No Mooney, Mr worboys stated a fact. He is entitled to do so. Marlowchair moved on to his unsubstantiated claim that the fact was due to managerial failings. Its what he does.
Obviously he is entitled to his opinion and to express it, but I for one am finding his return and his constant negativity and implications of impropriety/incompetence increasingly annoying.
@marlowchair said:
I will want to know where the increased spend has been , where the reduced revenue has been , who is tasked with accountability for those areas in paid roles and volunteer roles, and if the performance has indeed turned around to the point of needing investors now to fill the gap of such poor performance, see them held accountable.
I suspect, to be fair to the club, that additional expenditure went on players' wages. Akinfenwa, CMS, Saunders, probably Tyson, el-Adb and now Allsop and McCarthy won't come cheap - but my guess is Andrew Howard decided that the only way to realise the five year plan was to open the purse strings last season and sign some players on competitive wages. I also suspect that is why we'll probably be told that League One football is unsustainable without a guaranteed increased budget, which is unlikely to be possible in a supporter trust model.
Personally I agree with your analysis that the board are (in my own words, not yours) mostly committed amateurs - and I think the Trust could be far better run if it made a concerted effort to bring in talented outsiders from the wider fan base. However, I'm not sure that even a board full of Andrew Howards could make a supporter trust model work for Wycombe. I just don't think the model works for any club smaller than, say, Portsmouth when striking out on its own. The system will only work if all lower league clubs adopt the same model - and that won't happen any time soon.
@mooneyman said:
If our financial position has deteriorated so much, why have we recently signed Jason Mccarthy for allegedly a transfer fee?
Excellent question. I can only guess that it was a like for like to replace 09 using his sell fee? That wouldn't affect the week to week trading position per se? we still need to trade and our core business is football so I'd imagine GA demanded the fee be reinvested somewhat if not in totality
@DevC said:
The club put on a "finance forum" every year, Marlow, if you were as interested in the finances as you now seem to be, you would have to have been a right benny not to go along to actually understand the numbers. The base numbers are published on the trust website (although unhelpfully 2015 figures are not available as only abbreviated accounts are supplied)
As you plainly don't understand the numbers, perhaps it would be better to wait until the meeting so that you can understand them before throwing out your accusations of poor "performance" or do you have a policy of not letting the facts get in the way of spreading your vitriol and your desperate efforts to use scare tactics to undermine those in authority. You are the Nigel Farage of the forum.
The club is where the club is. We have a buffer this season from the fear of one bad season resulting in relegation from the league and with Conference finances as they are, probable financial meltdown. We have a window for some mature reflection of the best structure to avoid this risk. I would suggest that instead of insinuation and confrontation, we do that calmly. Ask difficult questions of course, but ask them without confrontation and constructively and listen to the answers. Perhaps ask for the management accounts for the last four years as the statutory accounts as always hide more than they tell. And from that information form a judgment on the facts on what is the best way forward rather than preconceptions.
except I wasnt the one who raised it.......jog on.
If the argument presented is you can only have Lg2 football not Lg1 (or even championship) with the current structure, I think I would vote to retain the current structure in Lg2.
If the argument is we would find it very difficult to even retain Lg2 status and if we went down the conference would be even harder to sustain than lg2, then there is a much stronger case for change now from a position of relative strength rather than waiting for it to happen and trying to recover from a position of relative weakness.
@DevC said:
No Mooney, Mr worboys stated a fact. He is entitled to do so. Marlowchair moved on to his unsubstantiated claim that the fact was due to managerial failings. Its what he does.
Obviously he is entitled to his opinion and to express it, but I for one am finding his return and his constant negativity and implications of impropriety/incompetence increasingly annoying.
So Mr Worboys £500K loss statement is fact now Dev?
Dev don’t turn all your posts into an attack against someone elses intelligence or knowledge, Marlow is stating his views as if you disagree then do so but you do not need to be insulting when doing so, shows a terrible weakness and desire to bully.
@DevC said:
No Mooney, Mr worboys stated a fact. He is entitled to do so. Marlowchair moved on to his unsubstantiated claim that the fact was due to managerial failings. Its what he does.
Obviously he is entitled to his opinion and to express it, but I for one am finding his return and his constant negativity and implications of impropriety/incompetence increasingly annoying.
