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Guest Brockvillenomore
24 minutes ago, FalkirkBairn2021 said:

I'm pretty sure I remember that St Mirren worked out that the club needed 1000 monthly subscribers at £12 a pop to run. Presumably making some basic guesses on the number of STs you will have, commercial income etc.

Would be interesting to see what Falkirk's model, laid out simply, is. That could help too if fans knew that we needed say 900 FSS monthly subscribers to be completely self sustaining. Gives a target.

We need to set out something saying for each division (and I get a lot of this will be extractable from the accounts somewhere)

1) Cost of running the club Inc salaries, upkeep etc

2) Commercial income  ST sales, prize money etc 

3) Shortfall

Apologies if this has already been done but do we know how many monthly subscriptions are required to be completely break even?

You weren’t at either of the meetings last month I assume as this was clearly set out 

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Last time we got to around 970 pledges and they were still pushing to get the numbers up to 1k+ iirc. I'm not sure if that number would be able to decrease the further up the leagues we go? Certainly being in this shiter of a league has the most financial challenges 

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1 minute ago, NavyBlueArmy1876 said:

Last time we got to around 970 pledges and they were still pushing to get the numbers up to 1k+ iirc. I'm not sure if that number would be able to decrease the further up the leagues we go? Certainly being in this shiter of a league has the most financial challenges 

I think costs increase by proportion too though. Salaries are higher, costs on match days when the bigots visit. Clearly commercial income, TV money etc goes higher too.

You will be right though obviously that this shiter of a division is a real money pit.

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2 hours ago, FalkirkBairn2021 said:

I'm pretty sure I remember that St Mirren worked out that the club needed 1000 monthly subscribers at £12 a pop to run. Presumably making some basic guesses on the number of STs you will have, commercial income etc.

Would be interesting to see what Falkirk's model, laid out simply, is. That could help too if fans knew that we needed say 900 FSS monthly subscribers to be completely self sustaining. Gives a target.

We need to set out something saying for each division (and I get a lot of this will be extractable from the accounts somewhere)

1) Cost of running the club Inc salaries, upkeep etc

2) Commercial income  ST sales, prize money etc 

3) Shortfall

Apologies if this has already been done but do we know how many monthly subscriptions are required to be completely break even?

Are we not going to  self sustaining anyway?  I'd be a bit wary about basing your future on having a certain number of subscribers . Fans can be very fickle and things like the current cost of living crisis could adversely affect the clubs ability to survive. At the moment the club doesn't have anyone putting in a pile of cash every year to cover losses so we have to base our budgets on guaranteed income I'd have thought. The fss money should be seen as bonus money . I'm all for the fss owning the club by providing enough money eventually to get to the magic 51 percent of shares but I'm not so keen on us wholly relying on a certain amount of subscribers cash every month to actually exist.

 

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Lots of good ideas on here. 

On memberships, we’re currently on about 460 individuals contributing nearly £5.5k a month averaged. That’s just shy of 20% higher than pledged in our survey last year, but about half of the number who pledged for Back the Bairns four years ago (albeit under a different proposition). 

We are trying to keep pushing memberships up, and have had a good boost since McGlynn was appointed. Incidentally, the most successful membership day was when the ex DoF left the club, and we tend to see spikes in membership linked to good news stories and good form.

By now, every Falkirk fan must know that we exist and what we’re trying to achieve. We kept the offer basic so as to make sure we were being honest with fans, rather than add a load of bells and whistles where the core message gets lost. But all these ideas are helpful.  I’m less sure about the lower entry level as any boost might simply be offset by people choosing to lower contributions. But that’ll be looked at when we review membership policy later this year. 

On one point - the board has been mega-supportive. They wrote to all ST holders recently promoting membership, included info in the ST packs, helped us get McGlynn for the event next week, and many other things. So we need to mend the roof while the sun is shining!

