Club ready for big fall in revenue

NEIL JOY: “Athletic in a stronger position than other clubs.”

IF RELEGATION and promotion issues go against the club, Athletic could be looking at a nightmare scenario of a £500,000 fall in revenue next season.

The new package of Premier League ‘solidarity’ payments will distribute around £325,000 to Athletic and every other npower League One club for the next three years.

That is substantially less than Championship clubs, at £2.1million apiece, will pick up.

Overall, with the central Football League pot reduced as a result of a poorer TV deal, the negative effect for the Boundary Park club is expected to be “substantial”.

Throw out the potential losses in the event of the well-supported Sheffield clubs and local rivals Rochdale leaving the division and the picture is a stark one.

The one thing Athletic have in their favour is 18 months of planning for such problems.

“It is obviously tough,” said Athletic chief executive Neil Joy.

“At the moment we have no fixed idea of what we will get in terms of season-ticket revenue or central funds.

“All we can do is control the length of contracts we hand out to players, which we have been doing for some time.

“Most of our players are on short-term deals.”

From 2012-13, Athletic are expecting to lose more than £200,000 a year in central funding compared to this season.

In the event of two of Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday and Huddersfield Town being promoted and Rochdale relegated, up to a half a million could be lost.



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