Free-Loaders Need Not Apply

30 August 2010 17:11
Stirling Albion are challenging the way football clubs are run and will not be handing out free tickets to all and sundry. Stirling Albion are the first senior Scottish club to be owned by its Supporters’ Trust. Now that they have their feet under the table, they are looking at ways to ensure they do not become the guardians of a club on the downward spiral to obscurity. While they had a good look at the books during the protracted negotiations to take the club over, with the ownership come responsibility and some tough decisions have to be made to save costs. They have been in touch with the SFL and the other SFL clubs to announce that they will no longer be providing complimentary tickets on demand to visiting clubs and players. They have no intention of asking for complimentary tickets from opposing clubs for their players and officials. The club made the decision after a financial analysis of the potential cost to the club over a full season. The SFL clubs appear to have accepted this step change from the norm and will be watching with interest how this works in practice. I would not be surprised to see other clubs following the model of cutting costs and generating income.Stirling Albion spokesman, Paul Goodwin said: “In some cases, Stirling Albion has been asked for 75 complimentary tickets for games at Forthbank by opposition clubs.  Based on twenty home games a season we are talking about giving away over £20,000 a year. We fully appreciate that we are challenging the traditional way that football clubs have operated in the past but we’ve always said that football needs to look forward and in certain situations adopt a different approach instead of continuing to do the same things ‘because that’s the way it’s always been done’. Like most football clubs Stirling Albion is operating on very tight budgets and we have an obligation to the club to continue to reduce costs and look to increase revenues at every source to provide the strongest possible playing budgets to our manager while working towards a more sustainable financial position for the club.  If just half of those using our complimentary tickets were to pay at the turnstile we would increase the club’s income by £10,000 a season and, for us, that would be a huge boost. Official representatives of other opposition clubs will continue to be invited as guests to the Forthbank Stadium and should other clubs extend an invitation to us then representatives of our Supporters Trust will take up that kind invitation on behalf of the Club. We trust that those who have enjoyed watching football at Forthbank over the years by using complimentary tickets will continue to attend and appreciate that their gate money will be going straight into helping sustain Stirling Albion’s future.  We will certainly benefit from their financial support.” Editor Ger Harley (ger@scottishfitba net)Admin Team (admin@scottishfitba net)This is Scottish-Fitba Net

Source: FOOTYMAD