20 years here and I've rarely gone off message.

Over that time the club has changed beyond recognition and this move is an attempt to shed it's skin, wash away the bad things done to the core support over the last decade and start again.

Admirable intent, but 24 hours after the final whistle, still nowt on the website, no direct comms to attendees and some God awful highlights posted by widnes??????

If I'd paid £1.00 to attend my first game, I'd be more likely to come back if I was asked if I "had a good time" and then I was INVITED BACK.

What prey tell is the social media wizkid up to? The Twitter feed was awful.....really hideous...toe curlingly.
22’ | TRY WIDNES!

After a welcomed bit of rest bite, they find space down the left hand stand and Lloyd Roby dots down and the conversion was converted by Joe Edge.

[4-20]

Our offers from AFC Wimbledon stated "either of those fixtures" which is a key reason I expect the attendance to be far lower next time. My understanding is those of us attending yesterday will need to pay full price in a fortnight. And the biggest issue I see with that is not offering a family group price.

I'd assume (perhaps wrongly) that the majority taking up the offer would choose the opening fixture.

... which I totally agree with. I'll be back, but I was already interested the moment I heard about the possible ground share and have kept abreast of the player announcements over the break as well as following results etc since the council gave the go ahead. I'l be in a very small minority with that perspective.

Never ever ever give something away cheap without a plan how to ultimately profit from it. Otherwise it's entirely pointless. Of course many will never come again however good the product but there has to be a plan that sees 1 in x becoming a regular and 1 in y becoming an occasional. Plenty of occasional visitors is still good especially as they will be a good source of full price attendees and they are always a prime source of future regulars..

I do feel that the Broncos didn't do a very good job of marketing the match. Everything I heard is from the football club. Yes they have a major ulterior motive (money) but I do believe they see the Broncos as a benefit to the community. We get fixture Broncos announcements during the AFC Wimbledon home matches, plenty of articles on the official website, twitter etc. Free publicity for a very relevant target audience I would suggest.

Not convinced the Broncos made best use of the Fans Zone behind the South Stand. The pub was busy, but when I checked pre-match the two food stalls looked very quiet. My suspicion (but I'm guessing) was they had a bad trading day. I knew they were there and how to get there. Only Widnes fans would have passed them. Where were the PA announcements. The food is good, there has been plenty of feedback. Support those vendors as I suspect they won't be back if my fears are true. And you know what, you buy the pie and mash or vegan burger and chips, turn round and there are beers on sale. Perfect with some food. The beer is the biggest mark-up to the football club and my understanding is the Broncos get a share at the Rugby.

We stayed in our seats at half time. Not sure anything happened. Perhaps some score updates (engagement again, first many will hear about future opponents), some info on the club, an interview, a bit on the rules. Whatever.

How many of the 2,182 understood the fundamental six tackles rule. As such many would have been confused by what they were watching.

The best engagement I saw were the players at the end. They came over to the fans, looked approachable and were actually creating a link. Even following the news I struggled to relate to 17 individuals. Probably most familiar with Joe Edge as he kept taking conversions in front of us! For most it was 17 random players running around (in fairness the interchanges were announced). Plenty of pre-match to have announced a bit about the 17 players which should have been alongside at least a basic programme. Play on the different nationalities, that's fun and engaging to understand the variety of players at the Broncos and really fits with the inclusivity of London.

From my perspective I will do some more homework on the players, roles etc before the next game so that I improve my enjoyment. But why not do that for me and everyone else.

At half time I was honestly wondering how many more matches I'd watch. Credit in the second half. That was interesting, reasonably competitive accepting the winner was already known. Now I'm really looking forward to the Whitehaven match..

.

Really interesting to hear your perspective. I thought it was a good new compact ground and it was good to have numbers in. I definitely thought the pre/ mid match announcer that was much trumpeted was woefully underused and I couldn’t make head nor tail of what he was saying. Half time noth8ng happened and it should have- again that’s something for the Broncos management to consider. The players do seem approachable and it is a very regular sight to see them amble over to speak to friends, family and fans at end of game which makes it a bit different from football. The lack of LB branding, programmes or merchandise was baffling. This is probably go8ng to be the biggest crowd so why not exploit it. The real fly in the ointment is the quality and depth of the squad. 6 of the starting 13 were recruited from L1 a further 3 were young recent Academy prospects with minimal experience at this level. it’s really unfair to expect them to compete with seasoned Championship pros but for the club to succeed and thrive that is what is needed so I’m at a loss what the club intends to do about that. Haven should be a good game and I hope the club offers returning Dons fans a decent deal 50% off or some such, but my advice is to give the Fev Rovers game a swerve. That I fear will be a punishment beating and of minimal entertainment value.

I hope the club are reading Snithers99. He's handing them cheap
match day experience improvements on a plate. Sadly the first attempt to impress has already gone. Attempt two needs to show a substantial improvement to help everyone believe the days of stick posts in arca,new ground, announce kick off time and be confused when no-one shows up are gone.

There are some promising signs but must do better as many school reports used to read.

I hope you stick with it and that the club get to see these comments. Frankly, the Broncos owner David Hughes is nothing short of clueless when it comes to marketing.

