Cod Almighty | Diary

No afterthought

28 April 2020

The start of week six, and the self-proclaimed "Best league in the world" is eyeing an 8 June restart. There can be little doubt that the football league will follow suit.

Three London clubs - West Ham, Arsenal and Spurs - have been joined by Brighton in allowing players back into the training ground. As London is the UK hot spot for COVID-19 it can only be a matter of time until others fall in step.
Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden (No, I've never heard of him either) is on record as saying he'd been in touch with the Premier League with a view to re-starting "as soon as possible".

Casual Diary for one welcomes this as good news. I am however slightly irked that the minister responsible sees fit only to contact the "World's greatest League"™. Apparently the other 72 clubs who make up a league that has existed since 1888 are irrelevant.

The resumption will be behind closed doors, with the sweetener of some games supplied to free-to-air TV. This morsel is no doubt offered in order that the sponsors can film all games and create revenues accordingly. At our level the likelihood is that, like some midweek games this season, games will be offered through iFollow.

If my rough and ready figures below are about right, this could prove more profitable for Town. Our average attendance at the close down was 4,599 at home and 767 away, although I'd dispute the away figure, having been among crowds that seemed some way off the official attendances that were announced.

Of the home support around 3000 are season-ticket holders who have already paid for the game. The remaining 1,600 will pay around £17, giving a home revenue of £27,200 per match. Add in programme sales, bar takings and pounds per punter the burger vans pay and we can guesstimate a gross of around £40,000. With a proper game, you'd also have the costs of medical staff, stewards, police, catering staff, stock, printing and feeding the boards and their cronies from both clubs. None of these will be necessary for a behind-closed-doors game.

For the away game we receive only the revenue of tickets bought via Blundell Park. I would guess this is around 400 at most. We get 5% and the average cost is £20 so our income is £400 per game.

With nine games remaining - five at home - if we say match day costs are covered by the peripheries then our total income would be around £139,000. The cost of the iFollow games is £10, which would require only 14,000 to sign up - or an average 1,500 for each game. I have no idea of the percentage of the £10 Town receive but expect it to be at least 30 per cent. In a stir-crazy, locked-down UK, with UK-based exiles who don't normally come to games able to watch on iFollow, I can see no scenario where the takers don't pass the 5,500 per game mark required.

The behind closed doors option is, short of normal resumption, the best option. The Conference has decided to null and void their season, with promotion and relegation to be settled. Notts County are very keen that the play-offs should go ahead to determine promotion. It seems certain that after an absence of 48 years Barrow will return to the Football League.

I have always had a soft spot for the four clubs which lost their League status between 1970 and 1978. Bradford (Park Avenue), Barrow, Workington and Southport failed to secure the votes necessary to maintain league status. With the exception of Workington, who'd had three terrible seasons with crowds well below 1,000, the others had enjoyed comparatively recent success. Maybe I identified with them because of our own brush with re-election or that, with the exception of Bradford, they too were outposts. Give me Workington or any of the others over a franchise created for profit every day of the week.

Stay safe. UTM.