markrammond wrote:There was a reason for each of the previous moves...
The deal at Ealing Trailfinders also seemed to be baked in warmth, with the initial talk being about treating the club as your own and one big happy family etc. But the reality was that once a supporter had passed through the gate, pretty much all money went to the Trailfinders. The Trailfinders were also highly restrictive around what Broncos could do, and fixed prices in e.g. the corporate facilities. The problem with this was for instance, the Broncos may have got e.g. 100 people who would pay 15 pounds for a meal, but perhaps only 30 people who would pay 25 pounds for a meal, meaning the club had no flexibility. Some of the other decisions stripped out revenue opportunities in the last season or two, because if you are merely a salesman you might remove unprofitable product lines, but if you are with a big business, you cannot necessarily apply that thinking or you might close everything down, which is not exactly commercial acumen, as the downturn becomes then closure in real terms. In my opinion the club should have insisted that any merchandise provider ran a stall for say 5 hours on a matchday, guaranteeing a range of products etc. As things went, it became improbable the Broncos would make any money once in the ground, due to short term decisions which had a highly corrosive impact.
I reckon it would have only taken a modest double digit percentage of the bar takings and food stall takings to secure new terms, perhaps 50p out of a Pint, and a pound out of a burger sale and we could still be at Trailfinders. But obviously the octogenerian travel multi-millionaire at Trailfinders wanted all the cream for himself.
Firstly, I was aghast at the move to "The Wedding Venue". I saw this as further evidence that the lunatics had taken over the asylum and was proof that Hughes was now doing the bare minimum to ease his guilt from the 2013 dummy spit.
As time went by, the ground seemed to suit us and when I first visited it, I could actuallu see the potential. I still believed that there'd be little chance of the locals allowing a stand to be built, but was proven wrong, so when I returned to watch SL Rugby there in 2018, the ground was perfect for what we had at the time, which was 2k fans. When we returned to the Championship, we would return to a 1k average and Trailfinders was perfect for this. Couple all of this with the fact that our hosts had their eye on the prize of the Gallagher and further development would have been in the pipeline. I believe Hughes had also mentioned he would help with upgrade costs when we moved in (or did I dream that), so the venue seemed perfect.
The Knighted Billionaire you refer to didn't become either a "Sir" or a "Billionaire" by doing daft things. That said, how many times over the seasons at Trailfinders did we "sell out" the corporate lounge? The straw man argument over corp-hospo income is a red herring and given they've dropped their drawers (and the gimp in commercial) 2 games into AFC fiasco, it wasn't the venue nor the revenue split that was the issue. Short term issues can be ironed out by open and frank discussion, but Hughes doesn't do that and Loubser is an accountant.....as a Salesperson I'd eat him for breakfast in such negotiations.
I can only assume that Hughes has asked where the crowds are and "why am i sat alone in corporate hospo" and has been told it's the venue, location, pricing, revenue split and that the dog ate someones homework.....so it's off we go AGAIN.
REMEMBER...225K A YEAR WAS TOO MUCH AT HARLEQUINS.......so it's blatantly obvious why we'd move a few more miles down the road from there for a pretty similar set up with 3k fewer fans, in a lower division and as a part time team for the same money.