Wrong again, you're certainly true to form.
I said "@marlowchair said if the reported £500K loss Mr Worboys touted was true, IF, then it represents a large turnaround from what we were told was the case 2 years ago and if that was the case .....
"I will want to know where the increased spend has been , where the reduced revenue has been , who is tasked with accountability for those areas in paid roles and volunteer roles, and if the performance has indeed turned around to the point of needing investors now to fill the gap of such poor performance, see them held accountable"
what is unreasonable about that Dev , other than you don't like the possibility of inconvient truths being present at the club?
Our debts have reduced every year per the accounts - £1.75m paid off between 2013 and 2017. These repayments have been funded primarily by transfer fees received.
@marlowchair said:
I will want to know where the increased spend has been , where the reduced revenue has been , who is tasked with accountability for those areas in paid roles and volunteer roles, and if the performance has indeed turned around to the point of needing investors now to fill the gap of such poor performance, see them held accountable.
I suspect, to be fair to the club, that additional expenditure went on players' wages. Akinfenwa, CMS, Saunders, probably Tyson, el-Adb and now Allsop and McCarthy won't come cheap - but my guess is Andrew Howard decided that the only way to realise the five year plan was to open the purse strings last season and sign some players on competitive wages. I also suspect that is why we'll probably be told that League One football is unsustainable without a guaranteed increased budget, which is unlikely to be possible in a supporter trust model.
Personally I agree with your analysis that the board are (in my own words, not yours) mostly committed amateurs - and I think the Trust could be far better run if it made a concerted effort to bring in talented outsiders from the wider fan base. However, I'm not sure that even a board full of Andrew Howards could make a supporter trust model work for Wycombe. I just don't think the model works for any club smaller than, say, Portsmouth when striking out on its own. The system will only work if all lower league clubs adopt the same model - and that won't happen any time soon.
Excellent post. I would offer a counter point that the possible higher wage outlay for the quality of those players you mention has been off set by the much smaller squad though? GA's quality over quantity ethos has worked thanks to his talent in recruitment and reputation attracting good loans. It has always been stated by the board at meetings that we operate within a strict playing budget. There has never been any mandated alteration to that strategy that we know of so can only assume we remain spending within our playing budget which to date has us nicely placed in league 1.
that leads us to assume either the budget was sustainable when set, but revenues have not matched the projections, leaving us with a deficit. OR, we budgeted too high, or have broken the budget on players.
I tend to think it is the first case, hence my issue with other operational failings we have as a club in my opinion ( Food and bev for a start). The budget was realistic by AH and strictly adhered to by he and GA. But it has been let down by the projected commercial and trading revenues not hitting the target, thus leaving us in deficit.
That tells me it can be fixed without stripping further the playing budget which GA has shown is sufficient ( if not ideal) to date., rather by improving things elsewhere on the revenue side. I was castigated months ago when I forecast commercial and sponsorship issues, but this is exactly what I was concerned about and forecasting.
Its pretty clear that moving games creates a different set of winners and losers. It is good to give serious thought to innovation, but as Mr Worboys himself acknowledges, there isn't enough known about the composition of the fanbase to make informed decisions. Quite how you test the demand without that data is unclear to me, given that the club cannot afford to lose existing support in pursuit of the new.
@DevC said:
Our debts have reduced every year per the accounts - £1.75m paid off between 2013 and 2017. These repayments have been funded primarily by transfer fees received.
But you have just said that Mr Worboys statement that we were losing £500k per year was FACT. You appear to be somewhat of a Jekyll and Hyde character and end up arguing with yourself!
@Baldric said:
Its pretty clear that moving games creates a different set of winners and losers. It is good to give serious thought to innovation, but as Mr Worboys himself acknowledges, there isn't enough known about the composition of the fanbase to make informed decisions. Quite how you test the demand without that data is unclear to me, given that the club cannot afford to lose existing support in pursuit of the new.
First thing you do is survey the fans, get a feeling, see people think its worth a go. Pretty sure there's a list of 1000 or so Trust members who could give a steer.
