Fury as SPFL leave clubs in budget limbo
Old Firm fixture shake-up causes chaos
MOTHERWELL and Partick Thistle have reacted angrily to the Scottish Professional Football League’s fixture calendar which they claim will leave them both up to £150,000 out of pocket.
The national body unveiled the games for all four of next season’s leagues yesterday with the two Premiership club’s furiously claiming their schedules leave them at a competitive and a financial disadvantage.
Historically with both Celtic and Rangers in the same division during the 12-team Scottish Premier League era, all other teams have had a single home match versus one half of the Old Firm, while two against the other, with the sequence switching the following season. However, in the calendar for the forthcoming campaign, Motherwell, Partick Thistle and Hamilton Academical have only been given one home game against each of the two sides.
To compound matters, Premiership rivals Dundee, Heart of Midlothian and Inverness Caledonian Thistle have been boosted by the news they will reap the benefits of hosting Rangers and Celtic twice each.
It is an issue that has incensed the boards at Fir Park and Firhill. Herald Sport has learned that Motherwell value the loss of one Old Firm home game to be in the region of £150,000 – the equivalent of three players’s salaries – while Thistle have demanded the SPFL compensate them for the £120,000 they anticipate to miss out on due to takings from gate revenue and hospitality.
“We are angry at the way that it has been done,” said Ian Maxwell, the Partick Thistle managing director.
“There has also been a total lack of communication. If the SPFL knew that this was potentially going to happen with the fixtures, why was nobody told? We have to do our budget.
“Budgeting at a football club is hard enough, and budgeting for gate receipts is hard enough, but the two easiest game to budget for are Old Firm games.
“You know from past experience what you’re going to sell in terms of tickets, because Rangers and Celtic are always going to bring a similar number of supporters.
“To do that with the biggest games we’ve got of the season and our biggest source of income is staggering, and even more so when nobody thought to let us know.
“The press that Scottish football has had over the summer has all been great, and there’s a definite good feeling and bounce about the game as a whole. Then this happens and it utterly deflates you. How can this be right? How can this be fair to all the clubs?
“It’s costing us £120,000 when you
take into account ticket sales and hospitality, and you could probably add on a wee bit more when you factor in things like pie and programme sales.
“It’s absolutely massive, and to do this the way they have done it is absolutely incredible. From a budgeting point of view, we’re already quite far down the line. We’ve got players under contract and have signed players on long-term deals.
“Now the SPFL might argue that they didn’t guarantee us three Old Firm games, but more importantly they didn’t tell us that they weren’t [scheduled].
“Everybody that I’ve spoken to this morning had assumed it would go back to the old way. Making changes to the budget at this stage can only affect the playing budget. We haven’t spoken to the SPFL. We’ve spoken to a few other clubs to get their feelings on it, and I’ll need to speak to the SPFL now and see exactly what the process is from here, because something has to happen. I don’t know if they can change the fixture list or if it might be too late for that, I don’t know where compensation would come from, but something has to happen because it’s just not right.”
Maxwell’s Motherwell counterpart, Fir Park chief operating officer Alan Burrows, shared his frustrations as he took to Twitter yesterday morning to vent his disappointment at the decision.
Herald Sport understands the Lanarkshire club’s board have not yet discussed the matter of compensation, but have made a defiant show of solidarity with Thistle in a strongly-worded statement also rallying against the lack of sporting integrity and financial parity involved in the SPFL’s schedule.
It read: “This has a serious financial impact on our club, and we cannot and will not accept it.
It creates a significant financial advantage for some clubs over others and in our view, just as important, compromises the integrity of the competition, both in terms of the potential/need for adjusting respective player budgets up or down and the amount of games teams have to play at what have historically been the most challenging venues.
“There was no hint of this fundamental change until we received the fixtures at 8.02am today and, therefore, like the other clubs in our position, now find ourselves significantly worse off than we were on Thursday night and with insufficient time to make appropriate adjustments.
“We expect this unacceptable position to be reversed immediately.”
Despite also being negatively impacted, Herald Sport has learned that Hamilton Academical are not going to make any formal complaint to the SPFL, despite their only two home Old Firm games coming back to back on December 17 with Rangers and a week later against Celtic.
The SPFL refused to comment when approached last night.