Can we afford football?

This article is about Blackpool, but only because that's what I know. You can alter the maths slightly, change the names and it's about any league one (or league 2) club. What it isn't about is whether Liverpool's summer transfer plans have been dealt a blow or which club is threatening litigation to who over their prize money. It's a thousand times more concerning than that. - It's about whether we're facing up to the incredible difficulties facing funding football beyond the TV world and whether the measures taken to ensure clubs survive might be more extreme than we think... 

Above is Ben Garrity. He's a little known midfield player who signed for Blackpool from 7th tier Warrington Town. He's the star of the piece in some ways, though he barely gets mentioned. It is the likes of him who maintain my interest in football. A young lad who has played football up till now, mainly for the pure love, getting his chance at a dream and a life in the game. He's never played for us. He might be the next David Eyres or Brett Ormerod, a unlikely legend in the making... or he might be Rory Prendergast, that lad from Blyth Spartans, that kid Ollie signed from an American university who was quick and nothing else - a damp squib that fizzles out. 

More than anything else, I'd love to find out... I'm worried I never will.

At the beginning is a load of crap satire about current affairs. You can just scroll to the main bit if you're short of time. It won't spoil the point I'm trying to make. I'm leaving it in cos it's my blog and I'll write in an irritating way if I wish.

The intro. A strange world, where there are no rules:

On Monday afternoon I wondered if we need football at all.

Watching an oddball bald man in a very nice garden play a game of 'how far can you twist logic before everyone agrees reason is entirely broken, so you can technically do anything you want now' with a series of weirdly over dressed journalists looking like they're on a works night out is a surprisingly fascinating spectacle. It pisses on Aston Villa vs Southampton, even though the media (liars) would have you believe the nations future depends on such a fixture being enacted. And it's on terrestrial telly!

Something has started to nag at me though.... When the Sunderland game was cancelled, I assumed we'd be back on it in about three weeks. We'd have a little break, all stay home, we're an island, it'll be reet, the Gov't'll have something up their sleeve, it's not a film ffs, it's not going to be an actual pandemic. Not here. We'd do what was needed then we'd all head back and everything would be as it was, except the season end would be a little more sunkissed than otherwise imagined or the games would come a little thicker and faster. I essentially thought it would be a bit like what actually happened in New Zealand.

Things have unravelled a bit differently to my complacent assumptions and the fact I find myself getting a snack and settling in to watch a press conference where a man describes his son having a wee in the woods and it's a matter of great public interest, shows us how far we still have to go before normal service resumes.

It's possibly the surreal nature of recent political discourse that has made me more prone to thinking the unthinkable. It seems, to get my head round reality, I have to accept that black is white and vice versa. I am doing my level best to adjust to the new rules, where the press stating facts is actually lies and that withholding the truth is in fact a noble deed that prevents confusion. It seems my new found powers of mental elasticity (see, Muggers was right after all) have allowed me to believe another previously unimaginable possibility - namely that there might be NO FOOTBALL FOR LITERALLY FUCKING YEARS. 

What? Hang on? What are you saying? Where in the hell have you dragged that up from? Holy fuck, you were twatting on about Cummings and then you drop that shite out of nowhere...! (I hear you reader...I'm saying the same to myself...but bear with me, there's method to this madness... I kind of wish there wasn't)  

This will go on for a bit (sorrynotsorry), so you'll have to buckle up and hold your bladder. I'm not stopping for petrol and you certainly aren't getting out at the woods for a wee. You might feel sick and have to have a little wander by the river by the end though. You've been warned. It's grim and I take no pleasure in it all. Like Dom, I'm using the reason at my disposal to work out the situation at hand.  

Are you ready? Let's go. The tortuous intro is over...

The main bit: How does a boat float, when it's got a big hole in it? 

There's a general assumption that we're not seeing crowds anytime soon. It seems fairly safe to assume that we're not getting the 'all clear' in the next few weeks or months. Even if we believe the powers that be started out with a laconic approach and are now starting to get jumpy that they're going to be lumped with the least popular round of spending decisions ever if they don't get shit moving, they're not going to risk a widely felt second wave by inviting people to sit together in close proximity and scream stuff at the top of their voice for an hour and a half twice a week for no real reason. Supporters coaches, trains, car shares to away games, gathering in the pub, standing around in unventilated concourses, putting the police force amidst the crowds. It's just not happening in the near future. The risk outweighs the benefits.

