Staying at the Lane? : Wed Aug 11, 2010 8:18 am  

Last night was flicking through radio stations in the car and by chance heard the end of an interview with Mark Aston on BBC Sheffield.

He was going on about how he thinks the eagles will still be at the lane next year as United are getting good income from food, drink etc and that he hopes that it will all be sorted and confirmed in the next few weeks.

Now i've heard different stories from people who work at Bramall Lane as some people alot higher up at United were hoping for us to average around the 2,000-2,500 mark. Now this may be just rumours or gossip but does anyone else know anything?

i love Bramall Lane and have honestly only started going to all home games since Eagles moved to Bramall Lane and I think it would be a huge blow to the club if they can't continue to build on the small success they have achieved their this season.

Re: Staying at the Lane? : Wed Aug 11, 2010 9:34 am  

Whilst the numbers haven't improved as we'd hoped I still think the move to the lane was the right thing to do. I certainly hope we are still there next year, there have been problems this year but that's to be expected in a new home. I'm keeping positive about it

Re: Staying at the Lane? : Wed Aug 11, 2010 9:46 am  

I think we should be given another season at the Lane as this season there has been one or two teething problems,Both the Eagles fault and also on the SUFC side,I also dont think weve helped ourselves this year,An average of 2k to 2.5k should easily be attainable,We need a full-time Marketing manager someone who can soley concentrate on the marketing of the club and increasing the fan base,Mark and Brendon have done good jobs but theres only so many hours in the day and people can only do so much,Mark either needs to concentrate on coaching or concentrate fully on selling the club and increasing the gates etc,We have some great ideas but they just get swept under the carpet after a while,The Eagles TV a great idea but look at the state of it now,Complete shambles and waste of time,Next season needs to be updated a lot quicker,At the start of the season there was adverts on the SUFC website and now nothing,The Eagles official website regarding stats etc is never updated,The last Eagles home game at the lane was MAY 27TH what marketing has been done (2 months) since then to increase the gate for the Halifax game,One of the biggest clubs in this divison.It seems as though after a short surge of promotion/advertising everybody has just sat on there laurels and expected things to just happen,They don't.Weve got the ground and the facilities now lets not just glide along,lets take advantage and get super league back,If we dont we could be back at Doom Valley and going nowhere again.

Re: Staying at the Lane? : Wed Aug 11, 2010 10:27 am  

A website in this day and age is the main focal point for clubs in terms of information for fans & hopefully to attract new fans, buying tickets & merchandise etc.

Imagine if your a new fan. No idea on the eagles website on how to buy a ticket or shirt etc. So on the day of the match you show up to buy a ticket (again no clue as what stand to go to) and whats you find your way to the ticket office your greeted with a huge que then have to walk all the way around again to john street. If I was someone new to RL it would put me off coming again!

Re: Staying at the Lane? : Wed Aug 11, 2010 2:09 pm  

I agree, the website ought to be more up to date but as for being the main focal point I'm not so sure.
No one actually knows how many Eagles supporters have online access, no one really knows where they live, how they get to matches, whether they are season ticket holders, whether they are Goldrush members, whether they buy Golden Gambles, merchandise etc, does anyone know what fans would like to be able to buy?. You need to know more about your fan base before you do anything and spend any money at all.

Take the number of people who post on the fans forum as a percentage of the number of fans that we may have at the moment - less than 10%? So yes have a website because they are available to a lot of people but the return you get has to justify how much is spent etc.keep it up to date so keep it simple and have something that can be maintained easily to keep costs low.


Eagleblade has it spot on - the club needs a dedicated person (I don't want to say full time because I doubt that the club could fund it) to carry out the marketing function, someone who understands what marketing is about and someone who can best use any budget allocated to them. Magnificent 7 has touched on this point many times, marketing is much more than giving free tickets out, without feedback and follow up it's a pointless exercise - you may get a couple of hundred more people but not sustainable.

Eagles ought to be able to tap into United's resource, they must have a marketing team and maybe someone isn't 100% busy all the time.

Regarding staying at Bramall Lane, I really hope so at least for league games anyway. My biggest fear is United hitting a run of good or bad form. If good then they may not want the Eagles "damaging the pitch" even though we know we don't. Likewise if they hit bad form it's something else to blame.

Re: Staying at the Lane? : Wed Aug 11, 2010 2:59 pm  

I understand what you mean but most people will use the website to just find out simple info (kick off time etc) and its a pretty poor image for the eagles as 1st point on contact for most.

I agree a marketing person is a must for a club but I think the idea of tapping into the blades fanbase is a goodway to go first. Perhaps (if we are there next year hopefully) then before the season advertising discount tickets to blades fans and who takes up the offer then gain their information via the blades who will no doubt have a huge database which will be full on their information

The eagles from their can tap into what promotions and advertising campaigns have/haven't been a success for united and copy their sucessful ones somewhat to the same people to hopefully repeat the sucess.

But yes in my opinion the three things the eagles need to do is, sort out the website, get someone devoted to marketing in a part time position so mark can commit fully to coaching and set up online shop for sales of tickets and products to bring in a new form of income.

Re: Staying at the Lane? : Wed Aug 11, 2010 3:03 pm  

I agree fully with the above points mentioned.

Re: Staying at the Lane? : Wed Aug 11, 2010 6:07 pm  

Airborne Eagle wrote:

Eagleblade has it spot on - the club needs a dedicated person (I don't want to say full time because I doubt that the club could fund it) to carry out the marketing function

If you pay a dedicated person, say, £20000, exactly how many extra bums on seats, at full ticket price, does he or she have to achieve to pay his own salary ? About 150 a game ? I wouldn't have thought that was too difficult for someone reasonably competent.

Bottom line is - we've kept blaming Don Valley for poor crowds. Now we have Bramall Lane and they're no better. Or not much. If we don't get bigger crowds, we can abandon any $uper£eague ambitions.

Re: Staying at the Lane? : Wed Aug 11, 2010 7:57 pm  

Well sums add up if the club gets to keep full admission cost and if the increase is from match 1

At DVS didn't the club pay back so much per paying adult.

Re: Staying at the Lane? : Wed Aug 11, 2010 8:13 pm  

The question is, AE, whether we have genuine $uper£eague aspirations or not.

The target might be 180 or 200 to break even. To get into $uper£eague, we need more like 1800 or 2000, so the breakeven target is extremely modest.