Cambridge United call for action not just more words to avert football's financial crisis as club's losses could hit £500k
Rick Parry has publicly called for £250million to save EFL clubs, but to what does that figure really equate to?
Big ticket numbers can seem detached from reality, and hard to place in context – after all, the total that the EFL chairman refers to would be spread across 72 teams.
Cambridge United have laid bare the hard facts of the financial toil that staging matches without fans is having on all clubs, and why they are demanding the government, Premier League and PFA work together to swiftly deliver a solution.
Rather than talk of the collective millions, chief executive Ian Mather has revealed how the U’s are missing out on around £20,000 per game without spectators on lost ticket income, based on the 2018/19 season. During the campaign in question, United’s revenue from match-day tickets alone was £475,469 – not taking into account season tickets.
Without supporters coming through the turnstiles, aside from merchandise and sponsorship, the only way the club can make money is through the iFollow streaming service, for which they receive £6.66 from every £10 pass.
To reach the amount of match-day revenue of 2018/19, they would need to sell around 3,000 iFollow passes for each game, which is on top of those provided to season-ticket holders.
It is why Mather believes that multiple bodies should step up to the plate to help EFL clubs, but does beg a particular question before anything else is addressed – why was the season allowed to start?
All clubs wanted it to do so, but that was on the presumption that fans would be allowed back into grounds at some point and there was also the belief that some support would come from the Premier League.
There is also no getting away from the fact that the Premier League wanted the EFL to play because of the impact on other competitions, such as the Carabao Cup and the FA Cup.
“The speculation was that we would definitely be getting fans back at some point, and we had to work to find ways of getting fans back in a socially distanced way,” explains Mather.
It is why the U’s and Charlton Athletic worked with Movement Strategies to model the safe return of supporters, and were able to pilot it against Fulham under-21s in the EFL Trophy, to success and compliments all round.
It was not an insignificant cost either. With 1,500 season-ticket holders – who Mather describes as “absolutely brilliant”, getting tickets without knowing if they will see a game – staging a game with fewer than 1,500 fans is costly, about £7,500.
With many indications now that fans will not be allowed back into grounds until March, with hindsight, would there have been a different decision about beginning the league competition?
“I think we would have wanted to start the season, but we might have wanted to do a different deal with more guarantees of support,” says Mather.
“The can has been kicked for months, with Premier League discussions about helping EFL clubs, and the can is nearly at the end of the road – and they don’t seem to realise that. It would have been a different conversation, because not only do we want to play the games but the Premier League wants us to play the games. Sometimes you’ve got to pay the price, and they don’t want to pay the price.”
There are a number of different reasons why Mather believes the Premier League should step in to offer assistance.
One is simply to make sure that the season is completed and, to that end, this could be fulfilled with help in funding testing.
“The Premier League is not having the same problems the EFL clubs are having because they are testing more – they are doing it because they can afford it and we can’t,” says Mather.
The other is for what the EFL provides to the Premier League. There are so far 40 players on-loan from the top-flight to the next three steps in the pyramid, and more could make the move to gain experience with weeks still to run in the transfer window.
“We had Jack Roles here last season from Spurs, and the likes of Harry Maguire, Jamie Vardy and Andrew Robertson developed through the Football League,” says Mather.
“There are a number of players going into Premier League clubs from EFL clubs, and there are a lot of Premier League players going into EFL clubs to develop them.
“It’s time that the Premier League accept that we’re here as part of an ecosystem – they should look at it as enlightened self-interest. It’s in their interest to help EFL clubs get through this season.”
When it comes to testing though, that is where the PFA should step up to support its members, according to Mather.
With net assets worth £68m, as listed on the union’s website, the funds would seemingly be in place to assist clubs, which in turn would help players.
“I can’t think of anything more important for player welfare than testing for Covid in this situation,” he says.
“Not only would it help clubs to fulfil fixtures and keep infected players away from other players.
“It’s no use the PFA saying they will support them once they’ve been infected and got a damaged career, how about doing some pre-emptive help?
“If they were to pay for testing – Phil Wallace at Stevenage came up with a number of about £5m – it would not make a small dent in their war chest of £60-odd million.
“I would really like Gordon Taylor (the PFA chief executive) to respond to the question, why don’t you do this for the benefit of your members?”
The third and most critical call for action is to the government.
It has pledged £1.57billion to the arts, and the £250m that Parry is asking for works out at 16 per cent of that figure, and no-one can deny the ancillary benefit that football clubs provide to their communities.
The government has gone on record to say it wants football back to ‘boost the mood of the nation’, and that it wants fans able to attend games because it can see the economic situation faced by clubs.
However, the announcement last week by the Prime Minister was so vague as to when that may happen, with suggestions it will not be for a further six months.
“If the government wants the Football League world to survive then they need to offer some help,” says Mather.
“Oliver Dowden (the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) tweeted this week that they were setting up a working party to look at this, but that really is kicking the can down the road.
“It’s like an episode of Yes Minister – we’ve got a difficult situation so we will create a group to talk about it.
“The time for talking is gone. We need to get to a point where actually we are delivered some real help, and that means money.”
Mather admits that there is sympathy for the situation the government has in trying to close the economy in parts to reduce the R number.
It is just the messaging involved that has made it very difficult for football.
One minute fans may not be back until March, the next a working party is looking at what can be done to get supporters back in grounds as quickly as possible.
“They’ve got to come out and be consistent,” he says.
“At the moment, we’re working on the basis there are no fans back and if they are going to maintain that line then they need to come up with some money if they want to see football survive.
“It is too easy for people to sit in their offices, wherever they are – in Whitehall, in the Premier League or the PFA, and talk about helping. I almost get this impression they are all pointing to each other and nobody is stepping up.
“The people who have stepped up are EFL clubs who were asked to make sure that we controlled our expenditure – we voted for a player squad cap and salary cap for the first time.
“We’ve done what we can do, and those organisations want us to carry on playing football, well it’s time that they came up with some money.”
It is anticipated that the hole in United’s finances if no fans returned to the Abbey this season would be around £500,000.
They believe they can sustain that through owner Paul Barry, invaluable sponsors and the recent investment of US businessmen Adam Webb and Mark Green, although it will not be easy.
But Mather says: “It’s not only Cambridge United, you have to look across the whole range of the Football League.
“We’ve managed our situation in that we believe we just can see our way through it, but if a number of other clubs are falling over then what does that do for the integrity of the competition? Or does it completely wipe it out for this season?
“We believe we could survive this season, but then you have to look to next season where our financial position would be very difficult from the start.
“We take a longer-term view than just let’s get through this season, although it’s important to be able to do that. But I think there are some other clubs who are not looking at that horizon, they are looking at weeks.”
He added: “We’re all in this together. We all care about each other, but there is also self-interest as well.
“We need teams to play against, and if they are falling over then the whole pyramid could start to collapse.”
There have been so many ‘crucial weeks’ and false dawns, but you can sense that it has got to the end of the line and the powerbrokers in question – the government, the Premier League and the PFA – need to produce a full rescue package for EFL clubs if fans remain absent from grounds.
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