Is the club now self sufficient?

[Bruce Forbes]

When I asked the question "Who pays the bills at the end of the month?", Tenacres replied saying "Eastleigh FC".
Does this mean that the club is now self sufficient, and Stewart doesn't need to make regular contributions? 
Is the funding for the new clubhouse coming directly from the Football Club?
If it is true, that's fantastic news. 
Could anyone confirm this?

[taylov]

I seem to recall that SD indicated at a fans forum last year that we were approaching the point where the income of the club was approaching expenditure, but I doubt that this includes capital projects.

[westendspitfire]

Would be very surprised if the club could be self sufficient given all the changes this year.

However if things were on an even keel then I guess it's not impossible, but surely self sufficiency is a model that would involve settling at a level and maintaining that, only pushing forwrd when capital allowed, whereas Stewart made it clear in his interview that his target is a bit bigger than that and that can only mean his pockets will continue to be utilised for quite a while longer.

[tenacres]

I think perhaps you are slightly misunderstanding what I was saying Bruce.

You referred to Stewart selling a player and I pointed out that it was Eastleigh FC who buy/sell players not any particular individual.

The inner workings of the club - who exactly makes what decisions and how, is not something we are privy too - I would certainly hope & expect Martin Allen has a big say in player movements.

[tenacres]

Is a particular football club self sufficient? is a different question & quite a complex one.

What does self sufficient mean? Plenty of different opinions & ways to answer that.

[Deleted]

Is any club self sufficient?
I read somewhere recently that Man U were 500M GBP in debt - that is hardly a self sufficient club., and they don't come much bigger.

[boyatthood]

Jan 18, 2017 21:48:30 GMT usspitfire said:

Is any club self sufficient?
I read somewhere recently that Man U were 500M GBP in debt - that is hardly a self sufficient club., and they don't come much bigger.

Agree and Eastleigh is no different. Club record transfer fees received will help though....

[tenacres]

I believe this subject was touched upon during a fans forum with Stewart a couple of years ago - during our first season in this league.

As I remember our budget was generally thought to be 6th-8th highest in the league. I asked SD what our budget would be without his input for that season and IIRC he stated it would be probably be around 12th-16th highest in the league.

Obviously things have changed since then & I think the turnover of the club will have increased somewhat - we have sold more STs in the last couple of seasons, crowds have gone up, I'm sure sponsorship has risen - we signed a substantial deal with Utilita.

As said by another poster above I think this season will have been quite costly in wages as we have made various mistakes, at least 2 players have had their contracts settled early (which the club will have had to pay a lump settlement for) and as we all know there have been lots of comings and goings which won't have been good financially.
Moving forwards obviously the new build is likely to raise substantial extra income for the club which I think will help us become "sustainable".

I suppose sustainability in a football club - or indeed other organisation - is essentially a matter of aligning costs with revenue - the biggest obvious cost of a football club being player wages.

My own thoughts are that we are certainly long term "sustainable" as a conference club - but having the budget to compete at the top of this league could/may potentially push us over the edge a little. Of course should we get promoted we get around £800K from TV money/the FA to help develop our youth. Obviously if/when we do go up we would be likely to gain more sponsorship/advertising revenue as well as increased gate & ST money. So is the potential "overspending" worth it to potentially achieve our goal of the football league? I think you could quite easily argue it is.

Apologies that the above isn't a simple yes/no answer - as said before I really think it is a multi dimensional question.

[bomber]

Jan 18, 2017 21:48:30 GMT usspitfire said:

Is any club self sufficient?

 Probably Swansea are the closest you can get to that model.

[bomber]

Jan 18, 2017 23:01:52 GMT tenacres said:

I believe this subject was touched upon during a fans forum with Stewart a couple of years ago - during our first season in this league.

As I remember our budget was generally thought to be 6th-8th highest in the league. I asked SD what our budget would be without his input for that season and IIRC he stated it would be probably be around 12th-16th highest in the league.

Obviously things have changed since then & I think the turnover of the club will have increased somewhat - we have sold more STs in the last couple of seasons, crowds have gone up, I'm sure sponsorship has risen - we signed a substantial deal with Utilita. 

Clubs like Lincoln, Wrexham, have well over a 1000 st holders at double the price of a standard adult st at Eastleigh. We do very well thanks to Stewart's pricing, as some clubs in our league charge as much as championship clubs.

So I doubt we are self sufficient yet.