Please find below the minutes from the quarterly open forum held on Thursday 12th February below – taken by Spartans Trust Chairman Dan Rolls.
Attendees from the board and management team – Kevin Miles (KM), Craig Richardson (CR), Paul Norvell (PN), Dan Rolls (DR), Mark Middling (MM), Colin Blackett (CB), Marc Nash (MN), Anthony Woodhouse (AW).
Apologies – Stephen Southern (SS2), Martin Trinder (MT), Peter Saleem (PS), Shad Saleem (SS1).
The Quarterly Forum was opened by DR at 8:04, who welcomed everyone and presented the running order for the evening before handing over to KM for the quarterly report.
KM begins by apologising for the absence of some of the board members and thanking supporters for attending the quarterly forum before presenting his report.
- Acknowledges the upturn and in results and performances under the new management team since the turn of the year. Believes following recent results, there is plenty of room for cautious optimism.
- Stated that Matlock’s manager was full of praise for Spartans, following the narrow 1-0 defeat at Matlock Town the previous month.
- Believes we have much more of a settled and combative team, with a more focus tactical approach.
- Recognises that the weather has put a bit of strain on the club’s cashflow situation of late.
- On the opening of the discussion surrounding the financial report, it was stated that matchday income and developing income streams at Croft Park by expanding the infrastructure.
- Confirmed that the Social Club had been formerly renamed the ‘Blyth Spartans Community Clubhouse’ to for the purposes of applying for grants.
- KM also highlighted the community focussed events that had already taken place at the Clubhouse, citing the children’s Halloween and Christmas parties.
- It was also announced that the catering company ‘Shield and skillet’ has also been set up as independent company – focussing on outside catering events as well as matchday food.
- Funding applications to the Premier League stadium improvement fund and the Football Foundation are being considered.
- It confirmed that this summer, plans are in place to upgrade the changing rooms, converting the kit room into a manager’s office – and converting part of the boiler room into the new kit toom. These will be paid for with grant funding up to 70%. The football club will cover the cost of the other 30%.
- KM believes that improving the changing facilities will be one of the factors that helps to attract players to football club.
- An application is to the Football Foundation for a number of projects around the ground. One would see the Shield and Skillet moved to forecourt next to the Clubhouse, to help allow Sunday dinners to be sold in there. Colin’s café would also be moved to the storeroom of the club store, while the club store would be turned into the club’s offices. The Club store would be rebuilt in a new structure near the Kingsway End of the ground. A new hospitality suite would also be located where the Shield and skillet current sits – similar to the style of hospitality unit at Whitby Town.
- Thew new hospitality suite would also be available to hire out during the week.
- KM accepted that complications around planning permission may cause delays – stated that he wanted to do things the right way and that Blyth Spartans would be a ‘model club’ in doing things the right way.
- The power supply around the ground would also need to be upgraded.
- It was stated that the money spent on the stadium upgrades would not takeaway from first team’s budget.
KM closed his report by thanking supporters for attending. The floor was then opened up to the supporters for questions in regarding Kev’s update and the financial report, which can be found below. - During the open forum, KM also thanked supporters and everyone around the club for their support following the loss of his son David, in late November.
Q) We budget for 500 at the start of the season, but we average nearly 600 a game. I though we were getting more money in than we had budgeted for?
MM) One of the issue’s is we had less home friendly than we had budgeted for in the summer. Also, the balance of people paying for concession prices vs adult prices has been different to what we expected as well.
Q) In relation to that, should not have had these figures to hand?
MM) Possibly – we could provide a further update on that.
DR) Just on that, we had budgeted for 4 home friendlies – bringing in 2.5K a game. We of course only had 2, so that was 5K gone straight away. From some figures basic I’ve seen, roughly 45% of people paying at the gate or who bought a season ticket were actually paying full price.
Q) What sort of percentage does the food outlet give?
KM) Every penny of profit from a matchday comes into the club. We’re in constant discussion with them on how we maximise that. The football club provide them with the container and cover the electricity and water costs; they take out the cost of the wages and the food. The profit fluctuates based of the crowd. We can give you those figures, but roughly it’s about £100 a game they generate. Sometimes it’s less than £100 a game, but for the Blyth Town game we made £800.
The other stuff that they do on a Sunday, is done on a profit share basis. 50% of the profit goes to them (No 54 with love) and 50% of the profit goes to the football club. We regard that as money we would not have otherwise had. We also of course make money from Bell’s bottle bar, Colin’s café and the Clubhouse. We’ll also look at reporting on each of those income streams.
