Ivarr the Boneless

TBH I doubt the club will be too worried about sales to date. They need to generate a substantial new interest base, and then convert that into regular support. Whether 150/200/250 existing fans purchase a 2026 season ticket is almost neither here nor there in the mid to long run. If every regular fans last season bought one, you are still massively short of the revenue needed in SL. How many new fans are hooked in by the end of the coming season is the big one.

The club will know, they will have a computerised turnstile system. H&S rules at that level of football make some demands in that way.There's also the slight matter of the taxman being interested. Football clubs are increasingly not publicly declaring either. I asked one club why and the main reason was they thought announcing poor attendances would put off potential new fans, not help win new sponsors and so on. Whether that was Broncos line of thinking last season, I don't know.

In the sports world key jobs tend to be word of mouth or head hunter approaches in my experience. There's always exceptions obviously and a newly arrived Australian consortium with few obvious links to English sport may be one. But they have a very well tapped in man in Gary Hetherington.

To be fair to Broncos, some of the likely roles are pretty specialist and the right person probably had to serve a notice period. Hopefully they have people lined up but can't say much yet.

Probably worth adding there's also been some promising signs away from public gaze. Last season a Broncos person messaged me, and has used my contact book in non-league football. They definitely exchanged ideas with Dulwich Hamlet and were looking to set up meetings with two other relatively local clubs I suggested. This was before the takeover. I'm not quite sure what that will mean for that strand of work but there were good people working quietly in the background. They wanted to learn from previous errors, which they openly acknowledged, and to learn from clubs who have successfully transformed themselves. With presumably a few bob to spend on fan recruitment now, and having spoken to people with a good track record in that area, I await what Broncos will do with interest.

Of course gates would rise. The small minority of people interested in the sport locally would be more likely to show. And would find it easier to persuade friends to give it a try. Winning games is absolutely part of the fan attraction and retention process. But it's only part of it. But I don't believe for a second the gates would rise to anywhere near break even by that method alone. To be fair to the club, they seem to recognise that. The most interesting thing for me to date is the kick off times. Given how scattered geographically Broncos fans traditionally have been, that suggests the club are willing to lose the more distant fans in the belief they can build up a more local support base, seemingly via event led match days. I actually think that could be a wise move, despite being a distant fan. The fact someone seems to be thinking that through gives me cautious optimism this reset may have a chance. We simply don't know enough detail to go beyond that statement right now. Broncos havre tried the recruit lots of stars and win games but don't do anything else method, at Charlton for starters. Nic Cartwright gave a press conference saying it was like us signing players from Real Madrid and Barcelona, to try and catch the attention of football fans. That was in the days RL got decent coverage on the main stream media and Metro, meaning more people knew about it than they would today realistically. (Cheers algorithms.) Gates rose, but not by that much and never hit break even. Incidentally Dulwich Hamlet barely sell real ale. It simply doesn't work very well when the ground is only in mainstream use once or twice a week. They are also noted for having a much higher percentage of females in the crowd than your typical non-league club. But feel free to keep parroting clichés. Hamlet, a side which used to average gates of 170, will quite happily keep getting bigger gates than Broncos. Hopefully that'll change this coming season. It has to if there's to be a future for professional RL in London.

Unfortunately the vast majority of people within the catchment area will have no idea that Broncos are winning. And if Broncos sign NRL players, they will have no idea who they are or who they signed from. The names will mean nothing. Though it would open up some interesting marketing opportunities. Broncos / RL simply aren't on the radar of the vast majority of people down south. (Sadly they've also alienated a fair chunk of those who know of them.) Winning matches won't change that in the vast majority of cases. If Broncos go 100% next season most people in London won't know. And most of those who do won't suddenly turn up without suitable fan recruitment work. Winning every match next season won't see paying sell out gates at the last two or three matches. That's pretty much nailed on. Fan recruitment and fan retention is a serious subject. Just win games and they'll come flooding in simply won't work at London. Its failed at numerous London sports clubs (London Knights, London Monarchs and so on), and will fail at others yet to come. Some of what is coming out of the club is worrying. Some is positive. But until we see the whole offering, it's far to early to hail it as either genius or awful. Hopefully it works.

The club were working on a rebrand as Wimbledon RLFC and the kit was part of that. Someone I know saw the proposed club branding. Orders then came from on high that the Broncos name was to be retained. The blue kit was always doomed at the end of the first season at Wimbledon.

It absolutely matters. People are more likely to buy it if they like it. I'm involved at kit selection at a team in another sport, with a fan base far in excess of Broncos. Last season we had a kit that was a brilliant piece of design but unpopular with many due to the relative lack of one of the club's two traditional colours. Poor sales followed. We went with the oldest known kit of the traditional colours this season. People loved it, sales through the roof. Relatively plain is better generally for branded casual wear, but I doubt many wear Broncos match shirts as casual wear, outside match days. Whether it's liked on this forum is really neither here nor there, unless that viewpoint turns out to be representative.

That's a big call for someone to make. Living in Aldershot for years, and now just outside, I've watched the Army numerous times. They are a decent side but would be hopelessly mismatched against Broncos. I've only seen Wests a couple of times, but similar is true. Would a likely blow out be an enjoyable day out for newbies or a bore likely to put newcomers off? Tough one. I hope they call it right.

Unless something has changed I believe the ground is owned by a charitable trust, not the club. It's the same benefactor but he separated the two from memory. That could seriously complicate any joint ownership idea. I also seem to recall Ealing hitting planning permission challenges for permanent structures and being restricted on temporary stand heights. If my memory is correct, Ealing would seem to come with potentially insurmountable challenges. The council were looking for partners at Skolars ground a few years ago. No idea whether that's still true but there may be a slightly open door there. The future of athletics provision would be an obvious challenge there

Oxford at Abingdon was horrendous. The ground was awful for spectators. The miniscule gate figures made for an even more depressing experience.

To be fair to LBIB, the visa situation has undergone substantial changes since 2010. Anyone developing a fan attraction strategy would have to take that into account, if the Anzac market featured prominently. Simply polishing off a 2010 fan attraction strategy and using it in 2025/26 would be idiotic.

So far yes. Walkabouts at Aussie venues aren't going to translate into large numbers of season ticket sales, from people who have never been before. (Or walkabouts in pubs full of British born people either TBH.) We simply don't know what their fan recruitment policy is. If we've already seen it, a problem looms. Hopefully there's more in reserve for once they've built up a functioning non match day staff. Which will probably also co-incide with the weather perking up. Making first timers more likely to show. Anyone who knows anything about RL in London knows simply announcing a few decent signings won't translate into an immediate rush for tickets. It's the starting point for a journey, one Broncos will hopefully soon show signs of understanding.

It can be done in three hours if you bash something out. But it can also take a lot longer. I provide historical articles to a non-league football club, usually three or four pages per programme. The research and write up is probably ninety minutes or so just for my stuff. Then the Editor / Designer goes to work and that's up to an hour. 2.5 ish hours for three or four pages. (The editor is a professional - though unpaid by the club - and does a very thorough & impressive job.) We do 44 pages for every match between the proggie team. Obviously some pages (ads) don't change, others barely change (stats for example) and other new content takes less creation time (match reports for example.) But to do a good proggie, you are looking at massively over three hours.