20 point plan to survive the Setanta crisis

Phil Wallace has come back from the USA to meet with the board regarding a 20 point plan. It’s the plan he hopes will be sufficient enough to get the club through this season after the loss of apparently £100,000 due to the Irish Broadcaster’s collapse. £100k is a lot of money for a club of our size, in the division we’re in and whereas Premier League clubs would see that sort of money as change or a weeks wages for one of its players, it’s a totally different ball game in the lower leagues. £100k can mean life or death for some clubs.

This is something I think the FA and FIFA need to address sooner rather than later.

The Football League has already had one scare regarding TV deals. In 2002, ITV Digital collapsed leaving the 92 league clubs fighting for financial survival. It is still having an effect now with clubs like Luton finding it too hard to keep financially secure and seeing themselves plunge into non-league football. The same has happened for Cambridge, Wrexham and Oxford. The word ‘administration’ was hardly ever used in footballing terms until 2002, but it crops up nearly every year now with a different club going into the red and getting point deductions. I doubt the financial termoil that has hit the football league in the last 7 years would of occured had ITV Digital not collapsed.

I don’t think the governing bodies do enough to secure clubs finances when it comes to TV deals. Fair enough the Sky deal has changed top flight football forever and been a major success. The prize of getting into the Premier League is so great now, due to the TV money that they get from it. It’s arguably the biggest prize.

However these deals are not paid up front once the broadcaster wins the rights meaning that if they fall into financial difficulties like ITV Digital and Setanta, then the football deals suffer. Football clubs obviously budget for every season taking into account all the income they know they’re going to receive and these days the TV money is a large percentage of that income. That’s where the problem now lies for the Blue Square Premier. BSP clubs are finding themselves facing big losses with the expected windfall for this season now gone. Budgets are going to have to be adjusted and savings are going to have to be made elsewhere to make up for the Setanta money.

I think these deals should have some sort of guarantee with them. Either pay the money up front to the clubs for them to deal with accordingly or give it all up front to the FA or Conference for them to distribute all at once or an even amount each season. At the moment there is too much reliability on the broadcaster and in the current climate I don’t think that is a safe option. With the way TV deals are currently structured, one broadcaster collapsing could kill of 10-15 professional football clubs.

We’re lucky at Stevenage that our club seems to be run well. We have no debts and are financially secure, which is a rare thing to find at this level. 

“The final message to our fans and everyone involved at the club on this subject is this. The running of your club is in good hands. We won’t bury our head in the sand or keep our fingers crossed that something will turn up. We will tackle this issue head on and resolve it before a ball is kicked. Provided that we all work together to achieve the savings I will highlight, then we’ll be back to a neutral position. However in a business like ours the support of the fans – that means getting as many people to as many games as possible – is crucial and we in turn take on board the responsibility to provide entertainment, value for money and, hopefully, success on the pitch to those supporters and to continue our community activities in the town” Wallace talking about 20 point plan

PW will be using the Setanta story as a perfect excuse to try and get more fans through the turnstiles. If he uses this story well then he may get more people through the gates and for more money. That will mean less money he and the board will have to pump into the club come the end of the season. I’m pretty confident that the club will absorb the loss of the Setanta money and come out of the other end a lot stronger than other clubs in this division. I’d expect to see a lot of other clubs in this division suffer though. Some clubs would of been relying a lot on that money, Ebbsfleet come to mind, so hopefully with us in a good financial position we may be able to take advantage where other clubs can’t due to financial constraints.