I don’t want to undermine the importance of this thread but thank goodness there’s a game tonight and we can start talking football again! Rumours, theories and wild guesses will never go away but I prefer to wait until we hear hard facts on September 12 and then debate them in a civilised manner without the mud slinging and name calling that social media so often descends into.
I think the problem for @marlowchair is he’s spent so long posting based on a clear vendetta or grudge against some or all of the football club and Trust board, now when he has something worth contributing it’s jisy white noise.
I should think we’ll be told that under the current financial model we are unsustainable. We might be told that if we have an ‘ambition’ we’ll move away from fan ownership. I’d like to be told who we owe the majority or our debt to, and whose decision it was to run that debt up.
When someone like Andy Worboys, a paragon of propriety and integrity, says the club “......is losing about £500,000 a season...” the first thing we do is sit up and listen. The next step, in my case at least, is to question whether this is an average loss for two or more seasons or whether it is much more recent. Of course the components on which the figure has been based are no doubt very complex and I have a feeling that, even if carefully “explained” at the General Meeting, I for one am quite likely to be left moderately bewildered!
As I’ve said earlier on this thread, I hope some of the key contributors on here will stand up and challenge the Board if there is any lack of clarity in the presentation of options or lack of conviction about the motivation of the would-be investor(s). I am too lacking in confidence/speed of comprehension to do so myself.
I’m not sure whether it would be proper or within the rules for members to be asked for their Gasroom usernames as well as their actual names when asking questions or making a point but I bet I’m not alone in having been intrigued for some time about the identity of @marlowchair ! As quite a few know, I am Mike Ralph.
Mooney, Mr Worboys said we were losing c £500k before transfer fee income. This is broadly fact according to the accounts submitted to Companies House. Transfer fee income has exceeded these amounts allowing debt to be repaid (upto June 2017 at least)
I don't remember much transfer income in year to June 18 so figures for 17/18 may not be so healthy and debt in that year may well have increased from its June 17 figure which I read at around £1.3m.
@peterparrotface . I think the point was that the surveys haven't been carried out so everyone is speculating. Obviously a survey such as you suggest addresses that point but clearly somebody needs to find the resources in terms of both time and finances to do so. It may be on a to do list somewhere, but regarded by some as a lower priority. What is less clear is whether the existing priorities are correct.
The following data is extracted from statutory accounts published on the trust website (WWFC trading figures, FALL debt).
Unfortunately figures for 2015 are not available as only abbreviated accounts are supplied (cock up rather than deliberate I suspect). Overall 2015 was breakeven but split between trading and transfer profit is not known.
£000s
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
Revenue
3707
3350
3324
3593
Cost
-4537
-3752
-4311
-5174
Other
41
65
104
136
Op profit/(Loss)
-789
-337
-883
-1445
Transfer
1807
809
642
238
Net profit/(Loss)
1018
472
-241
-1207
Debt
1285
2574
2893
3117
3307
As always statutory accounts leave more questions than answers. more detailed management accounts would be required to fully understand data and draw any reasonable conclusions beyond overall conclusion that the club does appear to be losing around £500k, perhaps a little more, offset to date by transfer income. Obviously transfer income is unpredictable, I don't remember much if any in 2017/8 for example. We will have received a small amount already in 2018/9 for Luke O'Nien.
The big sell-on fee receipts that perhaps would have been reasonably expected, Ingram, Hause, Scowen, Harris all look a little less likely at present (especially Scowen which is now certainly gone).
Of course it has to be remembered with irritation that if only Woodward hadn't boobed so badly with the Philips sell-on and much of that remaining debt would have been have already been cleared.
@Floyd. No Mr Worboys figure is simply the op profit/loss figure fourth row down. So for year ending June 17 alone operating loss before transfers was a pretty scary £789k, for June 16 £337k. That's how I interpret the numbers anyway. Of course we don't know any other one-offs within those figures.
true Floyd.
Has to be said year to June 17 is especially disappointing on the face of it as that was the year of the cup run and Tottenham away which you would have thought should have improved the outcome. As ever though, very possible that there is a oneoff cost in there distorting things. A little knowledge as always is a dangerous thing.
This is my final comment on this thread but thanks @DevC for the figures. It’s a difficult situation for any football club at present as the Premier League seems to be sucking the lifeblood out of football as a whole.