So, the question comes... If a large chunk of next year (or all of it, as some reports suggest) is behind closed doors - is it worth playing? I don't mean 'worth playing' in terms of my feelings towards it. I mean is it literally worth playing...?

The urgent argument for top flight football is essentially - Sky will not pay out if the games don't happen - that equates to many millions for each and every club... (somewhere in the region of £50 million per season) The TV incentive is significantly less valuable to clubs outside the top two leagues (and particularly the top flight) - In League 1, (as far as I can work out) the current Sky deal is worth roughly £800,000 per season to each club. It's not pocket change, but it's not much in comparison to the average wage bill (2017/18 was the most recent figure I could find) of £6,600,000.

The clubs also receive a solidarity payment from the Premier League - the most recent figure I could find was around £700,000.

So, with my roughly accurate back of the proverbial fag packet maths, we can see that without factoring in any other running costs other than wages, the average League One club starts the season with a shortfall of about £5,100,000 every year to make up in the form of season ticket sales, matchday revenues, merchandise and sponsorship as well as any other creative uses of their facilities and 'brand' (sorry, off to gas myself for using such a term),

We can assume that the league or the clubs will work out some form of streaming package, but it's highly unlikely to be anywhere near as lucrative as selling tickets to the actual games, especially given the relatively poor quality of coverage - Taking our standard ticket prices of £20 per game (or £239 for a season) - a single fixed camera and local radio commentary is hardly Sky levels of coverage, but not far off Sky levels of cost (actually, more on a single match basis). That's a big outlay, considering the games come without any of the atmosphere, sense of occasion, camaraderie or ritual that attracts many to attend, week after week, even if the product on offer is dire. 

The less footfall at the ground, the less incidental purchases there will be. With no matches to go to, how many fans will buy the latest merchandise? It's certain no one will buy a pie or a pint, or eat a meal in corporate hospitality, there'll be no one hiring a box to impress a client or give the workforce a good day out.

How many sponsors will therefore want to be involved, given as the whole experience of advertising with a team at this level is that you get to be a visible part of the local community? Yes, we'll be on telly, but it almost certainly won't be proper telly (with Sky only showing a maximum of 20 league one games) and the exposure will be low. There won't be Tony Parr bellowing the name of the company and a chance to meet the players and feel special. Just a board, glimpsed briefly from a poor quality TV stream and half the ground won't even be visible.

The same goes for shirt sponsorship. Each year, the club would hope to strike better deals, but this year, all clubs are facing a chronic uncertainty as are many businesses. Blackpool (or any league one club) are unlikely to be dealing with the sort of multinationals whose vast profits inure them to the impact of the virus. Despite the club's altogether much more wholesome image these days, few sponsors are going to be  convinced to shell out the sort of money they would have done last year for a fraction of the benefits at a time when their own business may need every spare penny.

Even little details make a difference at smaller clubs. Programme sales, Golden Gamble tickets, the packet of crisps I ritually buy for my lad, to keep him quiet whilst I drink my pint of John Smiths at 2.40pm. The wander round the club shop when the traffic has been a bit lighter and we've got there earlier than usual and you decide you can't live without a pin badge or a mug or to replace the hat he's lost for the third fucking time.  

We can't put a figure on exactly how much the club make from food and drink or from merchandise sales without the info from the club. What we can say, is the average gate for the club is almost exactly the League One average. At the time the league shut down, we averaged 8,770, almost identical the mean divisional average attendance of 8,787. 

We have, therefore likely got a very 'average' cashflow. We are typical of a League One club's circumstances. Not the lowest by a long way (the 9th best supported) but someway behind some clubs in terms of income.

We don't know what Blackpool FC's exact financial position is. There are no accounts filed since the Oystons left. What we can say for sure is that last year that had at least 5,100 season ticket holders (I can't find a definitive final figure). We can estimate the income from that at somewhere around £1,000,000 (ish) - that leaves the people who pay on the day, home or away (on average about 3,670 - assuming the 5,100 is accurate)  - that works out somewhere around £1.2m to 1.5m - We can only be vague with the figures as we don't no exactly who paid what, how many concessions there are, how many early bird purchases, how many people attended on complimentary tickets and so on.

