SlowerThanPlatt
Well-Known Member
The pandemic is estimated to have cost Premier League clubs a combined total of £1.37 billion. Games played behind closed doors and so bringing in no match-day revenues, lost sponsorships and rebates paid to TV broadcast partners all accounted for a big financial hit in the top flight of English football.
Further down the domestic game’s pyramid, though, the impact of COVID-19 was felt even more deeply — and it continues to hit hard.
It is estimated that lost match-day revenue in the Premier League accounted for 14 per cent of each club’s income. One division lower in the Championship, that reliance on fans coming through the turnstiles, buying a pie and a pint — as well as on corporate match-day revenue — accounted for double that figure.
No wonder so many clubs have found themselves in dire straits.
It has forced clubs to have a rethink about how they operate, and Coventry City are aiming to get ahead of the game by diversifying their economic model to add more revenue strings to their bow. Chairman Tim Fisher believes COVID-19 was a watershed moment for the EFL and that lessons must be learned.
“I was at the EFL awards recently and I spoke to a number of older club owners and they asked, ‘Tim, what are we going to do?’” Fisher tells The Athletic. “I told them to get moving, because the situation is all catching up with us. If you don’t learn from COVID and the current situation then you are never going to learn. Football clubs are waking up and we want to get ahead of the curve.”
Fisher believes clubs should no longer rely on simply being football operations — existing just from one fixture to the next and relying on the sport’s traditional revenue streams to support them.
Instead, Coventry have branched into education, the West Midlands club linking up with Loughborough University and Brooke House College in neighbouring Leicestershire to launch a full-time elite football programme, called Vector, based at their Under-23 International Academy.
From September, the inaugural group of students will train under head coach Micky Adams, a former Coventry first-team manager, and his coaching staff while also studying for a BSc Sport and Exercise Science with Management, with the degree accredited by Loughborough University.
It is the first programme in the UK to twin a club at Championship level with a world-class education — Loughborough has been named the best university in the world for sports-related subjects for the sixth year running by the global QS higher education league table.
Trials have already taken place in Nigeria and Bulgaria with more planned, while some of the first crop have graduated from Brooke House, which caters for 300 pupils from 68 nationalities up to their A-Level exams. All applicants must meet certain criteria, both in their football and academic ability, and have the appropriate funding.
While Coventry would have first option on any emerging talent deemed to have the potential to make it as a professional player, the organisers of the Vector programme believe many more will make careers for themselves within football but in other fields.
However, there is another reason why the programme, which is similar to the college system in US sport, is important to Coventry.
“I believe football clubs must have something strategic beyond football now,” Fisher says. “If you look at (fellow Championship sides) Bristol City and Middlesbrough, they lost between £30 million and £40 million last year. We lost £4 million.
“I wander around moaning and saying you can only spend a pound once and question the thinking on expenditure, but it has dawned on us that you need another string to the bow, you need another strategy. That might be around technology, data or education, but you need something else.”
Clubs are not sustainable as they are, Fisher believes.
He adds: “We don’t have a benefactor like Leicester City do, so we need to attract other investors over time and do something different. That is where the education comes in.
“I am always nervous about the benefactor model, because you never know if one of them will get up in the morning and go, ‘What was I thinking? Right, That’s your lot’. Everyone looks at Derby County and thinks, ‘There but for the grace of God go I’.
“No club wants to go down the road of Derby.”
Further down the domestic game’s pyramid, though, the impact of COVID-19 was felt even more deeply — and it continues to hit hard.
It is estimated that lost match-day revenue in the Premier League accounted for 14 per cent of each club’s income. One division lower in the Championship, that reliance on fans coming through the turnstiles, buying a pie and a pint — as well as on corporate match-day revenue — accounted for double that figure.
No wonder so many clubs have found themselves in dire straits.
It has forced clubs to have a rethink about how they operate, and Coventry City are aiming to get ahead of the game by diversifying their economic model to add more revenue strings to their bow. Chairman Tim Fisher believes COVID-19 was a watershed moment for the EFL and that lessons must be learned.
“I was at the EFL awards recently and I spoke to a number of older club owners and they asked, ‘Tim, what are we going to do?’” Fisher tells The Athletic. “I told them to get moving, because the situation is all catching up with us. If you don’t learn from COVID and the current situation then you are never going to learn. Football clubs are waking up and we want to get ahead of the curve.”
Fisher believes clubs should no longer rely on simply being football operations — existing just from one fixture to the next and relying on the sport’s traditional revenue streams to support them.
Instead, Coventry have branched into education, the West Midlands club linking up with Loughborough University and Brooke House College in neighbouring Leicestershire to launch a full-time elite football programme, called Vector, based at their Under-23 International Academy.
From September, the inaugural group of students will train under head coach Micky Adams, a former Coventry first-team manager, and his coaching staff while also studying for a BSc Sport and Exercise Science with Management, with the degree accredited by Loughborough University.
It is the first programme in the UK to twin a club at Championship level with a world-class education — Loughborough has been named the best university in the world for sports-related subjects for the sixth year running by the global QS higher education league table.
Trials have already taken place in Nigeria and Bulgaria with more planned, while some of the first crop have graduated from Brooke House, which caters for 300 pupils from 68 nationalities up to their A-Level exams. All applicants must meet certain criteria, both in their football and academic ability, and have the appropriate funding.
While Coventry would have first option on any emerging talent deemed to have the potential to make it as a professional player, the organisers of the Vector programme believe many more will make careers for themselves within football but in other fields.
However, there is another reason why the programme, which is similar to the college system in US sport, is important to Coventry.
“I believe football clubs must have something strategic beyond football now,” Fisher says. “If you look at (fellow Championship sides) Bristol City and Middlesbrough, they lost between £30 million and £40 million last year. We lost £4 million.
“I wander around moaning and saying you can only spend a pound once and question the thinking on expenditure, but it has dawned on us that you need another string to the bow, you need another strategy. That might be around technology, data or education, but you need something else.”
Clubs are not sustainable as they are, Fisher believes.
He adds: “We don’t have a benefactor like Leicester City do, so we need to attract other investors over time and do something different. That is where the education comes in.
“I am always nervous about the benefactor model, because you never know if one of them will get up in the morning and go, ‘What was I thinking? Right, That’s your lot’. Everyone looks at Derby County and thinks, ‘There but for the grace of God go I’.
“No club wants to go down the road of Derby.”
