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The SPFL gets to keep half of the ticket revenue (after a deduction to the home side of 15% of aggregate receipts for hosting costs). I'm not sure if the remainder is shared between the two clubs or if the home side simply keeps what's left for each fixture. I think it's the latter. Based on what the ticket prices were for the games in last season's play-off (and assuming a fairly standard mix of adult and concessionary/kids tickets) my best guess would be that there was about £30k of ticket income kept by Thistle for the Queen's Park game (which saw an attendance of 3750 or so) and about £60k or so for each of the Ayr and Ross County games (which saw attendances over 7000). In terms of impact on profitability, you then have to subtract (a) actual hosting costs (b) player and management team bonuses (c) the additional VAT liability on sales, and in the case of the Ross County game (d) installation and operation of VAR costs. My understanding of what this meant for Thistle (though it may not be the case at other Clubs) is that these things roughly cancel out and that being in the playoffs, per se, has no significant impact on profitability. What actually matters for profitability is final league placing, because that directly impacts prize money. The situation is slightly complicated for accounting purposes at Thistle for last season (in terms of getting like-for-like figures on gate receipts) though, because the Ross County games technically fell in our current accounting period (2023-24) not the last one (2022-23). You can thank FIFA for sucking up to dictators for that one. The team that finishes bottom of the SPFL currently gets just under double the amount of the team that wins the Championship. These figures are in the spreadsheet I linked earlier in the thread, and are updated annually depending on the total value of the SPFL prize pot (each position all the way down the pyramid gets an agreed percentage of it). This isn't really the full story though because the economics of running a Premiership club are completely different from running a Championship one in terms of costs (principally but not exclusively playing budgets, see also VAR) and income sources. If a Club gets promoted, either as champions or through the play-offs it's as well completely ripping up its budget and starting again with a completely different set of assumptions around (a) price-point of STs and tickets (b) the volume of sales of STs and tickets (c) the commercial opportunities the Club attracts (d) the price point and profitability of hospitality. Thistle in the top flight, between 2013 and 2018, grew steadily from a business with a turnover of less than £2 million to one at its peak turning over more than £4.5 million. This came crashing down to about £2.5-£3 million when we got relegated back to the Championship and even troughed below £1.5 million the Covid season in the 3rd tier. We're now, broadly speaking, back to being a £2.5-3 million turnover Club again. The too long didn't read is that it's completely pointless to talk about how much "extra" you get for being in the Premiership. It means running a completely different type of business. As for when prize-money is paid out, you're right that it's done in tranches. I think there's either one or two major tranches pre-Christmas, one early in the new year and another at the end of the season. In the Premiership there is one when the split happens because they can tell what the minimum pay-out for Clubs will be by then. If you're a Championship Club and you're budgeting for the play-offs, you can typically expect about half of your prize-money to be paid out at the very end of the season. You know what has a much bigger impact on football clubs' financial performance at our level than almost anything else? Solidarity payments, sell-on fees, and (alas) big away cup draws against the Old Firm (not even Cup progression, especially but the match-day revenue). Thistle made (IIRC) more than £1 million in income from subsequent moves for Liam Lindsay, over and above the original £350k transfer fee Barnsley paid. That sort of money makes a dwarf of most of our sponsorship deals, the prize money differences for finishing positions etc. The away fixture at Rangers in the Cup last season brought in about £280k. That's essentially the difference between finishing 1st and 4th in league prize money terms. tl;dr it's extremely difficult to run a full time football club sustainably in the Scottish Championship for very long without (a) crowds of 4000 (b) a regular supply of transfer/similar income or other major non-footballing sources of revenue and/or (c) drawing Rangers or Celtic in a cup competition on a semi-regular basis.

SPFL Media Watch did a spreadsheet last season that suggested it was £90k gross. Their pinned Tweet has the final numbers. It's got this season's figures tabbed on its Twitter account: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1e5A-1txobxW548SF2-4IpwkmqP156qydOfxYBANAUM8/edit#gid=0 Looks like £100k gross this year, or thereabouts, for the difference between 3rd and 4th. Obviously, that's not the full picture, not least because most Clubs' player bonus structure will likely eat into this. So the net impact will be smaller (probably closer to £70k depending on other related assumptions). But your £75k figure isn't right. It was last that in 2019-20. The figures are calculated as a percentage of the prize pot, and the total prize pot is bigger now than it was then. So whilst the proportions haven't changed the absolute gap in pounds and pence has.

Not according to Sky or BBC?

Greenock Morten really are the dirtiest football club on this planet and dirtier than any on most of the other planets too.

I didn't get an email!

Making the Main Stand a listed building is probably the one thing most likely to lead to its outright demolition, because it would kill off the financial viability of any major redevelopment of Firhill that involved keeping it as a football stadium. I'm sure Thistle being forced to build a 4000 seater stadium in Bishopbriggs and Firhill Road being converted into a student village would be fantastic for community heritage...

I went to University with Paul Sweeney. If he wants to write a letter to the CEO of the Football Club I will be recommending, as one of the representatives for the majority shareholder, that any reply is short.

A statement about a bathmat. Dearie me.

One for @The Thistle Archive Apart from today and last weekend, when if at all have the surnames of the Thistle goalkeeper and the entire back line all begun with the same letter (Mitchell, McMillan, Muirhead, McBeth, Milne)? What’s the highest number of Thistle players with the same first letter of surname to have been on the park at the same time? And what was the narrowest alphabetical spread of any Thistle starting XI (eg today’s was F(itzpatrick) to R(obinson) but had an astonishing 8 players across consecutive letters LMN)?

No it's not. It's a good laugh.

Drop TJF an email and we can bring it up at our next board meeting (next week). Personally I think VAR needs to get in the fucking bin, but I can't speak for anyone else on this (yet)!

I don’t think you understand what the word tinpot means.

Lacrime Mortenella

The Boing is Back

https://ptfc.co.uk/ptfc-fixture/partick-thistle-v-greenock-morton-16th-march-2024/

Neither the minutes of the November 2022 AGM, nor the draft minutes of the January 2024 AGM, make any mention whatsoever of a hybrid pitch. You are misremembering. As explained by others earlier, I strongly suspect that the quality of the surface is a result of the late finish to last season, and that having led to more limited works to revitalise the surface over the summer than is otherwise the norm.

No they didn't. This is what they said at the end of the 2021-22 season: "Following our final regulation home league game of the season, Partick Thistle FC can confirm that a full renovation of the pitch at Firhill will take place at the end of the current season, commencing as soon as it fully concludes. To help accommodate this, we have requested that our two 2022/23 Premier Sports Cup home group matches this summer are scheduled as our final two group fixtures. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank head groundsman Allan Findlay and all his staff for their hard work all season and especially in recent months. The club can also confirm that there will be no ground-sharing agreement in place with any other club for the 2022/23 season." https://ptfc.co.uk/ptfc-news/club-update-regarding-firhill-pitch/

Strong fake news here. The Firhill pitch is not and never has been hybrid.

A grim watch from start to finish. Fearing for the next few games tbh.

Reminder to those Rovers fans planning to go to Munns that it’s cash only.

Special mention for G4S who were total jobbers yesterday. The biggest health and safety risk at Hampden is not people standing six inches onto the stairwell in a 9/10 empty stadium. Nor is it allowing David Mitchell or Luke McBeth to go up to the fans and show their appreciation for them. Yet the “national stadium” apparently can’t even get a stretcher to a player who cannot walk. What a complete and utter shambles of an operation.

One more thing: Dundee United are the most dirty and violent football club ever to have graced the planet and I hope they spread the rabies that the rat Louis Moult clearly has among the full squad.