Ad Lib
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Posts posted by Ad Lib
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On 24/04/2024 at 11:36, Claudia Gentile said:
Do you know the cost of that? I assume it wasn't cheap.
I don't have the figure to hand but I believe it was a five-figure sum.
On 24/04/2024 at 12:05, oneteaminglasgow said:Last years run would’ve been an oddity as well in that (IIRC) we had to extend the entire squads contracts a wee bit to cover the playoff final so had an extra weeks wages to pay for, whereas that wouldn’t be the case this season.
Not a significant impact, but yes, we have that particular f**k-up from who it was who arranged those contracts to mop up.
On 24/04/2024 at 12:05, oneteaminglasgow said:Would we have to pay to install the VAR stuff again this season (if we make it that far) or would we already have most of it in place due to last season? @Ad Lib can you shed any light on this?No idea.
On 24/04/2024 at 12:06, Pie Of The Month said:I believe the justification for it is the SPFL needed the money from gate receipts to be put towards the parachute payment for the 11th placed team if they got relegated. The parachute payment is something like £500k in year 1 and £250k in year 2 and I suspect there would be clubs not willing to agree to the playoffs being introduced if all that money came from their prize money.
Correct, it's explicitly used to fund parachute payments on roughly that scale. What is paid can fluctuate depending on whether teams achieve an immediate return to the top-flight the following season (as parachute payment support lasts for two seasons) so the SPFL builds-in contingency so that it can cope with various eventualities (including when there is and isn't a play-off induced relegation).
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31 minutes ago, Rovers_Lad said:
VAR was used in both legs.Not got a scooby who paid for it to be in place at Firhill
We did as the host club.
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Criminalise VAR
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I think I'm ready to be hurt again.
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18 hours ago, Claudia Gentile said:
I am not too sure clubs make much our of the playoffs as the SPFL take a chunk of gate receipts as do the away team. Obviously we make something, but probably not as much as a home league game. Again this would depend on the attendance. @Ad Libmaybe better placed to give an idea of numbers.
This brings me on to another point. How much money would we have if we went up, big if, I know? I had the sane thought up at Dingwall at the end of last season but events took over.
You get your league placing money but I don't think we get anything extra for winning the playoffs? Do we get a release of projected league money before the season starts? I know it gets paid in 3 or 4 tranches but not sure when clubs get their first payment.
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.
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17 hours ago, cb_diamond said:
Assuming the prize money has went up this year as it is as only 75k of a difference last season?
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.
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1 minute ago, Claudia Gentile said:
Still 1 - 1.
Not according to Sky or BBC?
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On 28/02/2024 at 17:26, purplemonkeydishwasher said:
Thistle to drop more points here, thus completely hibsing the 10 point gap they had.
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Greenock Morten really are the dirtiest football club on this planet and dirtier than any on most of the other planets too.
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44 minutes ago, oneteaminglasgow said:
Did this ever happen?
I didn't get an email!
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On 28/03/2024 at 10:04, VictorOnopko said:
Indeed. And I'd be willing to bet that the folk wringing their hands about a cheaper, modern alternative being used have no interest whatsoever in Thistle or our stadium (and probably no awareness of financial pressures in Scottish football) except to have a wee tut about historical accuracy when walking past.
Regional List (lol) MSP Sweeney's apparent suggestion to try to get the building listed at a time when work is already underway - which could therefore presumably cost us quite a lot of money in the unlikely event he could make a retrospective listing happen - marks him out, quite frankly, as a busybody. He apparently cares about the appearance and fabric of our old stand, but he clearly hasn't considered the overall interests of the football club playing at the stadium and their staff. The new windows look fine.
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...
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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.
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A statement about a bathmat.
Dearie me.
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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)?
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9 hours ago, The Ghost of B A R P said:
To repeat, forcing a professional footballer to move a hoarding that had been intentionally put there to get in his way in order to take a fuckin throw-in - and the ball-boys putting them back every time! - is the height of tin-pottery.
No it's not. It's a good laugh.
