Will BWFC make a profit this season?

For years the club have been losing money. Even when we were getting Premiership income and fancy Sky TV money we were spending more than we were receiving. Successive managers have tried to buy success and they've all failed - Allardyce, Megson, Coyle all spent more money than they earned. FAIL.

Obviously the club has other financial activities that are not directly related to football which skew the accounts but it's clear that as a cost centre, the football club has to stop making losses year on year - it's a business not a charity.

Freedman has made inroads into the cost side of the equation by getting some of the high earners off the books but it would seem that further cuts are still required.

At what point does the club stop investing in the squad and players to the extent that income finally exceeds cost?

Where is our break even point? Is it actually possible to make a profit as a mid-table Championship side and if so are we likely to do it this season?

Under Allardyce we were running successfully with a small manageable deficit which is normal in football.
Megson onwards is a different story.

So no we will make a loss for the next 10 to 12 years unless we gain promotion and survive up there long enough or do several trips up and down on a shoestring budget.

Administration some time ago was a chance missed which should have been taken.

carrs wrote:Under Allardyce we were running successfully with a small manageable deficit which is normal in football.
Megson onwards is a different story.

So no we will make a loss for the next 10 to 12 years unless we gain promotion and survive up there long enough or do several trips up and down on a shoestring budget.

Administration some time ago was a chance missed which should have been taken.

 
I actually agree with all of this apart from the Allardyce bit as I understood that he returned  losses but Megson caught most of the flak of Allardyce's ageing and overpaid squad - Sam bailed out knowing what was coming having painted us into a corner. 
The rest seems like a balanced and realistic assessment of our situation going forward.
Administration would only have been an option if they'd separated out the non-football trading activities into a separate business though.

Sam  recognised the need for some funding which was within our means. It was refused.

carrs wrote:Sam  recognised the need for some funding which was within our means. It was refused.

Don't want to start that whole debate about Allardyce again but most of the squad needed replacing (which wasn't affordable) and he hadn't got a plan B so he left us in the shit and ran off to grab the Geordie shekels. He f***** us over good and proper IMO and we're still feeling the pain of what he did to the club today.

Sam left us with 36m to 40m debt depending which dates you look at the figures. The club and team needed some funding put into it irrespective of who was the manager then or to come.

Time you left that alone and take the situation from the start of the current problem which is the Megson era.

Look back and you will see the writing has been on the wall since the Megson gamble failed. The rest is history.

I can't honestly see how we can ever break even or make money from the football club alone.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and it's easy to look back now on the decision to build The Reebok in Horwich and say "Perhaps we hamstrung ourselves right from the off" but I think it played its part.

We were told at the time that the new ground would be self-funding and wouldn't cost us anything, the idea being that the retail park would cover the costs of building the ground - patently not true.

And you've got to question the decision to build a stadium that holds just shy of 30,000 people for a club that struggles to average 20,000 paying attendees every week (even in The Prem.)

Yes, I know hat we used to get much larger crowds in the 70's but that's when you could get a season ticket for about sixty quid, not five hundred.......

I'm not saying the decision to build The Reebok was a bad one, just that the people in charge of planning should have been a bit more realistic in their projections of how many people would turn up every week and what it would cost to maintain and service a swanky new stadium that could wind up being 50% under-occupied every week.

Then throw into the mix the ridiculous amount that players can command in wages nowadays and it was never going to end well: Wages >100% of Revenue = Unsustainable.

We're not a big club and we suffer from having so many Premier League teams on our doorstep but that's always been the case and I can't help feeling that we should have been a bit more realistic in terms of our ambition and the size of the ground we built.

It's as if we forgot about how easily this club can slip from profitability into deep shit and by that I mean, for the Normid supermarket in the 80's, read The DeVere White Elephant in the Noughties....

Both had to be tacked onto the ground as alternative revenue streams to shore up the business because we weren't making enough through our actions on the pitch. (I know the Normid wasn't ours to make money from like the hotel is, but the money we made from selling the land saved the club, so it's a similar set-up.)

I think we're screwed and will never make enough from football to turn a profit.

Personally my opinion is that the debt isn't an issue.

Someone keeps paying the bills to keep the club going, so they aren't bothered about making a profit - they would get a better return by simply putting thir money in the bank and getting some interest on it, if that was what they were after.

Seems obvious to me that the club is simply a means to an end - not sure what the end is though - possible the big land development, maybe something more murkier?

Whatever it is the aim is simply to keep the club going until the time comes when it suits them not to.

Why else would a small town club like Bolton be up there with the likes of United and Real Madrid in terms of club debt - no one else our size is remotely near the vast amount of debt we are in.

Suspicious or what?

Breadman wrote:I can't honestly see how we can ever break even or make money from the football club alone.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the only way clubs like Bolton can start to turn a profit is to target a better class of person.

What is the point of targeting Honest Joe from Johnson Fold who can't afford a season ticket and can only make a handful of home games? I mean, look at the bellends on this site - full of opinions but very few actually contribute to BWFC by going to games or buying I've Scored At The Macron knickers from the club shop.

Go 100% corporate and target rich individuals and companies. No upper class person wants to rub shoulders with common folk, so by guaranteeing the underclass are kept out we could really appeal to those go-getters who are looking to flash the cash.

Are you related to Gartside, Nat because that's precisely the kind of stunt I could see him trying to adopt at some point?

It's typical Gartside thinking - Looks viable on paper, would provide a short-term solution to the problem but the practical application would fail and end up alienating what's left of the genuine fan-base.

For christ's sake, don't e-mail him......!

Breadman, the "genuine" fan is all but extinct. They've buggered off to go dogging, fisting or cock fighting. All cheaper forms of entertainment with a better outcome.

The club has to move on and target people with cash or it will go the same way as Little Chef.