The new official QPR web site
Earn money for Olly's Army

The new look official web site is certainly a huge improvement on what supporters have had to put up with over the last few season. There seems to be growing approval for many aspects of the new site, not least the live audio streaming and match commentary.

What many people may not yet be aware of is that since FLPTV - the joint venture between the Football League and Premium TV, an NTL subsidiary took over the management of the site, it has become a valuable income stream for the club.

Nearly all current Football League clubs have now signed up to this venture and although this has resulted in a certain uniformity of style amongst the majority of the sites it cannot be denied that it has resulted in a service (certainly on the QPR site) that is greatly enhanced.

The principle behind the deal is fairly straightforward although how the pot of money is shared out amongst the clubs is pretty complex. Basically the club will earn revenue whenever a visitor uses the site in a traditional fashion for looking up fixtures, reading match reports, in fact any activity that results in a page being displayed on your screen.

Specific revenue will also be earned if a visitor to the official site uses one of the additional services offered such as the new QPR branded betting service along with features such as Quizmatch, Fantasy Football, etc.

QPR have plans for continued improvement of the official site, Jim Frayling provided us with the following statement:

"We aim to make qpr.co.uk so attractive to fans that they need have no thought of altruism in coming to the site. That said if anyone wants to place a massive bet on the site it would really help us out! The superhoopsbet.co.uk site really does have a good range of odds on Rangers games and other events. It's a good example of what we are trying to achieve - a site that offers Rs fans the best possible betting service while benefiting the club directly. We want to use qpr.co.uk to give fans unparalleled access to the club with both behind the scenes staff and players. We hope it will reflect the QPR Community online and give them something unique. We don't want to take anything away from the very good sites run by QPR fans in their own time - if we had completely our own way we would bring them much more into the fold. Unfortunately we have entered a commercial agreement which limits what we can and can't do with fans' and unofficial sites.

Each week we will have a Q&A session with someone from the club. Today (20th Sep) we had a special Q&A with Chief Executive David Davies to explain the implications of the lock-out period announcement to fans. We instantly had many emails for David - all of which were addressed by the end of the day.

We'll also have regular columns from Ian Holloway, live commentary on every Rangers league game, video highlights of Rangers games 55 hours after kick-off, an Ask The Panel feature where fans can utilise the professional expertise of the QPR backroom staff, plus regular updates of the latest QPR news.

We are constantly looking to improve the site - feedback from Rangers fans had a major influence on shaping the improvements to messageboards across many PTV sites. A whole host of new features are in the pipeline too!

The club appreciates the massive support given by Rs fans during what has been a difficult period. The fantastic away and home support, the superb numbers of people buying season tickets and the backing of all the fans groups has been vital in helping get the club back on its feet. We want to thank every single fan for all their help and support. With qpr.co.uk the fans can again help the club, simply by checking the site out every day. At the same time we want to provide QPR fans with the first class service that they deserve."

To date the club have earned roughly £1/2 million from the deal. QPR may not have the biggest support in the Nationwide Leagues but we certainly have as many if not more supporters that are" net savvy" than other clubs, witness the range of high quality unofficial sites and message boards dedicated to the club.

It is important to note that part of the fund is shared out on a performance basis which will be calculated by working out the percentage of hits provided through the QPR web site divided by the total for all clubs involved, so the QPR site is in fact in direct competition with the other PTV club sites.

The betting site superhoopsbet.co.uk forms an important part of the revenue stream and is pretty impressive with a wide range of sports supported as well as specialist sections, you can even bet on this years Booker prize winner! if you do like a flutter then consider superhoopsbet.co.uk for your next punt. If your horse falls at the final hurdle, knowing that your bet has helped towards Olly's war chest may help to soften the blow!

We as supporters can help the club on a daily basis, put simply, every time someone logs on, every time a supporter places a bet, goes onto quizmatch or the fantasy league game, the club benefits so click away at www.qpr.co.uk and for any IT managers out there, changing the home page for your users' browsers to www.qpr.co.uk probably would not hurt the cause either (wink)!