Aberdeen supporters claim we account for...

[Danny 0]

4% of their entire season gate return.

 

http://www.donssupporterstogether.com/dst-on-rangers-newco-sporting-integrity-and-the-financial-reality/

 

DST views with increasing concern the possibility that SPL clubs will vote to allow direct entry of a newco to the SPL with minimal penalties. The overwhelming opinion of supporters in Scotland is that a newco should enter senior football by applying for admission to the SFL 3rd division and working their way up again in a sustainable and honest way. Rangers like all other member clubs must be seen to comply with the rules and honour their debts, otherwise why should fans ever bother to turn up again, knowing for sure that the league is permanently rigged in their favour.

 

The mantra being repeated by most pundits and the officials of the SPL is that it is in the member clubsâ?? financial interest that a Rangers newco is immediately admitted to the SPL. The purported grounds are that Rangers along with Celtic bring about £700,000 a year to the other clubs by their fans attendance at matches and the TV deal. The message now being put about is that integrity and fair play is trumped by the financial imperative to survive since Scottish football will supposedly cease to be viable if Rangers are not in the top league. How can this stance be squared with Rangers and Celticâ??s insistence in recent years that their departure to England/an Atlantic League would not be detrimental to Scottish football?

 

These assertions must be strongly challenged by the SPL club chairmen. Firstly, who are making the assertions? Many of the proponents of the â??status quoâ? being essential have a vested interest. Media pundits and the press pack know that there will be far less appetite for their blanket coverage of the Old Firm if there is a transfer embargo and Rangers are facing East Stirlingingshire twice a season rather than Celtic. Their jobs hang in the balance. Clearly Rangers officials and supporters want their club at the top table winning trophies every season with guaranteed European football. They also have a vested interest for either financial or emotional reasons.

 

Now for the financial reality. In the case of our own club, in a season when AFC is in the top six, Rangers will normally add about 8000 over 2 games to the overall attendances for the season. Including programmes, food and other ancillary sales, the annual revenue is therefore about £200,000. Rangerâ??s fans represent about 4% of Aberdeenâ??s gate revenue in an average season, and if we have a good run in Europe, such as 4 seasons ago their effect is reduced to 2% of gate revenue.

 

Should Dundee (probably the best supported club in the SFL 1st division) be promoted into Rangers place, they have historically brought at least 2000 fans to Aberdeen matches, so the Rangers effect is reduced to £150000. If only 300 AFC fans fail to renew their season tickets and walk away from the club next season as a result of a misguided vote to allow a Rangers newco direct entry to the SPL, the effect of any Rangers support attending Pittodrie will be cancelled out. This is an entirely plausible scenario, which may well be repeated across all the SPL clubs given the strength of feeling being demonstrated across Scotland on this issue. SPL club chairmen will only finally count the cost of their decision when season ticket sales fail to materialise, by which time it will be too late to persuade the fans that the SPL is not permanently rigged in favour of the â??too big to failâ? clubs. The SPL chairmen should indeed â??be careful what they wish forâ? if they vote for finance over integrity.

 

The TV deal melt-down scenario must also be challenged. If imaginative thought is applied, an alternative TV deal could be put together which would replace the current tired format. Rugby Super League in England has a £90m 5 year deal with Sky despite having lower attendances than the SPL. That is a better deal than the SPL had, so why can a minority sport with lower support do it and the SPL canâ??t? Probably because we are competing with the EPL and UEFA games, and therefore get less money and the lunch-time, Friday and Monday evening kick-offs to fill in the TV schedule gaps. If we go for summer football, we would be the only show in town for several weeks of the year and our product would be much more valuable. We could increase the league size as the customers want, have bigger play offs to keep the end of the season alive, and if OF games are actually essential to the deal, re-introduce the old League Cup qualifying groups at the start of the season with Rangers and Celtic in the same 4 team group to start the season with 2 OF games before the league starts. Overall, a revised programme for the season could easily generate the same cash as before from a TV deal, whether Rangers are in the SPL or not.

