£70k down....

What follows is a quoute of a posting I placed on both Burning Budgies and the Official Forum:

Hmmm, something doesn't add up here....

Supposedly it takes about £7k/week to run the Phoenix (that was the figure mooted in the summer), now to make that [i]from gate receipts alone[/i] requires 778 people @£9 per head (averaged admission figure based on walk up, advance, concession, and ST per game prices), given the team plays for the full 30 weeks of the season. This gives a total gate reciept of £210,000/season.

Now, if we knock £70k off this we have a figure of £140,000, leaving a gate reciept of £4.6k/week, or 511 paying punters.

Our average attendance is somewhere arounf the 750-800ish mark (all paid from what I gather).

So either the £7k figure is erroneous, or something is seriously wrong. (Of course, these figures are a gross oversimplification of the actual cash flow, and ignore any ancilliary incomes such as sponsorship and merchandise, 50/50. etc). I personally think it is a combination of both.

Stick with me here...

I have heard that the magic figure for the season (ie the amount you could run the team on, including all expenses) is £300k, or £10k per week (which sounds more reasonable when you take everything into account).

Now, if all the clubs income currently gets near to this figure, then I would assume that either a large chunk of the clubs existing debt is being paid off, leaving a shortfall on the +/- for this seasons accounts, or the club has a serious inefficiancy somewhere along the line.


Of course, this is all just speculation, and I may be miles wide of the mark, but it does get you thinking, doesn't it...

So, what does this all mean?

Only 1 person has an accurate answer to this, and his name is Neil Morris. Personaly, I think that there is something deeply wrong with the finances of the club at the minute. Wrong, but rightable. I don't think we will be going bust any time soon, but I think that there is a pressing need for some major financial re-organisation. Running at a loss has a historical precendent for the Phoenix (every season AFAIK), but it can not continue indefinately, unless we have some very generous and forgiving creditors.