NEWS: McMillan media coverage windfall continues
Coventry Cycle Speedway club, pacesetters in Cycle Speedway promotion and publicity, have continued to attract massive Media coverage for the sport following the signing of Australian Test match star Bobby McMillan.
The 22 year old McMillan gave an assured and accomplished performance when appearing on BBC CWR on Monday evening. Bobby spoke about the new season, the sport and his new club in a clear and eloquent manner. He cleverly mentioned the Great Britain V Australia Test match, to be staged at Hearsall Common on Thursday 6th August, and pointed listeners towards the new Coventry website (www.coventrycyclespeedway.co.uk) for more information about the sport.
The Coventry club made headline news in the main Coventry newspaper, the daily Coventry Telegraph, last Saturday. In saturation exposure, the signing of McMillan, plus picture, made the page 57 lead story in the main sports pages. See below for a copy of this tremendous coverage of the sport.
The media barrage of coverage surrounding McMillan continued on Thursday (29th January), when the Aussie pin-up boy again made headlines, this time in the mass circulation Coventry Observer newspaper, which is delivered free to most homes in Coventry. Again, McMillan appeared in an eye-catching picture, with the iconic images of the old Coventry Cathedral ruins forming the back-drop.
Both the printed and on-line coverage of the McMillan signing in the Observer featured as the fourth biggest sports story, with only three Coventry City FC stories gaining bigger coverage. Astonishingly, the Coventry Cycle Speedway club story of the signing of McMillan gained higher prominence of the Wasps Rugby club signing of New Zealand All Blacks rugby star Frank Halai in the Observer. Wasps Rugby club last month bought the Ricoh Stadium in Coventry and last Saturday attracted over 23,000 for a European Cup match.
See the Observer coverage here: http://www.coventryobserver.co.uk/2015/01/29/sports-news.html
In what is thought to be a first for Cycle Speedway, the Coventry club arranged a professionally staged media and photo conference featuring McMillan. They came-up with the idea of the famous Cathedral ruins location to capture media interest with two models – which has spectacularly paid-of with unparalleled coverage of the sport. A club official primed the media of the story by telephone beforehand and ensured optimum exposure by contacting them again afterwards, ensuring the story copy had been received, `selling` the story, answering further questions and making sure to the media that the pictures were free of copyright.
A Coventry spokesman said: “This is what can be done with vision and imagination. We have signed a top class rider, attracted media coverage you could not pay for, made our sponsors very happy and promoted the sport in a terrific way, all in one fell swoop”.