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3 hours ago, velo army said:
I don't want to impugn the effort of @Davis Love III as it's a well written piece, but I think what is needed is something which gets to the point quickly. We're trying to get the attention of busy people who don't want to listen to us. We need emotive and brief. What we want is to let our clubs know that we want VAR in the bin. I like that Davis Love III mentions that the reasons given for VAR was the financial cost of wrong decisions, because this is fallacious pish and can be a good point on which to pivot to the decrease of matchday revenue which is of greater importance to our clubs than it is to EPL clubs.
Like @HibsFan in his original post I'd love us to get our heads together and come up with a potent message, so it isn't my intention to rubbish what has been posted above, but to use it as a starting point, take what was good and hone it down a bit.
Dear ______
I'm writing to implore the club to change its stance on VAR and to respect the views of fans that it has become deleterious to the match-going experience.
The promised increased accuracy hasn't materialised and, even if it had, we as fans are now unable to celebrate goals in real time. This spontaneous celebration of goals in real time is the very reason we go to games. This has been sacrificed on the altar of perfectionism and supposed accuracy.
It might be argued that this doesn't affect teams such as ours (in the case of PTFC) as we don't have VAR in our leagues, but it has affected the way games are officiated at this level. The fact that more top level referees are required to arbitrate in the Premiership means that there are fewer referees of sufficient competence available to the lower leagues. I've also seen referees delay decisions in the Championship as if VAR were in place. The lack of confidence has trickled down.
We supporters don't care if our referees are allowed to officiate in UEFA competitions, and the ambitions of Scottish referees shouldn't take precedence over the enjoyment of supporters who are the financial lifeblood of our club.
That Morton were the only club to come out against VAR is shameful. You didn't ask the supporters what they wanted and took a decision that directly affects our experience of the game. We won't allow this to happen again.
Yours.
Velo Army.
This is just my hat into the ring. I'd like to hear feedback or see other posters' suggested efforts.
I'm wondering @Ad Lib if TJF could adopt a stance on this and put a survey out so that we have actual numbers.
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)!
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38 minutes ago, The Ghost of B A R P said:
No problem acknowledging the better team won, but I’ve got to mention the bollocks with the hoardings: possibly the most tin-pot thing I’ve ever seen at any level of football. Hope it was worth it.
I don’t think you understand what the word tinpot means.
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32 minutes ago, TONTROOPER said:
D.O.T. must have creamed his pants watching this.
Lacrime Mortenella
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- Popular Post
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The Boing is Back
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19 minutes ago, DreamOakTree1 said:
Is it pay at the gate? I’m going to head over from Croftfoot for the match.
https://ptfc.co.uk/ptfc-fixture/partick-thistle-v-greenock-morton-16th-march-2024/
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20 hours ago, BigMadMental said:
It was quoted somewhere, possibly at an AGM
genuinely not something that I’ve pulled out my arse. I’ve seen it written somewhere from the club. Obviously it’s not happened yet and perhaps I assumed that this was what they would be relaying when they dug it up in summer 22.
However the pitch is still pish this season and we didn’t have half the issues we did last season and struggle to understand why - despite the fact we barely played on it the whole of January. The pitch last year never looked anywhere near as bad as it does not.
So as a previous poster has suggested there is clearly some kind of cost cutting going on regards to the resources being made available to the ground staff. Much like everything else across the club.
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.
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3 hours ago, BigMadMental said:
Didn’t we carry out this work in 2022 though? The pitch was completely redone in Summer of 22 once QP left and they definitely said that it was a hybrid pitch.
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/
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The Partick Thistle thread
in Scottish Championship General Chatter
Posted
Because they were automatically relegated in 12th place, not relegated via the play-offs.
Under Article 155 of the SPFL, the 11th placed Club gets £500k in season 1 and £250k in season 2 in the event of relegation from the Premiership, with the £250k payment not falling due if they secure promotion the following season.
Under Article 156 of the SPFL, the 12th placed Club gets the lesser of £300k or 2.43% of the SPFL's Net Commercial Revenues in season 1 and the lesser of £125k or 1.01% of the SPFL's Net Commercial Revenues in season 2. As before, the second payment doesn't fall due if they secure immediate promotion back to the Premiership.
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