Banning fans costs £3m at every match
Q
Is the UK government expected to ban fans from attending matches?
A Boris Johnson refused to introduce extra coronavirus restrictions before Christmas and instead sought a few more days to assess data before deciding whether to impose a two- to four-week circuit breaker.
The plans for it have been drawn up. They would include a ban on indoor mixing and potentially large outdoor venues such as sports stadiums. Both measures were introduced in Scotland and Wales before Christmas, with football crowds limited to 500 fans north of the border and 50 in the principality.
Q How badly would losing spectators hurt clubs?
A Going behind closed doors would hit clubs at all levels. In the last season entirely unaffected by Covid, the 20 top-flight clubs made £1.6bn combined from match-day revenues (tickets, food, programmes, hoardings, match-day sponsors and so on), or roughly £3m per game each.
In the Championship it was about £250,000 per game, in League One £62,000 per game, and in League One, £30,000.
The numbers differ hugely between clubs, though. At the biggest sides in League One, where home gates can top 30,000 (Sunderland) and 20,000 (Ipswich, Sheffield Wednesday, Charlton and Bolton), a game with no fans can mean lost match-day revenues bigger than at an average
Championship club.
Q How much financial support have the Premier League given EFL sides so far?
A Last December, the Premier League stepped in with £50m of grants to League One and League Two. The top flight also secured a £200m loan facility for Championship clubs to access, interest free, which an unspecified number have drawn on.
Then last month the Premier League committed a further £20m for League One and Two clubs plus £5m to the three National League divisions.
Q Is the top flight’s support enough to ensure no EFL club goes bankrupt?
A When the Premier League introduced the rescue package for lower-league clubs a year ago, chief executive Richard Masters said: ‘Our commitment is that no EFL club need go out of business due to Covid-19.’ He reaffirmed that pledge when the extra support was announced last month.
‘To be fair it did help,’ said Lee Hoos, the QPR chief executive. ‘But was it the shot in the arm to absolutely get us over the line? No it wasn’t.’
The UK government did not provide football with a financial bailout during the first lockdown, despite offering one to the leisure and hospitality industries.
‘There was no ‘Eat out to help out’ [for fooball], we were told the VAT relief in the entertainment and hospitality industry didn’t apply to us, which I found incredible,’ Hoos added. ‘We didn’t get anything except for furlough.’