My figure of a £500k loss is based on an average of figures given in recent meetings over recent years (+ the accounts you highlight). This figure does not include profit on transfers or variable income from, say, cup runs. It is an estimated figure as I do not have access to any management accounts.
Tonight’s game could be a phenomenal boost to the situation should we win & draw a big club away. I believe for the Carabao Cup 1st Rd we won £5k in prize money + 45% of the nett gate receipts. Tonight I believe the winners receive £7k + the same gate split. That’s why I was disappointed only 1,500 home fans turned up for the Northampton game. Given the huge importance of progressing to the 3rd Rd I’d like to think an extra 1,000 would turn up tonight. The increase in FA Cup money this season is very substantial.
It’s very difficult for any football club to make up financial shortfalls via transfers & cup runs, especially as a business model. A friend of mine involved at Crewe says they always expect to lose £500k per season but make that up by selling one or two of their young stars. But with more and more foreign managers coming into even the Championship & bringing in foreign players that market is slowly shrinking.
The football club appears to have done a good job in implementing good financial practice and cutting costs. However, promotion to League One will inevitably cost more (even if not a lot more) on the playing side. Any business will also tell you that general costs are rising and we’ve also got the Woodlands Stand roof hanging over our heads (forgive the pun!).
So the cost side is fairly much under control given our promotion to League One as well. It is the other side that worries me greatly and this is why I raised the issue on here.
Please consider these points very carefully because these are the issues that need to be answered if the club is going to continue as Trust-owned.
1) Our opening league match was watched by 5,115 including 400 from Blackpool. So we roughly had 4,700 home fans.
2) Our home game with Bristol Rovers attracted 4,828 fans with 1,028 away supporters.
3) Our home game with Northampton attracted just 1,500+ home fans.
4) Our last game of last season attracted 8,878 supporters with 200 or so from Stevenage. And that for a game where effectively there was nothing on it.
I was reasonably pleased with the Blackpool attendance but a drop of almost 1,000 home fans for the Bristol Rovers game was very disappointing. Where did they go? The Rovers game coincided with the start of the Premier League and also most semi-professional leagues. What other reason could there be, given that Bristol Rovers is probably a bigger game than Blackpool?
I’ve been talking about creating 23 special reasons why people should attend games - be it a family fun day, a furniture town heritage day or even a Friday night match. The last game of last season was built up as the “Party at the Park” special event. Over 8,500 home fans turned up. Yet only 3,800 for Bristol Rovers this season.
I was expecting a few more from Bristol on the day - maybe 400 more as in recent meetings. I certainly didn’t expect a drop in home support. Just look at what 1,500 extra people would have meant:
1,500 x £17 (average ticket price)
Less VAT = 1,500 x £14.17 = £21,225
Replicate that over 23 matches and you hit the £500k operating loss. Many will snub this and say it can’t be done yet we drew 8,500 home fans for the last game of last season. And this increase doesn’t even take the home support over the 6,000 mark.
We have 2 big games coming up v Luton & Oxford Utd. I expect them to both sell out their 1,800 allocation. Therefore I would hope the Luton game would hit 7,000 & the Oxford game 7,500. It is still my belief that if the Oxford game has been played on the Friday night and publicised pre-season that it would be a sell out. Nevertheless, the attendances at both games will give an indication of what needs to be done and whether the Trust model of ownership is financially viable at League One level. As a guesstimate I reckon we have a pool of about 15,000 fans who when asked their allegiance would say “Wycombe Wanderers”. It’s how we get more of those people to actually attend matches.
There has been a lively discussion under this thread. I don’t have the answers but at least if people are now thinking about it then an informed debate will hopefully ensue on September 12th.
Just to be clear @A_Worboys I wasn’t questioning the integrity of your figures, just where the information came from. You have always been, and remain, one of the most thoughtful and intelligent members of the Gasroom.
Comments
@DevC - To be fair to @marlowchair, it is Mr Worboys that is suggesting that the club's finances are somewhat out of control.
Where has this 500k per year loss figure come from?
I could have sworn every statement by the club in the last 3 years has suggested our debts have reduced year on year.
No Mooney, Mr worboys stated a fact. He is entitled to do so. Marlowchair moved on to his unsubstantiated claim that the fact was due to managerial failings. Its what he does.
