Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
‘BAILOUT WILL BE NEEDED‘
A NUMBER of Football League clubs might be in need of a fresh financial bailout if Covid continues to deliver the rash of postponements witnessed in December.
That’s the dire warning from leading football finance expert Rob Wilson, who warns that already under-pressure clubs will struggle to stay afloat with their cash-flow effectively being turned off.
Leagues One and Two had 14 Boxing Day matches called off and then 15 more went three days’ later.
Even the Premier League are suffering. Brendan Rodgers (below) and Leicester saw their game with Norwich off yesterday and today’s clash between Southampton and Newcastle was another virus victim.
At a time of year when most clubs anticipate bumper festive gates and greater spend from punters within the ground, the past week has been little short of a financial catastrophe.
It has also left clubs facing a fixture backlog from hell when normal service resumes – if or when that happens.
With so many living hand-to-mouth, the next five months might prove a step too far for clubs who have already been bailed out to the tune of £250million since the crisis began.
“Even those clubs who have been more resilient over the past 12 months are still running low,” said Wilson, head of finance, accounting and business systems at Sheffield Hallam University.
“They would have been banking on a big Christmas period to top that up. For those clubs who have played matches over Christmas, there would have been a marginal loss.
“A team that might ordinarily have attracted 6,000 fans might have hoped to have 8,000 through the gate at Christmas.
“They will still have got some ticket revenues in, but the lost sales inside the ground won’t be coming back. That’s gone.
“For those clubs that didn’t play, this is just a disaster. It’s cash flow which is the biggest problem, because so many of them live a hand-to-mouth existence.
“If you have two or three games cancelled, then where is the revenue coming to pay the players at the end of this month?
“Will some clubs be going with a begging bowl to the Football League looking for another bailout?
“It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. These are very, very worrying times.”