I imagine there’s a lot less kids these days who were broncos fans going up. Anyone under 20 wouldn’t even remember our last premiership. Add to that, that the Titans and Cowboys have been around most of that period and it’s not a good outlook for the broncos.
If you really think about it, it's actually even a little more sinister than that.
As it stands, we average something like ONE Sunday afternoon game a year and only a handful more than that on the early Friday and Saturday time slots. This includes both home and away fixtures and it's been like this for more than a decade now.
We play basically ALL our matches on Thursday and Friday nights - in primetime viewing for the NRL, but at EASILY the worst possible time for kids and families to both watch and even more alarmingly, actually attend matches.
Now you add in the fact that the Broncos play at Lang Park, smack bang in the middle of the city and just about impossible to attend on a Thursday night if you're full time employed in regular business hours and would still like to get home to pick up your family so they can attend too.
It goes without saying that if kids don't attend football games, they just don't become fans. At least not 'fans' in the way that helps the Broncos. They don't buy memberships, they never form any real emotional connection with the club at the most critical age for kids to develop that sort of passion in life.
It's worse than this though, because on top of not being able to attend, they also are going to find it incredibly hard to even watch the games all the way through. Thursday night matches (on a school night) finish long past the time when most kids need to be in bed for the following day, and whilst it's slightly less of an issue on Friday nights, it's still a very late night for younger kids at a time where many of them are unlikely to hold an interest that late in their day.
This is all adding up to a perfect storm for the Broncos. We've already endured it for a decade or more, and soon enough there is going to be more than just one generation of kids who grew up in Brisbane and simply didn't attend Broncos games or even really watch them on TV. When those kids are adults earning a wage and should be buying up memberships, they likely wont have the engagement of inclination, and it'll be far too late to do anything about it for our club. If the Broncos aren't extremely nervous about all this, they damn well should be. It would fit in with the general level of incompetence around the place these days for them to not even be considering it mind you.
Night time football is a poisoned chalice. It's not just the case for the Broncos, but it certainly does affect them more than most given the times we play our games. It might be gold for broadcasters and sponsors, but in the long run it hurts your fan engagement and stunts the opportunity for you to grow loyalty amongst younger fans. Day time football is why the AFL kids 80-90k Mums, Dads and Kids along to the MCG and Etihad 5-6 times a weekend whilst the NRL is lucky to drag up 10k mostly adult males and a Thursday night at 8pm. I know the AFL has made the shift too, but mark my words, they'll pay the price for that down the track too.
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