Chris in London
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 21 Sep 2009
- Messages
- 13,335
Anyone who hasn't read Swiss Ramble's blog on FFPR, I recommend it to you.
This is one of the points he makes:
"City’s Achilles’ heel is their very low match day income, which is only £26 million. This works out to around £1 million a match, which is very low compared to Manchester United £3.7 million and Arsenal £3.3 million. It’s not just a question of stadium capacity either, as Chelsea and Liverpool earn £2.4 million and £1.6 million, even thought their grounds are smaller than City’s."
In other areas, we are making fantastic headway: more and better commercial deals, increased TV revenue, trimming dead wood from the wage bill, but our matchday income is scarcely any higher than under Stuart Pearce whereas our sponsorship income has gone through the roof. But our annual matchday income is £15m less than the dippers (the fucking dippers, for Christ's sake! It's not exactly millionaires row over there) and £25m less than Chelsea's.
We all know that there is a very significant proportion of non-Manc rag support, a lot of which are Chinese day trippers etc. Also, we know that there is a lot of rag support inside the M60. (Sometimes you can spot them from the stacks of bouncy castles, statues, pizza boxes and taxis outside their house.)
so: there are say 45,000 regular match going blues, 45-55,000 regular match going rags, and another 15-25,000 tourists who at the moment are going to the swamp. These people have no particular affiliation for the rags based on history, family, tradition or any of the things that make us blues.
What they do have is enough cash to make the pilgrimage from Mumbai, Singapore, Hong Kong etc to the swamp. That is a big part of the reason why at the swamp they are generating almost four times the matchday income we are. A lot of us ROFLd at the youtube video that those french guys made of the 6-1. But those four or five french guys probably ended up putting upwards of £100 each into the rag economy (ticket price, food at stadium, bag of shite from the megastore etc).
Putting it bluntly, we'll have some of that. If these people are going to travel accross the world to pour money into a Manchester football club, wouldn't you rather it was ours?
We are all proud - rightly and immensely - of our fanbase, our ties to the community, the fact that we pretty much sold out our stadium even when the teams we were playing were Walsall and Lincoln. (We all know what happened to the rags crowd when they went down in the 70s and to Leeds or the barcodes much more recently.)
But we have to recognise that money talks and if we want to be able to trade punches with Europe's best, we need to generate a huge amount of money ourselves rather than relying on the Sheikh. We will be given time by UEFA to meet FFPR, and probably lots of it, but one day we have got to be breaking even or we are out of Europe. At the moment, matchday revenues are where we lag seriously behind. Much as it sticks in the throat to say so, Singapore dollars are a very welcome addition to the project.
This is one of the points he makes:
"City’s Achilles’ heel is their very low match day income, which is only £26 million. This works out to around £1 million a match, which is very low compared to Manchester United £3.7 million and Arsenal £3.3 million. It’s not just a question of stadium capacity either, as Chelsea and Liverpool earn £2.4 million and £1.6 million, even thought their grounds are smaller than City’s."
In other areas, we are making fantastic headway: more and better commercial deals, increased TV revenue, trimming dead wood from the wage bill, but our matchday income is scarcely any higher than under Stuart Pearce whereas our sponsorship income has gone through the roof. But our annual matchday income is £15m less than the dippers (the fucking dippers, for Christ's sake! It's not exactly millionaires row over there) and £25m less than Chelsea's.
We all know that there is a very significant proportion of non-Manc rag support, a lot of which are Chinese day trippers etc. Also, we know that there is a lot of rag support inside the M60. (Sometimes you can spot them from the stacks of bouncy castles, statues, pizza boxes and taxis outside their house.)
so: there are say 45,000 regular match going blues, 45-55,000 regular match going rags, and another 15-25,000 tourists who at the moment are going to the swamp. These people have no particular affiliation for the rags based on history, family, tradition or any of the things that make us blues.
What they do have is enough cash to make the pilgrimage from Mumbai, Singapore, Hong Kong etc to the swamp. That is a big part of the reason why at the swamp they are generating almost four times the matchday income we are. A lot of us ROFLd at the youtube video that those french guys made of the 6-1. But those four or five french guys probably ended up putting upwards of £100 each into the rag economy (ticket price, food at stadium, bag of shite from the megastore etc).
Putting it bluntly, we'll have some of that. If these people are going to travel accross the world to pour money into a Manchester football club, wouldn't you rather it was ours?
We are all proud - rightly and immensely - of our fanbase, our ties to the community, the fact that we pretty much sold out our stadium even when the teams we were playing were Walsall and Lincoln. (We all know what happened to the rags crowd when they went down in the 70s and to Leeds or the barcodes much more recently.)
But we have to recognise that money talks and if we want to be able to trade punches with Europe's best, we need to generate a huge amount of money ourselves rather than relying on the Sheikh. We will be given time by UEFA to meet FFPR, and probably lots of it, but one day we have got to be breaking even or we are out of Europe. At the moment, matchday revenues are where we lag seriously behind. Much as it sticks in the throat to say so, Singapore dollars are a very welcome addition to the project.