Smithers99 wrote:I do feel that the Broncos didn't do a very good job of marketing the match. To clarify, before anyone says "good effort/well done", this exercise in the polishing of a turd just cost the club £70,492.71 for 2 half page ads in the papers and the rent of the ground and delivered approximately £30,000 in gate and matchday revenue From reading various musings across sites and social media, I think it's fair to claim the following in attendance from Sunday Widnes: Looked to be a good 300/325 in the away end and another hundred or so in the corner, so 450 @ 22 a pop is £9,900 Community: Much was made of the 600 tickets that had been handed out to the community in the build up to this game. 600 @ zilch is £00.00 Dons Fans. Looking at their "chatter" a good 500 bothered with the 1 quid deal. 500 is £500 1,550 attendees either from Widnes or Wimbledon, leaves 733 Broncos "fans" for the season opener @£22 is £16,126. Now then.....The Marketing (sic) Tube Stations, Metro, Evening Standard, SW Trains are all nice and fluffy, but they also cost an arm and a leg. The METRO advert alone https://d212k0qo5yzg53.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/20200622111700/Metro_ratecard_2020-06.pdf was £20k........ The evening standard cost over £35,000 https://www.eveningstandardcommercial.com/uploads/files/ESI_Ratecard_and-file_spec_EveningStandard310120.pdf That's £55k on 2 adverts to generate £27,000 on the gate Now....there's also the money that the Broncos will make of the sale of beer. Let us assume that of the 2,183 in attendance, they all consumed 3 pints of local ale and the club put 50p a pint into their coffers. 2,183 x 3 x 50p = £3,274.50 So, we're up to £30k on the gate............ah, but we forgot the RENT! 13 Home games/£200,000.00 = £15,384.61 As I say. Spending, £70,000 to generate less than 50% return isn't clever, it's laziness of the highest order! Social Media activity during the games was 100% twitter with maybe a dozen people interactive. Social Media since the game has been zero......The club have lapsed into their marketing coma again.....Hughes will have signed off what I can only estimate was a £100,000 launch budget and the clowns have blown it. Einstein and his definition of insanity seem to be the only thing you can rely on Hughes to do. The club need a 750 average paying the full £22.00 a game to pay just the rent at Plough Lane. 600 free tickets and 500 dons won't be back in 2 weeks time and neither will whitehaven bring more than 100.......so you're down 1,450 on yesterday already. If the club get a sub 1,000 gate in 13 days time, it'll surely be time to show lobster and monkey the door....won't it?

Smithers99 wrote:I do feel that the Broncos didn't do a very good job of marketing the match. To clarify, before anyone says "good effort/well done", this exercise in the polishing of a turd just cost the club £70,492.71 for 2 half page ads in the papers and the rent of the ground and delivered approximately £30,000 in gate and matchday revenue From reading various musings across sites and social media, I think it's fair to claim the following in attendance from Sunday Widnes: Looked to be a good 300/325 in the away end and another hundred or so in the corner, so 450 @ 22 a pop is £9,900 Community: Much was made of the 600 tickets that had been handed out to the community in the build up to this game. 600 @ zilch is £00.00 Dons Fans. Looking at their "chatter" a good 500 bothered with the 1 quid deal. 500 is £500 1,550 attendees either from Widnes or Wimbledon, leaves 733 Broncos "fans" for the season opener @£22 is £16,126. Now then.....The Marketing (sic) Tube Stations, Metro, Evening Standard, SW Trains are all nice and fluffy, but they also cost an arm and a leg. The METRO advert alone https://d212k0qo5yzg53.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/20200622111700/Metro_ratecard_2020-06.pdf was £20k........ The evening standard cost over £35,000 https://www.eveningstandardcommercial.com/uploads/files/ESI_Ratecard_and-file_spec_EveningStandard310120.pdf That's £55k on 2 adverts to generate £27,000 on the gate Now....there's also the money that the Broncos will make of the sale of beer. Let us assume that of the 2,183 in attendance, they all consumed 3 pints of local ale and the club put 50p a pint into their coffers. 2,183 x 3 x 50p = £3,274.50 So, we're up to £30k on the gate............ah, but we forgot the RENT! 13 Home games/£200,000.00 = £15,384.61 As I say. Spending, £70,000 to generate less than 50% return isn't clever, it's laziness of the highest order! Social Media activity during the games was 100% twitter with maybe a dozen people interactive. Social Media since the game has been zero......The club have lapsed into their marketing coma again.....Hughes will have signed off what I can only estimate was a £100,000 launch budget and the clowns have blown it. Einstein and his definition of insanity seem to be the only thing you can rely on Hughes to do. The club need a 750 average paying the full £22.00 a game to pay just the rent at Plough Lane. 600 free tickets and 500 dons won't be back in 2 weeks time and neither will whitehaven bring more than 100.......so you're down 1,450 on yesterday already. If the club get a sub 1,000 gate in 13 days time, it'll surely be time to show lobster and monkey the door....won't it?

They should have been shown the door before the 'relaunch'. Based on previous efforts, I think they would be very unlikely to deliver success.

I think everyone accepts most of the leg work was done by Dons and many people on this board have questioned the way Broncos chose to spend their advertising money.

The Haven gate will be of massive significance to the club. A poor gate won't mean it's time to write off the move to Wimbledon - the right people with the right money and strategy could still turn it around. The warning signs would be very obvious though.

I do hink Broncos deserve some credit here. The Social Media person has changed. That had to happen and as he gets his feet under the desk hopefully he'll have the confidence to change the passwords to prevent others dishing out pretty bans. I agree the post game silence is worrying.

They were happy to facilitate the work Dons did on their behalf. It wasn't the all too familiar no we know best, that won't work response.

The finally realise the club and sport need marketing in London. Yes the methods need reviewing but the penny has dropped.

The fact we are praising them for the above shows just how awful things had become. It is progress though and should be recognised.

Is good enough yet? Not even close.