-unionites, or those who misunderstood what game played, did not resturn and by the end of the first month back, we'd already experienced our first sub 2,000 gate.
March was a real opportunity to attract "new" fans to the game, with the visits of both Wakefield and Castleford, teams that we would have expected to perform well against. Groupon, was the only form of promotion for these games outside the "circle" of facebook and email friends of ther club...no plan "B"
The opportunity was lost, with an average of 2,324 fans witnessing the only 2 wins of the season to date in the League and the marketing activity in April was even worse than March.
Firstly, with the exception of offering a curry to the converted, no attempt was made to try and boost what was always going to be a tough sell, when the French came to town on Easter Thursday.
Then the club were handed an opportunity to get every school kid in West London to see a winning team....Dewsbury Rams came to town the home win was duly achieved...70+ points......no better way to get a Kid excited about the game. The RFL have rules about "ticketing" of Challenge Cup games, but surely every avenue could have been explored for this game.......instead, the lowest gate for a London SL team since the advent of summer rugby league was achieved.......652
May didn't fare any better, with OTR games at Orient and Gillingham doing nothing to arrest the decline in home attendances or to endear the club to any potential sponsors in its west london home. Orient saw the second worst attendance for a game against the Bulls in London since 1996, whist the sale/delivery of 2,000 tickets to locals by the Medway Dragons will see little long-lasting results off the park for the Broncos club, which happens to be based 50 miles away.
The Board of Directors announced last week that a far reaching investigation would take place with regard to the crap being dished up on the pitch and it would seem that the club are now down a commercial manager and a marketing and communications manager, which beggars the question, what now?
Statistically, 2012 to date has seen 8% less fans at games compre to 2011, 14% less at the stoop. No sponsors, no advertisers around the pitch, no corporate hospitality of note, no direction with regard to the marketing message, no planned campaigns and no plan B.
With June about to start, 6 home games left and no backroom staff to speak of, the club it would seem is in a worse position than it has ever been in the modern era.
Those left at The Stoop will need to step up to the mark if the club is going to produce a better second half this year.