We’d obviously welcome offers of help. Nobody new stood for election to the committee this year. We don’t want fans to become frustrated at us being unable to action their ideas, but equally we all work too. 
 

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24 minutes ago, Jackie Myles said:

Are we not going to  self sustaining anyway?  I'd be a bit wary about basing your future on having a certain number of subscribers . Fans can be very fickle and things like the current cost of living crisis could adversely affect the clubs ability to survive. At the moment the club doesn't have anyone putting in a pile of cash every year to cover losses so we have to base our budgets on guaranteed income I'd have thought. The fss money should be seen as bonus money . I'm all for the fss owning the club by providing enough money eventually to get to the magic 51 percent of shares but I'm not so keen on us wholly relying on a certain amount of subscribers cash every month to actually exist.

 

Not sure that's going to work though if we are going to have any kind of serviceable squad. It's a noble idea but I don't think we generate enough income. 

Unless we want to be part time of course. 

I think under our current ownership there realistically has to be income from the FSS to balance the books.

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Guest Brockvillenomore
1 hour ago, FalkirkBairn2021 said:

That is correct... I wasn't in the country. 

If there's a handy breakdown would be nice to see it

I didn’t take notes and don’t want to take a guess with the numbers.  Maybe somebody on here did? Or ask the BoD at the board email address? 

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14 minutes ago, Brockvillenomore said:

I didn’t take notes and don’t want to take a guess with the numbers.  Maybe somebody on here did? Or ask the BoD at the board email address? 

It was a projected approx £400k operating loss, after an improved commercial performance delivering a similar uplift, IIRC. 

That’s before any wishful thinking, like cup runs, transfers, add-ons etc.  

On current numbers, FSS will provide up to £70k of that. Long way to go. 

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50 minutes ago, FalkirkBairn2021 said:

Not sure that's going to work though if we are going to have any kind of serviceable squad. It's a noble idea but I don't think we generate enough income. 

Unless we want to be part time of course. 

I think under our current ownership there realistically has to be income from the FSS to balance the books.

You can't rely on a definitive amount from it though to balance the books. The fss money is to buy shares that will hopefully end up giving them more than 51 percent of the club. You rely on it and it falls how do you balance the books then if you've already based your budgets on an amount that you don't get?

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18 minutes ago, Jackie Myles said:

You can't rely on a definitive amount from it though to balance the books. The fss money is to buy shares that will hopefully end up giving them more than 51 percent of the club. You rely on it and it falls how do you balance the books then if you've already based your budgets on an amount that you don't get?

Think that target is 26% with the patrons group taking another 26% giving the club majority fan ownership. The Rawlins , SA and MR make up the bulk of the remaining shareholding I presume 

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49 minutes ago, FalkirkBairn2021 said:

Not sure that's going to work though if we are going to have any kind of serviceable squad. It's a noble idea but I don't think we generate enough income. 

Unless we want to be part time of course. 

I think under our current ownership there realistically has to be income from the FSS to balance the books.

Forgive me but it does seem like there is confusion as to the purpose of the FSS.

The contributions are to have more say in how the club is run and gain more involvement in the decision making - and future direction of the club - by buying shares. 

It's not to sustain the clubs cashflow as supporters are already doing that with season tickets, match tickets and retail alongside the wider sponsorship deals the club has.

 

 

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26 minutes ago, Blame Me said:

Forgive me but it does seem like there is confusion as to the purpose of the FSS.

The contributions are to have more say in how the club is run and gain more involvement in the decision making - and future direction of the club - by buying shares. 

It's not to sustain the clubs cashflow as supporters are already doing that with season tickets, match tickets and retail alongside the wider sponsorship deals the club has.

 

 

Ah, thanks.  Maybe me that's misunderstanding (possibly on the other clubs models too)

I had maybe wrongly assumed the monthly subs were part of the annual budgeting.

Are we expecting to break even this season? 

Edited by FalkirkBairn2021
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