Obviously he is entitled to his opinion and to express it, but I for one am finding his return and his constant negativity and implications of impropriety/incompetence increasingly annoying.
I suspect, to be fair to the club, that additional expenditure went on players' wages. Akinfenwa, CMS, Saunders, probably Tyson, el-Adb and now Allsop and McCarthy won't come cheap - but my guess is Andrew Howard decided that the only way to realise the five year plan was to open the purse strings last season and sign some players on competitive wages. I also suspect that is why we'll probably be told that League One football is unsustainable without a guaranteed increased budget, which is unlikely to be possible in a supporter trust model.
Personally I agree with your analysis that the board are (in my own words, not yours) mostly committed amateurs - and I think the Trust could be far better run if it made a concerted effort to bring in talented outsiders from the wider fan base. However, I'm not sure that even a board full of Andrew Howards could make a supporter trust model work for Wycombe. I just don't think the model works for any club smaller than, say, Portsmouth when striking out on its own. The system will only work if all lower league clubs adopt the same model - and that won't happen any time soon.
Excellent question. I can only guess that it was a like for like to replace 09 using his sell fee? That wouldn't affect the week to week trading position per se? we still need to trade and our core business is football so I'd imagine GA demanded the fee be reinvested somewhat if not in totality
except I wasnt the one who raised it.......jog on.
Me too
Lets see what is said, Aloysius
If the argument presented is you can only have Lg2 football not Lg1 (or even championship) with the current structure, I think I would vote to retain the current structure in Lg2.
If the argument is we would find it very difficult to even retain Lg2 status and if we went down the conference would be even harder to sustain than lg2, then there is a much stronger case for change now from a position of relative strength rather than waiting for it to happen and trying to recover from a position of relative weakness.
So Mr Worboys £500K loss statement is fact now Dev?
Thanks for that.
Dev don’t turn all your posts into an attack against someone elses intelligence or knowledge, Marlow is stating his views as if you disagree then do so but you do not need to be insulting when doing so, shows a terrible weakness and desire to bully.
Wrong again, you're certainly true to form.
I said "@marlowchair said if the reported £500K loss Mr Worboys touted was true, IF, then it represents a large turnaround from what we were told was the case 2 years ago and if that was the case .....
"I will want to know where the increased spend has been , where the reduced revenue has been , who is tasked with accountability for those areas in paid roles and volunteer roles, and if the performance has indeed turned around to the point of needing investors now to fill the gap of such poor performance, see them held accountable"
what is unreasonable about that Dev , other than you don't like the possibility of inconvient truths being present at the club?
Our debts have reduced every year per the accounts - £1.75m paid off between 2013 and 2017. These repayments have been funded primarily by transfer fees received.
Excellent post. I would offer a counter point that the possible higher wage outlay for the quality of those players you mention has been off set by the much smaller squad though? GA's quality over quantity ethos has worked thanks to his talent in recruitment and reputation attracting good loans. It has always been stated by the board at meetings that we operate within a strict playing budget. There has never been any mandated alteration to that strategy that we know of so can only assume we remain spending within our playing budget which to date has us nicely placed in league 1.
that leads us to assume either the budget was sustainable when set, but revenues have not matched the projections, leaving us with a deficit. OR, we budgeted too high, or have broken the budget on players.
I tend to think it is the first case, hence my issue with other operational failings we have as a club in my opinion ( Food and bev for a start). The budget was realistic by AH and strictly adhered to by he and GA. But it has been let down by the projected commercial and trading revenues not hitting the target, thus leaving us in deficit.
That tells me it can be fixed without stripping further the playing budget which GA has shown is sufficient ( if not ideal) to date., rather by improving things elsewhere on the revenue side. I was castigated months ago when I forecast commercial and sponsorship issues, but this is exactly what I was concerned about and forecasting.
So, let's sell some more Mars bars tonight then and all will be rosey in our garden! ?
Its pretty clear that moving games creates a different set of winners and losers. It is good to give serious thought to innovation, but as Mr Worboys himself acknowledges, there isn't enough known about the composition of the fanbase to make informed decisions. Quite how you test the demand without that data is unclear to me, given that the club cannot afford to lose existing support in pursuit of the new.
