Personally I think without someone willing to put in extra money, probably £10m pa (that they are prepared to lose) over several seasons I do not see how CCFC competes at the top of the Championship with or without a new ground.
The argument seems to be owning their own ground will make the difference. Well cold hard facts say it hasn't for a lot of clubs in the Championship who do own theirs. Spending 105% of turnover on player wages (aside from being business madness) means there is nothing left to pay for anything else (like staff wages, insurance, grounds maintenance, league fees, advertising, training ground, academy, loan interest etc.) Making annual losses £10m means someone has to dig deep in to their wealth to support a club on the off chance that club might be 1 of 3 to benefit from promotion to the "promised land". That's without factoring in the parachute payments of a number of clubs that have been there and failed but have huge income given to them to try again. The odds are getting worse each year as a small number of clubs bounce between Premiership and Championship.
So each year the club over spends by £10m and the hole just gets deeper. In our case for example 3 years of trying will equate to over £100m negative balance sheet as of today.
Yes there are exceptions - Bournemouth have turned near disaster into Premiership success - but not without someone being prepared to spend a large amount of extra money above the turnover those clubs have. We have neither the turnover nor anyone willing to risk an extra 20 or 30 million+ on the risky Premiership gamble. We have no assets, even in the squad at this point, of any real worth, Otium has been saddled with massive debt already, the club will not own any "new ground" or wont access enough of the income streams to make a difference if they stay at the Ricoh. That's the reality
Sorry to be so negative but the best I see in the future is scraping by in the lower reaches of the Championship, but more likely bouncing between the 2nd & 3rd divisions. In some senses the Championship fuelled by the parachute payments has become Premiership mark 2.
The Reality is we can fantasise but our attainable level does not seem to be Premiership. In which case personally I am lowering my expectations and simply enjoying a team winning more than losing for a change. We might get tremendously lucky and we make it but it is a very small chance
Also lets be clear the management of Otium have done deals to hive off income to third parties. Now they may have sold the rights but what that hive off does do is to decrease the turnover of Otium. It might be more profitable but unlikely to be significantly so. What it actually does is to cut cost and risk. So no cost of running a retail outlet or online shop but no control over it either - in addition it means less management cost too so fewer people employed or overheads in other areas not just the shop. There is no stock holding cost, no monthly rent.
Say shop sales were £400k net of direct cost but we now get 15% commission (£60K) the effect on the SCMP is to drop it by over £200k. Were we not told that TURNOVER/REVENUE was vital to the team which is why they cant stay at the Ricoh and the driving force for any new ground? Seems that currently it isn't, that cost cutting and breakeven is. Its a contradiction isn't it?
I think all teams should be self sufficient, sadly there is no proper control in place to ensure that. It is not a level playing field. Premiership clubs seem to have achieved it on the back of huge sponsorship deals but Championship clubs are actually encouraged to gamble, to over spend to dig a deeper hole which actually blocks the path for teams lower down still