If we don’t have the answer to the questions at hand, we can follow up on those later.
Q) The overspend on the budget under Colin Myers, was nobody else in the club keeping an eye on what he was spending?
MM) I’ll put my hands up to that – the loan players (Louis Burns and Joe Aungiers) hadn’t been factored in the budget, and there was an issue with one of players who’s wages were Colin had agreed was higher than they’d actually been paid – so there was a bit of back pay for us to sort out when they left.
MM also thanked Scott Gibson for his efforts in helping him with working on the club’s finances across the season.
MM also confirmed that despite being slightly overbudget at present for the year, the club would not be asking MN to claw back the overspend by cutting the budget.
KM) If I can just add to what Mark has said their, there’s always an issue between micromanaging and letting the manager make those decisions. We give a manager a budget and allow them to spend it. We’ve had discussions with the management team, and they don’t think an increase in the budget would have a massive impact on the team’s fortunes. We’ve seen previous attempts, and if you lash out money on players, sometimes they aren’t coming here for right reasons – they’re coming here for money. We saw that ourselves at times last season.
We will work as a board to support Mark with his budget, and if he ever spots a player that he thinks would make a difference – he can come and talk to us, and we’ll find a way of doing it. His feeling is though that the squad we have here is good enough to stay up and develop over the next few years.
Q) Due to the lack of income from the lack of games in recent weeks, are we in danger of running into an overdraft with the bank?
MM) The bank no, our very kind directors yes. This month is giving us problems, and they’re maybe a potential shortfall. The wages will get paid this month; there is no doubt about that.
KM) The cashflow does give us a problem. We may have to come to the community and ask for some assistance, but the first port of call will be the directors of the football club. We will make sure that the football club stays afloat. It’s not just a cash flow problem though, rearranged games don’t generate the same amount of income. Attendances are key, but so are developing other income streams.
MM) When I came in, I wanted to build up a surplus for when these sorts of things happened. Unfortunately, we’ve not be able to do that, the extra costs regarding the building work last summer have killed us a little bit there.
Q) The new hospitality sounds great and all, but we need to make a bit more of an effort in order for it to succeed – with things like photo’s online etc. We need to make a bit more of an effort in that respect now, in order to bring in more interest next season.
DR) On hospitality, it’s been structured a bit differently this season, and we haven’t been able to get many photos of sponsors throughout the season. I expect that will soon change, as that’s already underway.
Q) What is the uptake on hospitality so far this season? Has it been fully booked on a regular basis?
DR) It hasn’t been so far this season no. For the remainder of the season, it does have a few bookings in, however. In recent games it has done well, but overall, I believe we are down from the budget target.
MM) While it is down on last year, we are comfortable with that we’ve brought in so far and what the projections are for the end of the season.
Q) How do we actively seek sponsorship on a matchday? Do we just rely on contacting us, or do we tout for business?
DR) From our end we advertise sponsorship online, and information is also fixed on the website. Steven Brett (Business Development Officer) will no doubt push that our sponsors as well.
Q) What do you think the effect of reducing the prices has been this year, do you think we’ve went too far?
MM) There’s a couple of things that we’ve done this season that have been right for the club but have impacted the finances. Removing the extra charge for the season was one. For me as a finance person, we may have gone a bit too far in respect of the reduction but, that’s what the fans had requested. We do want to do what’s right for the fans.
DR) On the extra seating charge, I had seen that not one club at this level charged extra for seating. In the league above, not many teams are doing it. If we had gone ahead with that, we’d be charging £14 a ticket (for adults) – which for this level of football is obscene.
Q) Do you not think we should bring the £2 charge back to sit down?
DR) If someone wants to pay extra to sit down, they’re welcome to donate it, however for me, charging £14 for this level of football isn’t acceptable.
KM) I do think we need to keep the ticket pricing at an acceptable level so everyone here can access football at Croft Park. We will of course always give supporters the chance to support the club financially though.
Q) Clark Carlisle, what’s his role?
KM) Clark is the Chairman of Spartans In The Community. He’s recently changed jobs and we have had some delays setting it up due to some issues with the charity commission, however we should have an update on that soon.
A drinks break followed part one of the Q&A, before Marc Nash and Anthony Woodhouse joined the forum for part two.