We also don't know if the average figure quoted above is representative of the clubs wage bill. We know the wage bill was described as 'competitive' and we know that the average is likely to be inflated since 2017/18, so we could assume it is higher than that. We'll stick with it for lack of a definitive alternative. What follows is unsettling enough without facing the possibility that it could actually be worse...

It is a matter of record that League One clubs collectively suggest that by September, they are likely to be facing a £40 million shortfall (and that assumes the players will accept ongoing wage cuts). If we divide that crudely, that's approximate £1.7 million per club. Presumably that comes from a combination of lost revenue from games never played and the loss of season ticket sales for the year ahead.

Either way, that number is frightening, even if it's skewed a little by the biggest teams (Sunderland, Ipswich, Portsmouth, whose gates and therefore revenue losses are at least double ours...)

Put it this way - that sort of loss would swallow the entire TV budget AND the solidarity payment, leaving us with the full £6.6 million to find to pay for the average wage budget (which, remember, is assuming that budget is accurate)

We could, of course, offload our best assets, but we've few players of any significant resale value. Armand is the standout performer, but the misunderstood genius is out of contract, so worth nothing to us. Feeney is the other player whose stats jump out, but he's 34 next year. I can't imagine any other of our first teamers commanding much of a fee, especially in the current climate. Can you see any of them making a step up to a higher league? I can't... Can you see clubs staring down the barrel of this situation shelling out for first dibs on Michael Nottingham?... Me neither.

So where are we now? We've scribbled more figures on the front of the fag packet and it seems we need to charge more than it costs to watch proper games to supporters on iFollow. It's hard to imagine many shelling out £30 or £40 a game to watch a BTEC Media studies student move a camera back and forth whilst Chissy spouts his unique poetry. Even if people do in good numbers, we're not close to covering the shortfall and we've not covered any of the costs beyond the wages...

As some of the revenue streams are closed, we'd need to shift a lot of shirts and scarves and do a lot of sponsorship deals - the problem is, we don't have a recognisable product to shift. How many kids are going to be desperate for a league one shirt this year? My lad has sort of forgotten the football exists, his attention shifted to a world of computer games and intense irritation that he can't go to his nan's house or see his mates. Whilst I certainly haven't forgotten football, I'd argue my persistence in paying attention to the minute details of the game are the exception rather than the rule and for every fan who cites 'true fans will buy the shirt and support the club come what may...' - there's another fan who isn't thinking that much about the club at all. Who goes because his dad or his mate does. Who goes for the craic and buys a shirt to join in and if there's nothing to join in, then he or she won't buy one or shell out the cash. Nowt up with that. It would be boring if we were all anoraks.

I'm feeling a bit depressed now, so lets try and inject a bit of optimism... (hint, this *might* be a writerly device, designed to lift you up, only to plunge you further into the mire, like in a horror film, when you think they've reached safety then the killer appears at the window... read on at your discretion...)

There's a strong argument to say, we're a remarkably resilient fanbase - we raised legal fees and paid fines, we made and bought unofficial shirts, we are organised like few other clubs, we have raised money before in different circumstances and we could do it again. We've seen our club burning and we've seen it rise from the ashes. Hell, we fucking own Andy Watson! We could always flog him... That's all true and our history does us credit, but the sums involved in this situation are huge.

The town has taken a kicking. How many of our fanbase are going to be sharing this insecurity come August, September, October etc? We're Blackpool  and everything is telling us we're headed into the mother of all recessions on the back of a (at best) severely truncated summer season. That doesn't bode well for a local economy that is, even without Covid19's tender touch, in need of a bit of an injection...

If we're having to talk ourselves into thinking we can carry the weight of the club, then most of the other teams in the league have no experience of such a struggle. Accy, yes, Pompey, yes, but few others... and it's a different struggle. Without the unifying effect of games and latterly marches, actions AFC Blackpool matches and so on, the NAPM campaign (and the very different struggle Accy underwent in rebuilding their status, bit by bit, or Portsmouth's fans throwing themselves on the exploding club to save it...) would have really, really struggled to maintain the impetus. That's just how it works. People support things they feel a part of. Apathy is the product of distance. It's something many Blackpool fans reflected on during those years.

