Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Tue Mar 13, 2018 12:20 pm  

It would take far more than just money to make London Broncos a "powerful Superleague presence".

They already have a multi-millionaire bankrolling them, and he has done for some years, in the shape of David Hughes. In spite of that and after being in existence for 37 years they managed to draw a crowd of 526 for yesterday's game.

I honestly thought that when they got to Wembley in 1999 it would capture the imagination of the London public but it made no difference whatsoever.

We all love the game of Rugby League but if people aren't interested you can't force them to come no matter how much money you throw at it.

Money isn't the answer but a decent marketing strategy is(with money) something David Hughes has overlooked. CMG will provide statistical evidence to support this.

RL is bubbling under the surface in London. They have a decent youth policy. The big investors are in London. Huge numbers int eh south watch SL on Sky. Large numbers attend RL at Wembley from the south. If the game wants to be big t needs London end of.

Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Tue Mar 13, 2018 1:25 pm  

the artist wrote:

on the surface it does. however we are mainly talking about the coastal strip from barrow in the south to cockermouth/maryport in the north. do your figures include the lake district national park area, which is the main geographical hindrance to those travelling in and out of west cumbria, but also the main draw for a weekend away apart from the rugby

by the way, i've thought more about having the stadium at sellafield. makes sense. its fairly central for west cumbria, there is a lot of money there, plenty of land. a lot of local people work there, its well signposted and transport links are as good as it gets in that area. just lay on free travel from barrow, whitehaven and workington.

of course that is assuming the locals will drop the 3 main teams at the drop of a hat and go and support this new venture

They are about to make looooads of redundancies at Sellafield

Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Tue Mar 13, 2018 1:51 pm  

Roy Haggerty wrote:

If we start aspiring to having 3500 sell-outs in SL, we may as well pack up now and go semi-pro.

For a new club in an area without any major sporting teams, starting in League One and working their way up, it's a perfectly adequate sized ground for the initial season. They could even play on-the-road games around Cumbria at say Carlisle to build support across the whole county and so no one is left out.

Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Tue Mar 13, 2018 1:59 pm  

Hard one to gauge, support-wise. A former chairman of Workington told me he could predict how many season tickets they'd sell by reading the obituaries in the local rag during the close season.
OTOH, the support for Scotland was very impressive especially taking weather into account. Traffic's bad but then again I would never, ever want to live in the Leeds area again for that very reason.

Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Tue Mar 13, 2018 4:36 pm  

the artist wrote:

on the surface it does. however we are mainly talking about the coastal strip from barrow in the south to cockermouth/maryport in the north. do your figures include the lake district national park area, which is the main geographical hindrance to those travelling in and out of west cumbria, but also the main draw for a weekend away apart from the rugby

That was in direct response to the poster that claimed Cumbria's population is around 500,000.

Whitehaven, Workington, Maryport, Barrow combined muster not much over 200,000.

Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Tue Mar 13, 2018 5:51 pm  

Grimmy wrote:

They are about to make looooads of redundancies at Sellafield

Even better then. Loads of room in the car parks

Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Tue Mar 13, 2018 11:27 pm  

What about Isle of Man?

Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Wed Mar 14, 2018 3:56 am  

Exiled down south wrote:

Money isn't the answer but a decent marketing strategy is(with money) something David Hughes has overlooked. CMG will provide statistical evidence to support this.

How long have you got

By my reckoning and using data that was leaked for the period 2008-2012 at Harlequins RL, I can pretty accurately say that Hughes has sunk a minimum of £18,000,000 in cold hard cash into the London Broncos over the last decade. In that period he has witnessed a needless name change and 2 ground moves and of course a relegation of "biblical" proportions.
48 SL wins, 3 draws and 138 losses, backed up by 47W/22L in the 3 full championship seasons to date............258 games at a cost to Hughes of just shy of £70,000 a game.
In SL (2008-14) Londons 91 home games were watched by a total of 262,000 fans...call it 2,880 a game, paying £20 a pop.....£56,000 a game income for hme games. SKY.....let's call it £1.8 million a year......7 years £12,600,000 from SKY.........£5,100,000 from gate receipts and £18,000,000 from Hughes....over 7 seasons.....oh, hang on, I forgot the 3 years gate receipts and central funding from the championship.....let's call it another £800k on the gate and £2 million in funding........round it up with some shirt sales and over the decade we have £40,000,000 spent on running the #1 London based Rugby League outfit.....

