£13 per game is not unreasonable in the general national scheme of things. However given the recent performance of CCFC on & off the pitch and the way this news has been delivered it cant help but feel like a kick in the nuts for most fans.
Given that the club must have been aware of the strength of feeling about next season from season ticket holders you can not help but feel that CCFC directors & commercial department are completely out of touch with the clubs main source of income - the fans. It is an attitude of take it or leave it - a lot will leave it
Pure guess but I think the club will be doing well to sell over 3000 season tickets tickets. If so that's going to put average crowds at around 5000. That's going to be awful in a 32000 seater stadium, half of which is closed. It could of course change should the team be successful, but to do that Robins has to build a decent L2 squad in the first place
Will some of the shortfall be made up of people turning up on the day? well if the team does well possibly but wont that be countered by the lower levels of away fans attending. Look at the L2 table and there will be no local derbies and the average away fan numbers of those teams in L2 are not large in number.
An early bird seated season ticket at Nuneaton Town this season was 230 for 21 games (10.95 pg ) CCFC £299 for 23 games (£13 pg).
What happens if because of work, fixtures changes etc you miss say five games the price in effect goes up to £16.60 pg
Can not help but think like many others, a missed opportunity and poor interaction yet again. Still makes the reason for Mr Reid's article clearer I suppose - blame the poor performance of CCFC financially on the fans and specifically the Trust & other fans groups, when the reality is people are voting with their feet in the main, there is no great or organised financial campaign, and the club are helping the fans choice. There never has been a SBTrust plan, intention or 2 year plot to distress CCFC financially forcing administration then fans ownership, it was never even considered by the fans ownership planning. The constant reference to such scheming is ill informed nonsense
other stuff
Fisher in making his claim of 8th biggest budget for next season can only be comparing his projected budget estimate against this years L2 figures. We all know about Fisher projections of fan numbers don't we. That fisher budget will all change come next season when the real figures hit I suspect. Of course SISU are involved in setting budgets, why else is Laura Deering (a SISU employed number cruncher) a director of SBS&L and attending Otium directors meetings
in the 2015/16 accounts match day income was £2,314,567 on average crowds of 12570. Since then there was a price hike 25% so same crowds you would have expected £2.89m but of course crowd numbers dropped to a current 9085 estimated income match days (excluding Wembley) £2.09m 2016/17. I would think well below the budget set this time last year, bringing with it associated cash flow problems. So looking forward match day income on crowds of 5000 could be as low as 1.15m season 2017/18.
Other incomes in 2015/16 were 3.13m. TV, sponsorship, advertising shop etc. These are all going to be hit by the lower division and lower fans numbers. Would a reasonable guess be around £2m?
So turnover looks to me like it will be around 3.5m. The SCMP for L2 is 55% so that budget would seem to be around 1.9m (2015/16 estimated at 3.2m and 2016/17 a guess at similar depending on when Wembley windfall actually received) Thing is SCMP is based on when received not receivable - will CCFC receive the prize money before or after 31/05/2017? In any case SCMP is just a figure and doesn't mean it will get spent. Rules for FFP & SCMP are here
Appendix 5 - Financial Fair Play Regulations
If the club has to be self sufficient there are direct costs, other wages and overheads to be paid out. That in itself restricts the cash available to spend on players and their wages even before SCMP does. In 2015/16 Direct costs were 1.1m Total staff costs 4.3m and overheads 1.8m. Those figures you would have expected to decrease this current year and will have to next season decrease even further. Only so much saving you can do on direct & Overheads some of those costs tend to be pretty fixed. Only conclusion I can draw is that they are expecting either additional funding (doesn't match with statements about owner funding) or player sales
Simply put CCFC have to be successful and challenging for promotion all season for it all to work financially - no pressure there then Mr Robins, I hope the financial assurances you got are in blood & set in stone
Just my opinion of course
