Eric Perez buys Hemel’s licence, with plans to create second Canadian club (Merged Threads)

[GUBRATS]

2 minutes ago, Hemel Stag said:

Most (UK) clubs would expect to see 20% + of their audience as visitors each week. It's a normal part of the business. I accept that's not what happens in USA, CAN, AUS, due to logistical reasons and particularly distances.

Wether it is the US,Can ,Australia or the UK a responsible business will not factor in away fans ( or certainly shouldn't ) , at Leigh I have had many an argument about our potential to be a SL club , I've had fans and indeed directors of the club quoting to me that in SL we can average 6-7 thousand attendances , my argument is we need to be averaging 10 thousand in the championship.        Anything after that is a bonus                                                                                                                                                                            

 

 

 

 

[Hemel Stag]

5 minutes ago, GUBRATS said:

Wether it is the US,Can ,Australia or the UK a responsible business will not factor in away fans ( or certainly shouldn't )

I get your point, you need to be financially viable and independent. Any away fans could be looked at as a bonus then.

[Onieda FC]

On 3/11/2019 at 6:05 PM, scotchy1 said:

I dont disagree with any of that. And something like Tim Hortons looking to get in to the UK is exactly what we would be looking for. I guess my concern is that we end up with a similar issue as we have here of clubs cannibalizing the sponsorship market just on a different scale (obviously everything will need to be on a different scale to make it a success). Would an airline be wanting to sponsor both Philly and NYC or would we end up having one and not the other? Would Tim Hortons only sponsor Hamilton or would it not just be a sponsor taken away from Toronto?

If one airline can be found to sponsor Philadelphia, surely another could be found to sponsor New York (who's bid apparently already includes an airline sponsor). I think the issue over there with teams cannibalizing sponsorship is one- it's a smaller market and two- RL has a certain amount of cultural baggage, neither of which exist here. Toronto has managed pretty well without even engaging Tim Horton's. You have to think of the scale of North America. 

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Another issue with the focus on the North East coast is more simply the weather. These areas would be unplayable for a large portion of the year, Buffalo and Hamilton are only really guaranteed to be playable May to October, You are probably not getting to NYC, Boston, Philly, Toronto until April. By no means unworkable, but if you do start getting to 5/6 sides it becomes a lot more difficult to start factoring (if the amount of European teams stays at 12) basically a third of the league hacing to play away for the first 2-3 months of the year.

Perhaps a two pronged approach of a few based in the south like Miami, Orlando, Atlanta, and a few in the north would address that problem.

This is definitely something to consider. You're weighing travel and proximity vs. weather concerns. Yes, absolutely it is freezing (esp. compared to the UK/France) here earlier in the year. My major reasoning for clustering, as it were, teams in the Northeast is closer to the UK and easier to get to each other. If you're talking about starting teams in the semi-professional League One, it is going to be a huge ask for them to pay for their opponents to come over (as I'm sure will be expected) and then travel from Boston to Miami. London is closer to Athens (2396 km) than Boston is to Miami (2414 km).