 

Finally let us address the potential absence of £500,000 a year income from TV. This could be replaced by increasing the average home gate by attracting only 1000 extra fans to every home game. The latent support for a successful Aberdeen FC is there to be had. 18,000 made the long trip to Glasgow for a 1215 kick-off only last month. If the AFC product on the pitch was more attractive and marketed as enthusiastically as a certain well known North-East house building companyâ??s product, a target of 1000 extra season ticket fans to replace the TV income could easily be reached.

 

In summary, AFC like all the other SPL clubs does not need Rangers in the SPL to survive and thrive, and must vote for integrity in our national game.

 

15,468 for the Aberdeen 1 - 2 Rangers game that Naisy got injured in.

 

8,779 for the following match at home against Motherwell.

 

9,500 against St Mirren.

 

7000 against Hibs.

 

Where do they get this 4% from I wonder. Take away the 2 home Rangers games and that's a massive dent in their pockets.

 

What a sodding bunch of liars.

[kuznetsov 0]

I worked it out at between £250k and £500k per season. Huge sums for any SPL club. Their hatred is such that they will massage any facts and figures to make it out we are not needed or wanted.

[GovanAllan 0]

Fine then when we don't show up for a season or two their bank balance will be just fine, or will Milne's personal account be taking a pounding again.

[Juancornetto 1]

I hope those fuckers get relegated this season.

[Gribz 850]

They are basing it on Rangers fans ticket sales alone. What revenue they get from away ticket sales probably doubles again as they will have a few thousand extra home fans who dont go week in week out who are attending purely because a Rangers game.

 

Cant remember how much a ticket is, but lets be generous and say 20 quid. We take 4000 fans twice and that is 160k straight away. Going by approx attendances they probably get around 3500 part time supporters going in the home end for these games (x 2). If we generously average the ticket cost to 18 quid (OEP and kids) then thats another 126k. So that is roughly 286k before any programmes, food etc.

 

Out of 16000 on match day say half the crowd spend a tenner then thats 80k x 2 = 160k.

 

Away ticket Sales - 160k

Additional home ticket sales - 126k

Food, programmes etc - 160k

 

Id say anything between 350k - 450k is about right.

Edited May 28, 2012 by Gribz

[der Berliner 3,744]

Isn't any income from their Ibrox gate share included here, if any?

[andy steel 0]

As if we give a shit about, or will base any action upon, the views of Aberdeen supporters.

[the gunslinger 3,366]

they are using this year as a guage. where we only played them once.

 

let's se how they do if we boycott.

[calscot 0]

It looks like Aberdeen fans see themselves as a bottom six team but even then forget they will average 1.5 Rangers home games a season, rising close to an obvious 2 for a regular top six finish.

But they donâ??t even understand that Rangers are by far their top box office draw with an average of 2656 more fans turning up for Rangers games over Celtic. (15468 vs avg of 12812).

 

They also forget that a bottom 6 finish in the current system without Rangers could even see them having only one home Celtic game every second season with the two Rangers home games replaced with what would currently be the seventh team in the league. That is in addition to replacing the seventh teamâ??s two home games with that of the second placed SFL1 team. Therefore, at least every second season you are replacing two Rangers home games with that of Dundee or Hamilton etc.

 

Now Aberdeen fans are not the most loyal against teams at the bottom of the table and not many teams have fans who can be bothered with such a long trip and the amount they would lose could be very significant â?? and you also have to add in the fact that tickets for Rangers are increased by £1.

 

Their lowest attendance was against Hibs last season at 5281 and I think thatâ??s the ball park figure weâ??ve got to be looking at.

 

Thatâ??s over 20k unsold tickets. At £23 a ticket thatâ??s over £46k PLUS the extra pound for 31k tickets and youâ??re looking at close to £500k before adding in programmes and catering. And then thereâ??s the impact of advertising and the biggy, TV.

 

Seems to me that with a reduced TV revenue they could be losing up to £1m a season. Thatâ??s pretty hefty for a £7m turnover... At a reasonable 50% of turnover on wages that could force them to cut possibly 25-30% of their wage bill. With relegation already threatening them regularly, that wage cut could see them going down and a financial disaster. Or will they want the SPL to help them out again and fiddle it so they stay up?

 

Weâ??ve been put in this mess by forces outwith our control, Aberdeen fans seem to want to be the architects of their own downfall â?? all because they have a pathological hate of our club which totally outshines any responsibility to their own..