Stadium Updates (All Clubs)

[Shearer]

Losses of nearly €350k over the past couple of years would suggest otherwise.

Every club loses money. Weird dig.

[EatYerGreens]

The love in for the bitter reds and their fund raising always amazes me.
Rovers members have raised over well 400k in the last year through subs and various activities.

Which is also impressive - though in a much bigger and more wealthier area, and at a club with significantly more fans.

By any measure what Sligo do is genuinely noteworthy. The West is hardly awash with money (the EU officially rates it as not a developed area), and Sligo Town has 20,000 people - within a county of only 70,000, and a region where GAA is king.

[Nesta99]

Any chance the Sligo Board & fans could arrange with the FAI and give a course to all the other LOI clubs about how to run a club efficiently and better still raise funds to develope a stadium!

There is informal sharing of advice, certainly in the past. There were formal workshops run regularly on grant stuff, I gave more than a few myself, I presume there still are. Fundraising is a funny one, I think fundrasing officers should have been a ft role at the likes of Dundalk FC, event management types and there were plenty on the DkIT course that new grads would have grabbed the job cause its not an easy role to break in to successfully.
I think Sligo's fundraising is praised due to scale, is a small enough town, a sellout Tallaght crowd is roughly 50% of Sligo towns population (I wont complicate things with the county and support of other areas, the point stands). Rovers do a fine job, think outside the box like the academy as a childcare facility, genuis sort of thinking in maximising funding opportunity. Membership schemes are no brainers but a bit lazy too, success is often dependant on demographics. Bohs on both fundraising and fanbase growth we poke fun at but we all know they are doing a good job. Ringfencing proportions of whats raised strictly for development is where Sligo have succeeded and Dundalk have not. Drogheda are not great at it either, others I know less about.

The issue with the Galway training ground Im not nerd enough to look up the planners reason for objection but if it is due to flooding risk then it is a very good reason to reject planning and it does grind my gears when people jump to 'red tape' as the problem. Maybe the architect that should be submitting the plans should take some responsibility for not proving flooding isnt an issue or ways to alleviate it by say lots of infill to raise the site above the flood level, or say its not a suitable site in the first place. Who would grant money for a facility that could be washed out. Do you want to spend €100ks or more on a Riverside Stadium situation, that was mad, €1m grant funding washed away + whatever it'd cost to fix the subsequent issues.