“Financial Transparency”

[red_away]

With the club being in 'crisis' again and needing an immediate large scale cash injection and everybody blaming everybody about what should and shouldn’t be done - I was thinking what is the core issue that is at the root of most supporters concerns and the answer to my mind is “Financial Transparency”.

Supporters and the community do not know the following;

Attendance at every game?
Gate receipts for every game?
Receipts from ‘off the field’ fundraising activities?
Structure of the club (MC, Development committee, Membership/Shareholders etc)?
Cost breakdown of all the activities of the club?
What revenue streams are ‘ringfenced’ for which acivities?
Coordinated and prepared ‘roadmap’ with costings for the clubs future?
And the list could go on.

The MC may have good reasons for not putting this information in the public domain but personally after seeing three (this being the third) crisis at SRFC in my time, I think its well overdue that some transparency is given to the financial and operation activities at SRFC.

I think the positives will well out weigh the negatives (unless any MC member can persuade me otherwise) and could result in supporters being more realistic and maybe more appreciative and the business community more receptive to requests to invest in the club, these business people did not get their money by investing in ‘black holes’. Supporters would know where the club was from month to month and when the books became tight might increase there income raising activities or contribute more?

Either way the club has operated behind a veil for long enough and this has proved a failure, I firmly believe that it is time to try a new way to run the club!

[brianw82]

Agree with most of that. If, and I hope it does happen, the club is bailed out of the current crisis, it absolutely CANNOT be allowed to happen again.

The FAI also have to help out here. The mid-season break should be scrapped, teams like us were hit hard by not having a home fixture for weeks and weeks. Look at Bray - no home game for 7 weeks, now they have 2 league games and 2 friendlies at home in 6 days! A joke!

Sliding scale salaries and performance-related pay needs to be introduced too (ie. strikers get improved salaries/bonuses for scoring, defenders for not conceding/giving away tackles etc)

Season ticket sales should also be made official.

(Aside - Re: attendences, I don't see why some sort of electronic counter can't be put on the new turnstiles? It would be incredibly simple to implement, and it just adds a 1 each time the thing goes round, add up the numbers from each turnstile at the end of the night and bingo, you have your official attendance.)

[Rovers Maniac]

I can understand them not annoucing was they actually took on the gate but actual crowd figures should be announced.

I think there is some sort of ticker on our turnstiles.

[Rovers1]

I think there is some sort of ticker on our turnstiles.

doesnt work properly, just counts every person entering as paying adult afaik.

[Redzer]

Supporters and the community do not know the following;

Attendance at every game?
Gate receipts for every game?
Receipts from ‘off the field’ fundraising activities?
Structure of the club (MC, Development committee, Membership/Shareholders etc)?
Cost breakdown of all the activities of the club?
What revenue streams are ‘ringfenced’ for which acivities?
Coordinated and prepared ‘roadmap’ with costings for the clubs future?
And the list could go on.

Either way the club has operated behind a veil for long enough and this has proved a failure, I firmly believe that it is time to try a new way to run the club!

Unfortunatly even the shareholders dont get that much info.

We were told only 1k a month generated from the All weather pitch goes to the club. It seems very small. Thats only €250 a week. I think its about €50 an hour to hire, so someone is cleaning up. One of the members questioned this and he was told if he had a better way to run it, he should join the "All- Weather Committee". So there are very serious questions to be asked. But first we must get out of this hole we are in.

[Paraic]

Unfortunatly even the shareholders dont get that much info.

We were told only 1k a month generated from the All weather pitch goes to the club. It seems very small. Thats only €250 a week. I think its about €50 an hour to hire, so someone is cleaning up. One of the members questioned this and he was told if he had a better way to run it, he should join the "All- Weather Committee". So there are very serious questions to be asked. But first we must get out of this hole we are in.

There's no one cleaning up - there's a substantial loan to be repaid. undoubtedly there could be increased revenues from the All-weather, particularly in the summer time when regular bookings are low and this is something that is being reviewed at the moment.

[redobit]

There's no one cleaning up - there's a substantial loan to be repaid. undoubtedly there could be increased revenues from the All-weather, particularly in the summer time when regular bookings are low and this is something that is being reviewed at the moment.

Fair enough there’s a loan to be paid off, but IMO the numbers don’t add up.
To make €1400 a week at €50 an hour would average at 4 games per day (I play there twice a week and would say that is a realistic estimate) that would equate to €5600 per month
So after overheads, say 600 a month, does that means rovers are paying 4K a month back if only 1K is currently going into the club. The all weather pitch opened November 2005 - over 30 months ago which would come to a total of 150,000 K.

And when you take this into consideration:

'including a grant of €300,000 in 2002 which assisted in the development of this all-weather pitch, which will not only provide all year-round training for the club's many teams but also be used by local club and groups'

which comes from http://www.dast.gov.ie/publications/release.asp?ID=1101 (http://www.dast.gov.ie/publications/release.asp?ID=1101), I then wonder:
1. how much the all weather pitch cost to construct and
2. what’s the balance on the loan

Me and my maths could be completely off the mark, and if I so please enlighten me, but that’s how I see it.

[Paraic]

your projections of income are too high based on current levels of usage, but that;s not to say that they are not attainable if usage of the all-weather increases, which is the objective.

re the loan, I can't disclose financial details, but suffice to say the cost of the develpoment was well in excess of €500k and loan has about four years left of its term. in fairness, that's as much can be said in a forum such as this.

[SligoBrewer]

Cheers Paraic for somewhat clarifying things.