Of that figure, I would guarantee that not even £400,000 or 1% has been spent on marketing the game or the club to any kind of audience, be that local or regional.......and the reason why? Hughes believes it's the role of SL, SL chairmen can't market their own clubs let alone one 200 miles away and through all this, Woods just sat their eating cake and stealing a wage....Hughes (in his mind) is paying for his team to play and in his opinion, that's all he should have to do...I think he is wrong and have gone on record as such, but I also believe that the SL clubs were terribly insular i their treatment of London.....RL suffers from short-termism and this is a prime example...just look at Melbourne Storm, bankrolled by fox and the other clubs, blatant salary cap cheats and still they are funded......and accepted......because they are GOOD FOR THE GAME!

Ian Lenegan can see the benefit of London......as can some of the other owners such as Pearson, Caddick/Hetherington, Moran, McManus etc....you know, the owners of successful clubs.......and now fat boy slime has shuffled off to eat international pies, we might actually see some joined up thinking......maybe!

Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Wed Mar 14, 2018 10:11 am  

Call Me God wrote:

How long have you got

By my reckoning and using data that was leaked for the period 2008-2012 at Harlequins RL, I can pretty accurately say that Hughes has sunk a minimum of £18,000,000 in cold hard cash into the London Broncos over the last decade. In that period he has witnessed a needless name change and 2 ground moves and of course a relegation of "biblical" proportions.
48 SL wins, 3 draws and 138 losses, backed up by 47W/22L in the 3 full championship seasons to date............258 games at a cost to Hughes of just shy of £70,000 a game.
In SL (2008-14) Londons 91 home games were watched by a total of 262,000 fans...call it 2,880 a game, paying £20 a pop.....£56,000 a game income for hme games. SKY.....let's call it £1.8 million a year......7 years £12,600,000 from SKY.........£5,100,000 from gate receipts and £18,000,000 from Hughes....over 7 seasons.....oh, hang on, I forgot the 3 years gate receipts and central funding from the championship.....let's call it another £800k on the gate and £2 million in funding........round it up with some shirt sales and over the decade we have £40,000,000 spent on running the #1 London based Rugby League outfit.....

Of that figure, I would guarantee that not even £400,000 or 1% has been spent on marketing the game or the club to any kind of audience, be that local or regional.......and the reason why? Hughes believes it's the role of SL, SL chairmen can't market their own clubs let alone one 200 miles away and through all this, Woods just sat their eating cake and stealing a wage....Hughes (in his mind) is paying for his team to play and in his opinion, that's all he should have to do...I think he is wrong and have gone on record as such, but I also believe that the SL clubs were terribly insular i their treatment of London.....RL suffers from short-termism and this is a prime example...just look at Melbourne Storm, bankrolled by fox and the other clubs, blatant salary cap cheats and still they are funded......and accepted......because they are GOOD FOR THE GAME!

Ian Lenegan can see the benefit of London......as can some of the other owners such as Pearson, Caddick/Hetherington, Moran, McManus etc....you know, the owners of successful clubs.......and now fat boy slime has shuffled off to eat international pies, we might actually see some joined up thinking......maybe!

If Lenegan thought that London was so important for the game why did he disappear back to Wigan as soon as he could?

And as for it all being The RFL's fault, I'm not exactly sure how they can make clubs spend money on marketing if they don't want to. The simple fact is not enough people are actually interested in the game, and that includes the 'heartlands'. Just because you, I and others believe that it's TGG doesn't make it so.

Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Wed Mar 14, 2018 11:50 am  

44,393 fans watched England v New Zealand at the Olympic Stadium three years ago. From reading about the game there was said to be a lot of attenders from London and the South West there.