Here's another terrifying stat. The collective shortfall (remember, that estimate assumes wage cuts) of the League One clubs by September will be equal to almost two thirds of the money raised by Comic Relief in 2019. I don't mean to make light of the situation, but I don't think 'feed Ollie Turton' or 'help Jay Spearing make a forward pass' has quite the heart tugging appeal of suffering children. As rabid and passionate as the League One support is, even if every single person who watched a game of third tier football is prepared (and able) to put their hand in their pocket and support their club, the sum is massive.

The plight of lower league football is unlikely to have a glitzy national TV spectacular with Michael Macintyre sobbing over an empty crush barrier in the Memorial Terrace stand saying 'usually this stand is not quite as empty as this' or that annoying Geordie woman with the squeaky voice sat in the Bloomfield dugout next to a glum looking backup midfielder going 'Ben Garrity signed for Blackpool from Warrington and he thought all his dreams had come true.... but he never got to (voice breaks) play and without you, now, sending a tenner to us, he might not get to do so for ages, if ever.....' This seems especially unlikely given as the actual kiddies the world over (won't someone think of them!) might be in more need than ever by the time the telethon season rolls around.

Lets roll that figure about again... £40 million (at least)... £1.7 million per club... That's just the shortfall BEFORE the season starts. It's not the money it takes to play the game for however long it takes to get people back. It's not considering the cost of testing, weekly, for an unspecified length of time or any of the other staging costs at a time when you've no idea how long it is till your actual proper income stream is turned back on.  

No one knows how long. I don't know. You don't know.

What I can say is, it's a hell of an ask to expect club owners to bridge that gap (even if they can!) when there's absolutely no guarantee of ever getting the money back. Lets say you were Simon Sadler (or any League One owner) being asked to put in what amounts to millions to ensure that a highly watered down version of the game (you presumably love) gets played... That might be OK if you knew it was for a month. You don't. You don't have a clue whether it's for a month, two months or 9 months and no one can give you a clear answer. 

What if you put down 3 or 4 million quid (or maybe more, certainly more if you are chairman of Sunderland...) to get us to November, what happens if the league or Government says 'actually, it's May' As a fan, you can blithely say 'it'll all be over by date X' but if you're moving money from your own business, or if your borrowing against assets or if you're mortgaging the very future of the club, you might want a bit more reassurance than 'I read in the paper that...' and ultimately, there is no scientific or objective consensus on when mass gathering and hence 'normal' football will resume. That's an undeniable fact, whatever your personal opinion may be.

Even if Simon Sadler was prepared to plug that gap, come what may, for however long, I think he might be justified in looking around him and thinking 'hang on...' He'd surely notice that not everyone who owns a League One club has the means to do the same. Some of the owners have suffered in their business dealings, some of them just aren't in his league financially. Some of them are in it for the money and thus simply not willing to chuck money into a pit for the sake of football. Some of them are running clubs that are in a hole financially already. He might think (and so might you, if you wore his shoes)... 'I'm chucking this money at keeping the club playing but what if... there's no one to play against...' and think of your already reduced revenue streams dwindling even further - you'd surely begin to wonder why you were doing it...

It's one thing to ask fans to shell out for a game on iFollow, but quite another to ask them to shell out for a game that doesn't exist because the opponent went bust... 

Even if the league was able to hastily promote teams from below, that becomes a game of diminishing returns. How many teams do they promote? What happens to League Two? The clubs that came up, are unlikely to have the same appeal as the teams that went by the wayside...

If you were an average league one chairman, in an idle moment, weary from pushing sums around the spreadsheet and failing to make them add up, you might look out the window and think... is this worth it? You might idly start to wonder how much it would cost to lay off the players and staff and return to it all when football started up again properly. You might possibly think about ringing another chairman and running that by him, considering thinking about the legal implications and financial benefits of saying 'no football' if you believed it was the only way to ensure your club didn't end up in a huge financial hole or cost you the wealth you'd built up throughout your life.

