Airtricity League clubs facing potential cost-cutting of €10m

Airticity League clubs will meet on Thursday to discuss ways of addressing the financial crisis that has accompanied coronavirus but in the absence of substantial support from Government or Uefa, the Premier Division sides alone appear to be facing a deficit of anything up to €10 million with drastic cost-cutting about the only measure open to them.

According to Uefa’s annual Benchmarking report, the 10 leading sides here turned over a combined €15 million in 2018 – a tiny proportion of the €21 billion generated by top flight outfits across Europe, almost half of it by the richest 30 clubs – and the figure would not have substantially changed last year.

Of that, around €9 million goes on player wages, a very significant portion of which would be accounted for by the league’s current top two, Shamrock Rovers and Dundalk, who are believed to have commitments on this front of around €4 million between them in the current year.

That figure would have been increasing slightly year-on-year but it is almost as much as all 10 clubs earned between them in gate receipts in 2018. The league here is the fourth most dependent on ticket revenues (after Scotland, the Netherlands and Switzerland) according to the Uefa report which puts the percentage of clubs’ income dependent on people coming to games at 28 per cent (€4.2 million).

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Commercial revenue is worth 42 per cent (or roughly €6.3 million) with money from Uefa and assorted other sources coming in at 16 and 13 per cent respectively.

Outstanding shortfall

A disproportionate amount of commercial income would have been received by clubs already with many annual backers paying up front for the coming campaign. However, one senior official estimated that there would be outstanding shortfall of around €1 million per month for the remaining seven months of the season and the likes of match-day sponsorships and renewals of deals due in the coming weeks are gone, at least while the league is suspended, and possibly beyond that for this season as companies all over Ireland then try to pick themselves up from the collapse in business caused by Covid-19.

Gate receipts are something of an imponderable at this stage as a return to football even in May or June might allow games to be squeezed, the season extended or a combination of the two so that the full programme of games is played and not too much revenue is lost. At the other end of things, however, the worst case scenario could be a cancelled or very dramatically shortened season, something that would mean the permanent loss of very substantial income.

Of key interest to the top two plus Derry City and Bohemians will be the fate of the qualifiers for European competitions. Even in a poor year, these are worth around €2 million to the four clubs involved with the potential for much more to be earned and, though the expectation would be that the games will have to go ahead at some point, there are no guarantees that things will have sufficiently settled by July and early August when they are normally played or that unrestricted travel will have resumed across the continent.

The clubs will have varying levels of ability to cope with all of this but none would be able to survive without cash being brought in somehow or costs being very dramatically cut and despite the best efforts of the PFAI (the players’ union) its members do look likely to bear the brunt of the situation. With the FAI itself set to be hit severely by the postponement of Euro 2020 and loss of games, Niall Quinn suggested on Tuesday that there may be no option but for players to fall back on the government’s programme of assistance, worth just over €200 a week; a huge drop for the league’s best paid professionals.

Good shape

Speaking on Radio Foyle on Wednesday morning, Derry City director Denis Bradley suggested that club is in relatively good shape going into the crisis and remains hopeful that drastic action would not be required but he admitted: “it is hard to know what would happen if the situation continues on for longer than we would like.

“Ultimately,” he added, “we are a business as well as an outlet for sport and entertainment.”

A few miles up the road in Ballybofey, Finn Harps were dealing with another unexpected upshot of the crisis on Wednesday afternoon with the club forced to temporarily close a weekly lotto that had initially been regarded as something of a lifeline at such a difficult time.

“What has become apparent very quickly is that a large proportion of the sales depend on face-to-face interactions and in the current circumstances, when things like going door-to-door are simply not possible, it was about to start losing money and so the committee has come back to the club and recommended stopping it for the moment,” says Trevor Gordon, one of the club’s directors.

Having rejoined the board in January as Fundraising Officer (“like they say in the film: ‘picked the wrong time to give up smoking’”, he says with a gentle laugh), Gordon has been at the heart of the effort to keep things ticking over financially at the club but he admits that it is now hugely dependent on fans simply giving money, most obviously by way of a scheme involving a one-off or monthly commitment of €25, which currently has 200 members, or by buying tickets to postponed games.

“Clearly, it’s difficult,” he says, “but we have not wanted to shout about it too much at a time when 200,000 people are losing their jobs and people’s health and well being is such a concern; you don’t want to be seeing to be crying about ‘poor me’.

“We are still trying to operate, if only to bring a bit of light relief to supporters at a time when it’s badly needed and they don’t have the football that’s so important to them. We have a few things planned but the money is certainly a big issue.

“Anything could happen, including the season being completely called off, and I think at the meeting on Thursday the aim will be to move forward with some degree of solidarity.”