But you have just said that Mr Worboys statement that we were losing £500k per year was FACT. You appear to be somewhat of a Jekyll and Hyde character and end up arguing with yourself!
First thing you do is survey the fans, get a feeling, see people think its worth a go. Pretty sure there's a list of 1000 or so Trust members who could give a steer.
I don’t want to undermine the importance of this thread but thank goodness there’s a game tonight and we can start talking football again! Rumours, theories and wild guesses will never go away but I prefer to wait until we hear hard facts on September 12 and then debate them in a civilised manner without the mud slinging and name calling that social media so often descends into.
I think the problem for @marlowchair is he’s spent so long posting based on a clear vendetta or grudge against some or all of the football club and Trust board, now when he has something worth contributing it’s jisy white noise.
I should think we’ll be told that under the current financial model we are unsustainable. We might be told that if we have an ‘ambition’ we’ll move away from fan ownership. I’d like to be told who we owe the majority or our debt to, and whose decision it was to run that debt up.
When someone like Andy Worboys, a paragon of propriety and integrity, says the club “......is losing about £500,000 a season...” the first thing we do is sit up and listen. The next step, in my case at least, is to question whether this is an average loss for two or more seasons or whether it is much more recent. Of course the components on which the figure has been based are no doubt very complex and I have a feeling that, even if carefully “explained” at the General Meeting, I for one am quite likely to be left moderately bewildered!
As I’ve said earlier on this thread, I hope some of the key contributors on here will stand up and challenge the Board if there is any lack of clarity in the presentation of options or lack of conviction about the motivation of the would-be investor(s). I am too lacking in confidence/speed of comprehension to do so myself.
I’m not sure whether it would be proper or within the rules for members to be asked for their Gasroom usernames as well as their actual names when asking questions or making a point but I bet I’m not alone in having been intrigued for some time about the identity of @marlowchair ! As quite a few know, I am Mike Ralph.
Mooney, Mr Worboys said we were losing c £500k before transfer fee income. This is broadly fact according to the accounts submitted to Companies House. Transfer fee income has exceeded these amounts allowing debt to be repaid (upto June 2017 at least)
I don't remember much transfer income in year to June 18 so figures for 17/18 may not be so healthy and debt in that year may well have increased from its June 17 figure which I read at around £1.3m.
@peterparrotface . I think the point was that the surveys haven't been carried out so everyone is speculating. Obviously a survey such as you suggest addresses that point but clearly somebody needs to find the resources in terms of both time and finances to do so. It may be on a to do list somewhere, but regarded by some as a lower priority. What is less clear is whether the existing priorities are correct.
Micra.
The following data is extracted from statutory accounts published on the trust website (WWFC trading figures, FALL debt).
Unfortunately figures for 2015 are not available as only abbreviated accounts are supplied (cock up rather than deliberate I suspect). Overall 2015 was breakeven but split between trading and transfer profit is not known.
As always statutory accounts leave more questions than answers. more detailed management accounts would be required to fully understand data and draw any reasonable conclusions beyond overall conclusion that the club does appear to be losing around £500k, perhaps a little more, offset to date by transfer income. Obviously transfer income is unpredictable, I don't remember much if any in 2017/8 for example. We will have received a small amount already in 2018/9 for Luke O'Nien.
The big sell-on fee receipts that perhaps would have been reasonably expected, Ingram, Hause, Scowen, Harris all look a little less likely at present (especially Scowen which is now certainly gone).
Of course it has to be remembered with irritation that if only Woodward hadn't boobed so badly with the Philips sell-on and much of that remaining debt would have been have already been cleared.
Thanks @DevC. Does @A_Worboys figure come from the increase in operating loss from 16 to 17?
@Floyd. No Mr Worboys figure is simply the op profit/loss figure fourth row down. So for year ending June 17 alone operating loss before transfers was a pretty scary £789k, for June 16 £337k. That's how I interpret the numbers anyway. Of course we don't know any other one-offs within those figures.
Thanks again Dev. Pretty scary is right. Although, if you take out 2016 as an anomaly, a figure that falls year on year. If i'm reading that right.
true Floyd.
