Shrimpsvoices

fascinating article in todays times here https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/spor ... -nvgrmjxtj
gives some interesting insights into how they have been funded,also average league 2 budget of £1.8Million
maybe something for us here

may be subscription only so full article below
GREGOR ROBERTSON
august 12 2019, 12:01am, the times
Revealed: how Stevenage became the lower-league club who made a profit
gregor robertson

The Journeyman visits . . . Stevenage


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As another season swings into life, is there not something rather obscene about Premier League clubs spending £1.4 billion on summer transfers, as clubs in the Football League are fighting for survival more than ever?

Bury are on the brink. Bolton Wanderers have been reduced to a shell of a club. Fifty-two of the 72 Football League clubs ended 2017-18 in the red. Wages and losses are rising at a rate that is far outpacing income. Phil Wallace, owner of the League Two club Stevenage, makes a stark assessment. “If something doesn’t happen soon, then many of these lower-league clubs will not exist one day,” he says.

Wallace is well placed to make that judgment. Stevenage have been transformed since the chief executive of the Lamex Food Group bought the Hertfordshire club two decades ago.

They were promoted to the EFL for the first time in 2010 and followed that by going up, under Graham Westley, their former manager, to League One, in 2011.

In 2012, they reached the League One play-off semi-finals and, despite dropping back down to League Two in 2014, Stevenage have established themselves as a fixture of the Football League over the past decade.

Yet running a football club sustainably, Wallace says, is a “constant battle”. Stevenage were one of only eight League Two clubs to turn a small profit in 2017-18, thanks largely to the sale of Ben Wilmot, the academy-developed defender, to Watford. Yet Stevenage “probably lose money three years out of four”, according to the owner.

As with most clubs, Wallace says, Stevenage have pretty much exhausted all available income streams. “All of us are out in our communities, in local schools, giving free tickets away, doing everything we can to drive attendances to our community clubs — and we can’t put ticket prices up to increase our income,” he says. “Then, if you accept that we’re probably not going to be able to depress wages for staff and players, then that future looks quite bleak, doesn’t it?”

Stevenage, moreover, have not been afraid to think outside the box. This summer, they sold more than £300,000 of club shares through Tifosy, the sports investment platform co-founded by Gianluca Vialli, the former Chelsea and Italy striker, to invest directly into the first-team playing budget. Shareholders enjoy voting rights, would receive a 25 per cent dividend upon promotion to League One, and a further 75 per cent dividend should they get into the Championship.

“Over 150 people are now part-owners of the football club who have the ability to share in our success,” Wallace says. “It wasn’t an exercise in me divesting myself of the club; it was an exercise to bring money in that we could use to directly improve the football budget, and to reward those [investors] if we were successful.”

In 2017, Stevenage became the first club in English football to offer a bond, also using Tifosy, to fund the development of a new stand at the Lamex Stadium. More than 200 fans raised £600,000, investing between £500 and £25,000. The 1,500-seat North Stand opens next month.

Having missed out on the League Two play-offs by one point last season with a playing budget of £1.6 million, slightly below the £1.8 million League Two average, 12 new players have arrived this summer along with Mark Sampson, the former England women’s head coach, and David Oldfield, a former Leicester City midfielder, as assistants to Dino Maamria, the manager.

Kurtis Guthrie, of Stevenage, finds himself outnumbered as Exeter condemned the Hertfordshire club to a second straight league defeatKurtis Guthrie, of Stevenage, finds himself outnumbered as Exeter condemned the Hertfordshire club to a second straight league defeat
DAVID SIMPSON/TGS PHOTO/REX
However, Wallace says the status quo is unsustainable. “There’s a huge groundswell of opinion to see money filter down more, and that’s coming from a realisation that you can’t just have top-level football in this country,” he says. “Football is the national game and it has to be played at all levels to be the national game.

“This is not League One and League Two clubs looking for a handout. The majority of clubs are run well by good people who know what they’re doing. I know what I’m doing: I run a £1.6 billion-turnover business. But I can’t make this club break even.

“I can cut my wage bill and then take Stevenage out of the Football League. You could look at wage caps but I’m not really in favour of suppressing people’s wages — people should be allowed to earn what they can — and I can’t make supporters pay more. We are fighting an uphill battle. In years to come, we are going to ask ourselves, ‘What didn’t we actually understand was wrong about that scenario? How did we think this was sustainable?’ ”

An interesting read. Thanks for sharing.