You'd look up and see the championship clubs, with their spectacular debts and the Premier League, seemingly schizophrenic in its simultaneous wealth and precarity. It would be like being a beggar, asking for money from someone who just remortgaged their house or who is staving off the debt collector who is try to take away the Bentley. There's money in the game, but it's spoken for. It's being fought over like never before, and you are a relative runt in the litter compared to the big dogs. 

The end bit: Where I point out that I'm literally making this shit up. 

Ultimately, this is all conjecture. The sums are vague (but based on the best figures I could find...) and I have literally no idea what is going on in Simon Sadler's head. We know what's going on in Andy Holt's head and we know he's not fond of the implications of playing behind closed doors. We know the figures are frightening. We know that there's a salary cap coming and that could do something to mitigate the costs, though in itself, that is going to create a huge uncertainty and and there's a season's grace proposed, so wage bills won't shrink overnight. The average might fall, but there's still a huge hole to fill and it's not going to go from (probably more than) 6.6m to 2.5m because clubs decided it should. It will take time. 

We are doubtless going to see clubs looking for every reason to jettison players, but if the clubs are playing, it will be difficult to legally remove them from their contract whilst there is palpably work for them to do. You can't make someone redundant when their job exists and if that's not an option, how will you shift squad fillers who are under contract, at a time when all the other clubs who might have otherwise taken them of your hands are looking to cut their cloth in the same way you are? Hence the thought that it might be timely to decide there isn't any work. I'm no legal expert, but redundancies are less costly the shorter the period of employment and in general, footballers don't rack up 15 years of service...

Again, I have no special insight into what will happen next year, just as I've no idea whether Dominic Cummings is playing us all for a laugh or is genuinely family man of the year who can't undertake a potential death crash journey to test his eyes without his loved ones by his side. I have no idea either way. When the facts aren't plain, all you can do is read between the lines and sometimes the subtext is where the real story is. I can't help wonder why there is so much silence from parts of the League One world. It could be because they're contemplating what even now, seems pretty remarkable. It equally could be, because like the rest of us they're just thinking 'what the fuck do we do next?'

None of this is intended to imply a conspiracy or criticism of the clubs. It's an attempt to get my head round the task of being a custodian of a much treasured asset. It's a completely speculative piece where I tried to work out the maths and settled on an answer I don't like. Given that the actual people who have to do this for real will probably have thought a lot more about it than me, I'd be surprised if this thought hadn't crossed their minds. I'm not casting them as bad people, far from it. They're more like art curators, who face having to take a famous painting off display to restore it. No one is going to like it, but what else are they supposed to do? Let it fade away to satisfy the short term desire or disappoint people now but ensure the painting is their for future generations? It's an invidious position and I don't envy them. It isn't League One boards that have created the virus or the broader structures of football finance that emphasise the impact on this level of the game. 

I could end on an optimistic note. If we face a future of homegrown players and salary caps. I'm happy with that, I'd be fucking delighted if the whole of football took that on board. We've got the right manager for the circumstances and our recent announcement about aspiring to be the best academy at our level is a perfect understanding of the moment. It shows our heads aren't in the sand.

I don't feel especially optimistic though. I don't NEED football. I can live without it but never the less, the thought of doing without it for a long time makes the world seem really quite grey. I don't like the thought of watching it on a screen, but it would be *something* at least, however the thought of how the hell League One (and below) affords to put it on in the circumstances makes my head hurt.

To be honest, if the BBC do decide to get involved in making a very different sort of Soccer Relief, I'd give a tenner to Sarah Millican if she'd shut up, but I'd rather give twenty quid to watch Ben Garrity play an actual game. He might be really good. Who knows?

Who the fuck knows anything these days?

UTMP

I never do the 'hey, spare me the price of a coffee' thing, (it's fine that people do, but I've got enough coffee and it makes me a bit giddy, if you've made it through all the shite above, imagine me after 2 cups of caffeine...)

I rarely ask for shares/retweets and all that, because mostly I'm just talking to myself and I like writing but occasionally I put my back into a piece and it's grand if I know some people have read it.

This is one of them pieces. It's cost me nothing but a bit of sleep, but if you thought it had any merit, I'd really, really appreciate a share or a tweet or whatever it is you do. If only so someone can say 'you're talking shite - of course there'll be football next year and here's why' and put my mind at rest...