Has to be said year to June 17 is especially disappointing on the face of it as that was the year of the cup run and Tottenham away which you would have thought should have improved the outcome. As ever though, very possible that there is a oneoff cost in there distorting things. A little knowledge as always is a dangerous thing.
This is my final comment on this thread but thanks @DevC for the figures. It’s a difficult situation for any football club at present as the Premier League seems to be sucking the lifeblood out of football as a whole.
My figure of a £500k loss is based on an average of figures given in recent meetings over recent years (+ the accounts you highlight). This figure does not include profit on transfers or variable income from, say, cup runs. It is an estimated figure as I do not have access to any management accounts.
Tonight’s game could be a phenomenal boost to the situation should we win & draw a big club away. I believe for the Carabao Cup 1st Rd we won £5k in prize money + 45% of the nett gate receipts. Tonight I believe the winners receive £7k + the same gate split. That’s why I was disappointed only 1,500 home fans turned up for the Northampton game. Given the huge importance of progressing to the 3rd Rd I’d like to think an extra 1,000 would turn up tonight. The increase in FA Cup money this season is very substantial.
It’s very difficult for any football club to make up financial shortfalls via transfers & cup runs, especially as a business model. A friend of mine involved at Crewe says they always expect to lose £500k per season but make that up by selling one or two of their young stars. But with more and more foreign managers coming into even the Championship & bringing in foreign players that market is slowly shrinking.
The football club appears to have done a good job in implementing good financial practice and cutting costs. However, promotion to League One will inevitably cost more (even if not a lot more) on the playing side. Any business will also tell you that general costs are rising and we’ve also got the Woodlands Stand roof hanging over our heads (forgive the pun!).
So the cost side is fairly much under control given our promotion to League One as well. It is the other side that worries me greatly and this is why I raised the issue on here.
Please consider these points very carefully because these are the issues that need to be answered if the club is going to continue as Trust-owned.
1) Our opening league match was watched by 5,115 including 400 from Blackpool. So we roughly had 4,700 home fans.
2) Our home game with Bristol Rovers attracted 4,828 fans with 1,028 away supporters.
3) Our home game with Northampton attracted just 1,500+ home fans.
4) Our last game of last season attracted 8,878 supporters with 200 or so from Stevenage. And that for a game where effectively there was nothing on it.
I was reasonably pleased with the Blackpool attendance but a drop of almost 1,000 home fans for the Bristol Rovers game was very disappointing. Where did they go? The Rovers game coincided with the start of the Premier League and also most semi-professional leagues. What other reason could there be, given that Bristol Rovers is probably a bigger game than Blackpool?
I’ve been talking about creating 23 special reasons why people should attend games - be it a family fun day, a furniture town heritage day or even a Friday night match. The last game of last season was built up as the “Party at the Park” special event. Over 8,500 home fans turned up. Yet only 3,800 for Bristol Rovers this season.
I was expecting a few more from Bristol on the day - maybe 400 more as in recent meetings. I certainly didn’t expect a drop in home support. Just look at what 1,500 extra people would have meant:
1,500 x £17 (average ticket price)
Less VAT = 1,500 x £14.17 = £21,225
Replicate that over 23 matches and you hit the £500k operating loss. Many will snub this and say it can’t be done yet we drew 8,500 home fans for the last game of last season. And this increase doesn’t even take the home support over the 6,000 mark.
We have 2 big games coming up v Luton & Oxford Utd. I expect them to both sell out their 1,800 allocation. Therefore I would hope the Luton game would hit 7,000 & the Oxford game 7,500. It is still my belief that if the Oxford game has been played on the Friday night and publicised pre-season that it would be a sell out. Nevertheless, the attendances at both games will give an indication of what needs to be done and whether the Trust model of ownership is financially viable at League One level. As a guesstimate I reckon we have a pool of about 15,000 fans who when asked their allegiance would say “Wycombe Wanderers”. It’s how we get more of those people to actually attend matches.
There has been a lively discussion under this thread. I don’t have the answers but at least if people are now thinking about it then an informed debate will hopefully ensue on September 12th.
Just to be clear @A_Worboys I wasn’t questioning the integrity of your figures, just where the information came from. You have always been, and remain, one of the most thoughtful and intelligent members of the Gasroom.
And I go to football to get away from facts and figures, God help me.